Paul Revere第2章的真实故事

第2章：革命的使者1773-1775

由Charles Gettemy.

于1773年12月14日，已预见的危机周期迅速接近。茶船曾在10月23日由北端核心核心核心解决，成员将“反对生命的危险，并在东印度公司进口的任何茶的自动售货机。

大公共兴奋参加了船舶到达茶叶的托运，并受到爱国者领导人的会议，看看应该做些什么是当天的命令。在其中一个歌曲被组成并立即变得非常受欢迎。其中一个经文ran：

我们的沃伦的那里和大胆的尊敬，用手做和言语欢呼，因为自由和法律;我国的“勇敢者”和坚定的防守者应该由真实的，然后是拉力，男孩和赶紧在绿色龙举行的酋长。十二月十四日会议，公民被招聘招牌召唤，在没有任何明确行动的情况下暂时延期至16日。但在那一天，旧的南方会议屋捧，人民被确定。有很多讲话，波士顿人在这一天过度喜欢的东西，而且，在下午四点半，在热情的热情中投票，奶头不应该降落。因此在马萨诸塞州宪报公报的栏目中被报道了什么随后迁移：“就在解散之前，一些勇敢和坚实的男人穿着印度方式，在装配大门附近接近，并发出了WhoOP，这张开房子，并被一些画廊回答，但沉默被命令，并征收了一个和平的举报，直到解散。“印第安人，他们被称为码头，船尾的船只茶叶，随后是数百人，看看那些制造如此怪异的人的交易。印第安人立即修复了船上的船上。大厅的船，他们悬挂了茶的箱子，当甲板上时，他们扔掉了茶叶。“已经清除了这艘船，他们继续上尉。布鲁斯，然后才能上尉。棺材的布鲁格。他们如此表现得很妥善应用于这种商品的破坏，在三个小时的空间中，他们分手了三百四十四个箱子, which was the whole number in these vessels, and discharged their contents into the dock. When the tide rose, it floated the broken chests and the tea insomuch that the surface of the water was filled therewith a considerable way from the south part of the town to Dorchester Neck, and lodged on the shores. "There was the greatest care taken to prevent the tea being purloined by the populace; one or two being detected in endeavoring to pocket a small quantity were stripped of their acquisitions and very roughly handled. It is worthy of remark that although a considerable quantity of goods were still remaining on board the vessel no injury was sustained. Such attention to private property was observed that a small padlock belonging to the captain of one of the ships being broke, another was procured and sent to him.“整个晚上和夜晚的镇上很安静。那些来自这个国家的人用快乐的心回家，几乎每一个面容都出现了一天的欢乐，有些是由于弥合茶的破坏，其他人由于它的安静。其中一篇论文之一说，主人和业主很高兴他们的船只被清除了。“尊敬在这个动荡的事情，第二天的主要演员，以及一个，当通讯委员会会晤，并决定派遣一个帐户时，在纽约和费城的爱国者，他被选为传递信息的人。他采取了这封信给“自由之子”。这可能是可想而知的是里维尔补充波士顿茶党这个简短描述，更详细的叙述。这一消息，他带来了纽约人之间迅速蔓延，他们聚集在公共场所了不起的数字。不用记录，众人兴致很高，而且一个个都宣称船舶在船上，这是当时已知接近纽约茶，必须送回或茶销毁。他们宣布他们什么样的波士顿做了赞许和发送的令人振奋的消息到费城。里维尔然后回到家里，当他宣布，州长特赖恩已宣布，茶船前往纽约，肯定会被转回，在波士顿所有的钟声敲响了。里维尔11天后进行这次访问，于12月27日在波士顿抵达。接下来的日子里，他被任命为放置在赫尔船长的船舶和货物由头脑冷静的爱国者的领导人，以防止任何民众之间的任性从做不必要的伤害25的“手表”之一。短时间内波士顿港口茶的宏伟破坏后，这个词被接收到的针对新英格兰消费另一代销的，而且摧毁了以同样的方式布置在第二批的第一出货量的坚决乐队的成员。 This episode was alluded to in a letter which Revere wrote March 28 to his friend John Lamb in New York: "You have no doubt heard the particulars, relating to the last twenty-eight chests of tea; it was disposed of in the same manner, as I informed you of the other, and should five hundred more arrive, it would go in the same way. Yesterday a vessel arrived from Antigua, the captain says your tea vessel was to sail three days after him, so by the next post I shall expect to hear a good account of it." The famous Boston port bill, intended to operate as a boycott against the port of Boston, received the royal signature and became law March 31, 1774. It was printed in the Boston newspapers of the 10th of May, and went into effect June 1. Formal action was taken at a town meeting at which Samuel Adams presided as moderator. It was agreed to send this appeal, prepared by Adams, to the sister colonies: "The people receive the edit with indignation. It is expected by their enemies, and feared by some of their friends, that this town singly will not be able to support the cause under so severe a trial. As the very being of every colony, considered as a free people, depends upon the event, a thought so dishonorable to our brethren cannot be entertained as that this town will be left to struggle alone." A committee was chosen to go to several towns. Revere was chosen to go express to York and Philadelphia. "My worthy friend Revere," writes Dr. Thomas Young, a prominent Boston Son of Liberty, to John Lamb of New York, "again revisits you. No man of his rank and opportunities in life deserves better of the community. Steady, vigorous, sensible and persevering." Revere set out on the 14th, and reached New York a few days later, delivering his message to the Committee of Fifty-One. On the 20th he arrived at Philadelphia; and that very night the citizens held a mass meeting, at which the "execrable Port Bill" was denounced, and a vote passed not merely conveying sympathy to the Boston patriots but making the latter's cause their own. Revere's return from this trip was duly recorded in the news of the day. In the Essex Gazette of May 30, 1774, appears this item: "On Saturday last Mr. Revere returned from Philadelphia, having been sent express to the Southern Colonies, with intelligence of the late rash, impolitic and vindictive measures of the British Parliament, who, by the execrable Port Bill, have held out to us a most incontestable argument why we ought to submit to their jurisdiction." The New York Sons of Liberty appear to have taken action in sympathy with their Boston brethren without waiting for the appeal which Revere brought, since resolutions were passed by them, and a letter dated May 14, the day Revere left Boston, was prepared, exhorting the Boston patriots to stand firm. These were dispatched to Boston by John Ludlow. Benson J. Lossing, whose fondness for romance is one of his defects as a historian, wrote a very pretty imaginative account of a meeting between Revere and Ludlow. "Ludlow," says Lossing, "rode swiftly with them [the New York resolutions] on a black horse toward the New England capital. He told their import as he coursed through Connecticut and Rhode island. Near Providence, on the edge of a wood that was just receiving its summer foliage, by a cool spring he met Paul Revere, riding express on a gray horse, bearing to New York and Philadelphia assurances of the faith and firmness of the Bostonians, and to invoke sympathy and co-operation. Revere also carried a large number of printed copies of the act made somber by heavy black lines, and garnished with the picture of a crown, a skull and cross-bones, undoubtedly by Revere himself. These he scattered through the villages on his way, where they were carried about the streets with the cry of 'Barbarous, cruel, bloody and inhuman murder!" Revere and Ludlow took a hasty lunch together at the spring, and then pressed forward on their holy mission." Revere's next ride after the Port Bill excitement had subsided was on the 11th of September, when Joseph Warren chose him to carry copies of the famous Suffolk Resolves, with a letter of Warren's, to the Massachusetts delegates in attendance on the Continental Congress then in session at Philadelphia. He arrived six days later, on the 17th, and on the same day the resolves were read in Congress. Congress promptly passed resolutions condemning the acts of the British Parliament which had called forth the Suffolk Resolves, thereby placing its official endorsement upon the latter, and Revere was able to bring the interesting news of this important action back to Boston. In October Revere was again sent to Philadelphia. The Continental Congress was still in session there. The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts was also in session and anxious to know what was transpiring at Philadelphia. Samuel Adams was one of the Massachusetts representatives to the Continental Congress, and on this occasion Revere carried letters to him from Warren and, no doubt, to others in the Quaker city from friends in Boston. In the following December Revere made the last trip on horseback as an official messenger of which we have a record, before that fateful ride of which Longfellow sang and which brought him fame. This December day, while not so long as the trips to Philadelphia, had an element of risk and adventure similar to that of the 18th of April, 1775, and was of hardly less importance to the patriot cause. By an act of British authority the colonies had been prohibited the further importation of gunpowder and military stores. An expedition was arranged for the relief of Fort William and Mary at Portsmouth, which was rightly to be believed to be in danger of attack by the provincials. But the ever vigilant Sons of Liberty in Boston learned of the reinforcements intended for the fort, and quickly planned to notify the "Sons" at Portsmouth. Revere, of course, was the one selected to carry the information. On the afternoon of December 13 Revere rode up to the house of General Sullivan in the little town of Durham with his warning news, and, after baiting his nearly exhausted horse, rode on to Portsmouth. In a letter to Lord Dartmouth, the British governor, Sir John Wentworth described the raid of the fort: "News was brought to me that a Drum was beating about the town to collect the populace together in order to take away the gunpowder and dismantle the Fort. The Chief Justice of the Province went to where they were collected in the centre of the town, near the townhouse, explained to them the nature of the offence they proposed to commit, told them it was not short of Rebellion, and intreated them to desist from it and disperse. "But all to no purpose. They went to the Island; and being joined there by the inhabitants of the towns of Newcastle and Rye, formed in all a body of about four hundred men, and forced an entrance in spite of Captain Cochran." Captain Cochran, in his report, wrote: "I told them on their peril not to enter. They replied they would. I immediately ordered three four-pounders to be fired on them, and then the small-arms, and before we could be ready to fire again we were stormed on all quarters. They secured me and my men, and kept us prisoners for about an hour and a half, during which time they broke open the powder-house and took all the powder away except one barrel." There is hardly any doubt that this affair, which happened four months before the fight at Lexington and more than two months before the episode of the Salem North Bridge, constituted the first act of force of a military nature committed by the colonists against the authority of the mother country. Moreover, it is clear that on this occasion the colonists were the aggressors. It may be questioned whether the patriots at this early date seriously contemplated war as an inevitable consequence of the drift of events. But if they were already anticipating that dread alternative as impossible of avoidance they could not have acted with greater prescience in sending Revere to Portsmouth to stir up the New Hampshire patriots to make the attack on Fort William and Mary. The whole object of that attack was not, primarily, to offer insult to the King, but to secure means of defence against the time when they might be needed. In the light of subsequent events the Portsmouth raid was fully justified. There was a fearful lack of ammunition in the Continental army during the siege of Boston following the outbreak of the war. When, in the crisis of the battle of Bunker Hill, Prescott ordered the retreat, his soldiers had but a single round of ammunition. Stark, however, opened up a fierce fire on the advancing Welsh Fusileers, which prevented the retreat being cut off and probably saved both his and Prescott's men from being annihilated or captured. "An ample supply of powder arrived in the nick of time," says Amory in his Military Services of General Sullivan. The gunpowder which saved Bunker Hill from being an utter rout for the Provincial soldiery was thus, upon the evidence before us, the same that was carried away from Fort William and Mary six months previous. To claim for Paul Revere the credit for preventing complete disaster at Bunker Hill would be a somewhat exaggerated view, no doubt. But it was Revere, as the agent of the Boston patriots, who warned the men of New Hampshire that it behooved them to act quickly if they would obtain possession of the store of gunpowder in the fort in Portsmouth harbor. We have it on authority of historian Jeremy Belknap writing in 1791 that the affair was transacted "in the most fortunate point of time--- just before the arrival of the Scarborough frigate, and Cansean sloop, with several companies of soldiers, who took possession of the fort, and of the heavy cannon which had not been removed."

第二章结束。继续保罗·里维尔的故事，第三章