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At Savannah, Ga., six members of the “Council of Safety” broke open the public magazine, before receipt of news from the north, seized the public powder and bore it away for further use. Governor Wright addressed a letter to General Gage at Boston, asking for troops, “to awe the people.” This was intercepted, and through a counterfeit signature General Gage was advised, “that the people were coming to some order, and there would be no occasion for sending troops.”

Such is the briefest possible outline of the condition of public sentiment throughout the country, of which Washington was well advised, so far as the Committee of the Continental Congress, of which he was a member, could gather the facts at that time.

Meanwhile, Boston was surrounded by nearly twenty thousand Minute Men. These Minute Men made persistent pressure upon every artery through which food could flow to relieve the hungry garrison within the British lines.

Neither was the excitement limited to the immediate surroundings. Ethan Allen, who had migrated from Connecticut to Vermont, led less than a hundred of “Green Mountain Boys,” as they were styled, to Ticonderoga, which he captured on the tenth of May. Benedict Arnold, of New Haven, with forty of the company then and still known as the Governor’s Guards, rushed to Boston without waiting for orders, and then to Lake Champlain, hoping to raise an army on the way. Although anticipated by Ethan Allen in the capture of Ticonderoga, he pushed forward toward Crown Point and St. John’s, captured and abandoned the latter, organized a small naval force, and with extraordinary skill defeated the British vessels and materially retarded the advance of the British flotilla and British troops from the north.