saw the importance of carrying out this idea on a wider field of action, and Virginia accordingly inaugurated a system of intercolonial correspondence which led to the meeting of a continental congress, and was the first practical step towards political independence of the parent state.  Adams’s decision to work for independence was made, or confirmed, as early as 1767, when Charles Townshend succeeded in passing the measures which were so obnoxious to the colonists, and finally led to civil war.

At a most critical moment, when the feelings of a large body of people were aroused to a violent pitch, when ideas of independence were ripening in the minds of others besides Samuel Adams, General Gage, then in command of the British regular troops in Boston, sent a military force to make prisoners of Adams and Hancock at Lexington, and seize some stores at Concord.  Then the “embattled farmers” fired the shot “which was heard around the world.”  Then followed the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the battle of Bunker’s Hill, on the same day that Washington was appointed by congress to command the continental army.  At this critical juncture, John Adams and other prominent colonists—­not excepting Washington—­were actually disavowing all desire to sever their relations with the parent state in the face of the warlike attitude of congress—­an attitude justified by the declaration that it was intended to force a redress of grievances.  Tom Paine, a mere adventurer, who had not been long in the country, now issued his pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which was conceived in a spirit and written in a style admirably calculated to give strength and cohesion to the arguments of the people, who had been for some time coming to the conclusion that to aim at independence was the only consistent and logical course in the actual state of controversy between England and the colonies.  On March 14th, 1776, the town of Boston, then the most important in America, was given up to the rebels; and British ships carried the first large body of unhappy and disappointed Loyalists to Halifax.  On July the fourth of the same year the Declaration of Independence was passed, after much hesitation and discussion, and published to the world by the continental congress assembled at Philadelphia.  The signal victory won by the continental army over Burgoyne at Saratoga in the autumn of the following year led to an alliance with France, without whose effective aid the eventual success of the revolutionists would have been very doubtful The revolutionists won their final triumph at Yorktown in the autumn of 1781, when a small army of regulars and Loyalists, led by Cornwallis, was obliged to surrender to the superior American and French forces, commanded by Washington and Rochambeau, and supported by a French fleet which effectively controlled the approaches to Chesapeake Bay.