“I never quite realized the full meaning of the word ‘dignity’ until I saw this man and heard his deep rich voice.  There was a kind of magnificence in his manner and person when he said: 

“’I will raise one thousand men toward the relief of Boston and subsist them at my own expense.’

“That was all he said and it was the most eloquent speech made in the convention.  It won the hearts of the New Englanders.  Thereafter, he was the central figure in that Congress of trusted men.  It is also evident that he will be the central figure on this side of the ocean when the storm breaks.  Next day, he announced that he was, as yet, opposed to any definite move toward independence.  So the delegates contented themselves with a declaration of rights opposing importations and especially slaves.”

When the Congress adjourned October twenty-sixth to meet again on the tenth of May, there was little hope of peace among those who had had a part in its proceedings.

Jack, who knew the conditions in England, knew also that war would come soon, and freely expressed his views.

2

Letters had come from Margaret giving him the welcome news that Lionel Clarke had recovered and announcing that her own little revolution had achieved success.  She and her father would be taking ship for Boston in December.  Jack had urged that she try to induce him to start at once, fearing that December would be too late, and so it fell out.  When the news of the Congress reached London, the King made new plans.  He began to prepare for war.  Sir Benjamin Hare, who was to be the first deputy of General Gage, was assigned to a brigade and immediately put his regiments in training for service overseas.  He had spent six months in America and was supposed, in England, to have learned the art of bush fighting.  Such was the easy optimism of the cheerful young Minister of War, and his confreres, in the House of Lords.  After the arrival of the King William at Gravesend on the eighth of December, no English women went down to the sea in ships for a long time.  Thereafter the water roads were thought to be only for fighting men.  Jack’s hope was that armed resistance would convince the British of their folly.

“A change of front in the Parliament would quickly end the war,” he was wont to say.  Not that he quite believed it.  But young men in love are apt to say things which they do not quite believe.  In February, 1775, he gave up his work on The Gazette to aid in the problem of defense.  Solomon, then in Albany, had written that he was going the twentieth of that month on a mission to the Six Nations of The Long House.

It was unusual for the northern tribes to hold a council in winter—­especially during the moon of the hard snow, but the growing bitterness of the white men had alarmed them.  They had learned that another and greater war was at hand and they were restless for fear of it.  The quarrel was of no concern to the red man, but he foresaw the deadly peril of choosing the wrong side.  So the wise men of the tribes were coming into council.