Page:Harris Dickson--The unpopular history of the United States.djvu/32

 of freedom and hurl the tyrant’s minions from our shores. But the flocking and the hurling went on mighty slow.

Some way or other the New England Minutemen contrived to get in the first lick, striking the British at Lexington and Concord Bridge. Those wrathy farmers chased the redcoats for more than twenty miles. Picking them off like robins from behind trees and stone walls, they killed and wounded 223 soldiers, with a loss to themselves of 88 men. That’s what started us down the wrong road; it looked too easy.

Three days later, April 22, 1775, the Congress of Massachusetts resolved that an army of 30,000 men was necessary for defense of the Colony, and attempted to raise at once thirteen thousand six hundred by voluntary enlistments of men who had got a taste of victory and ached to finish the job.

Right here and now I want to call your attention to the vicious practice which Massachusetts then adopted of giving a Captain’s commission to any one who could enroll a