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During the summer of 1774 militia companies had been rapidly organized throughout the Colonies. New England especially had been so actively associated with all military operations during the preceding French and Indian wars, that her people more readily assumed the attitude of armed preparation for the eventualities of open conflict.

Virginia had experienced similar conditions on a less extended and protracted basis. The action of the First Continental Congress on the fifth day of September, 1774, when, upon notice that Gage had fortified Boston, it made an unequivocal declaration of its sympathy with the people of Boston and of Massachusetts, changed the character of the struggle from that of a local incident, to one that demanded organized, deliberate, and general resistance.

Notwithstanding the slow course of mail communications between the widely separated Colonies north and south, the deportment of the British Colonial governors had been so uniformly oppressive and exacting, that the people, everywhere, like tinder, were ready for the first flying spark. A report became current during September, after the forced removal of powder from Cambridge and Charlestown, that Boston had been attacked. One writer has stated, that, “within thirty-six hours, nearly thirty thousand men were under arms.” This burst of patriotic feeling, this mighty frenzy over unrighteous interference with vested rights, made a profound impression upon the Continental Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, and aroused in the mind of Washington, then a delegate from Virginia, the most intense anxiety lest the urgency of the approaching crisis should find the people unprepared to take up the gage of battle, and fight with the hope of success. All this simply indicated the depth and breadth of the eager sentiment which actually panted for armed expression.