The Dare Boys of 1776 by Stephen Angus Cox
page 22 of 145 (15%)
page 22 of 145 (15%)
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"I guess, Tom, that we will be kept too busy to get homesick."
"You think there will be lots of fighting, then? You feel certain that there will be war?" "War has really existed for more than a year, Tom. You know the battle of Lexington was fought April the nineteenth of last year, and that was the first battle of the Revolution. And since that there has been more or less skirmishing between the `Minute Men' of New England and the British, the most important of all these being the battle of Bunker Hill, which took place on the seventeenth day of June of last year." "Our soldiers defeated the British there, didn't they, Dick!" "Yes, they got all the better of the battle, but their ammunition gave out and they had to retreat. Still, it was equivalent to a victory." "That's what I thought." "Yes, and then General Washington-who was appointed commander-in-chief of the army by the Second Continental Congress, at Philadelphia in May of last year, and who went to Boston and took charge of the army on July third-kept the British penned up in Boston till about the middle of last March, when he fortified Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston, the work being performed in one night, and next morning the British, seeing what had been done and realizing that they would be at the mercy of the patriot army if they remained in Boston, hurriedly boarded the ships of the British fleet, then in the harbor, and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia." |
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