King George Read Online Free Page B

in Lexington. It was a full house at the Clarkes’ place. In addition to Adams, Hancock, and the Clarke family (fourteen of them!), you also had Hancock’s Aunt Lydia, his fiancée, Dorothy Quincy, and-his clerk, John Lowell.
    It was just after midnight, and everyone had gone to bed. The big house was dark and quiet. A Lexington minuteman named William Munroe stood guard outside the house, just in case.
    Suddenly, a horse charged up and a man jumped off. He demanded to be let into the Clarkes’ home. But Munroe didn’t know this excited rider, and he asked him to keep his voice down. “I told him the family had just retired, and had requested that they might not be disturbed by any noise about the house,” Munroe later said.
    â€œNoise!” shouted the stranger. “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!”
    The man pushed past Munroe and started pounding on the front door. Several windows opened upstairs, and several heads stuck out to investigate the disturbance. One of the heads (in a silk nightcap)
belonged to John Hancock. He looked down at the door, recognized the intruder, and said:

    â€œCome in, Revere, we are not afraid of you.”

    Paul Revere was let in, and everyone came downstairs to hear the news.
    Hancock immediately began pacing in his nightshirt, demanding his sword and gun, insisting that he was going out into Lexington Common to fight the British. He was probably trying to impress Dorothy. Samuel Adams, however, preferred to get out of town. He reminded Hancock that the two of them were members of the Continental Congress—politicians, in others words, not soldiers. That was his polite way of telling Hancock that he was acting like a fool. But Hancock continued to insist that he would stand and fight.
    While Adams and Hancock are arguing this point, we’ll check the progress of the British soldiers. Where were they, anyway? According to Gage’s plan, they should have been here by now.
    John Hancock
    Where Are the British?
    G age’s whole plan was based on timing. He wanted his soldiers to hit Concord before dawn, before the minutemen had a chance to gather in large numbers. Gage’s first mistake was putting Colonel Francis Smith in command of the expedition. Smith was a slowmoving man, one of those people who’s always late. You’ll remember that Gage ordered Smith to have his soldiers assembled by the boats at exactly ten o’clock. Well, the men were there, but Smith wasn’t. When he finally showed up, about seven hundred soldiers were standing around, wondering what they were supposed to be doing.
    From this point on, everything moved much too slowly. It took two trips to get all the soldiers across the Charles River. Once they were on the other side, the men stood around waiting some more. Lieutenant John Barker remembered: “We were halted in a dirty road and stood there till two o’clock in the morning, waiting for provisions to be brought from the boats and to be divided.”
    This was a total waste of time, since most of the men had brought their own food. As soon as they got their share of army food, they threw it on the ground.
    So four hours were gone already, and the British had traveled about a quarter of a mile. Not a good start. At least they were on their way now, marching toward Lexington in the bright moonlight.
    On to Concord
    A nd speaking of Lexington, Billy Dawes arrived at the Clarkes’ house while we were checking on the British. Don’t blame him for getting there half an hour after Revere—his route was longer.
    While Dawes and Revere had a quick snack (you have to eat, even
in the middle of famous historical events), Captain John Parker got the Lexington minutemen together on the town common. They had their guns. They were ready to defend their town. The only problem was, there was nothing to do. The British were nowhere in sight.
    It was a cold night.