Page:The Journal of American History Volume 9.djvu/462

 a most exasperatingly tedious delay, as it appears to this generation of rapid news-gatherers and news-readers. Merchant vessels brought news or rumors of news occasionally, several months old, throughout that winter, but if Sir Edmund was fully informed he effectually smothered the important information.

When the great news of the Prince's Protestant Dutch Army arrived in Boston on April 4, 1689, it was at first treated as a mere rumor; but the people could only be controlled for two weeks longer, when New England's revolution broke out in Boston without official news of Prince William's landing at Torbay and of the great revolution then going on in England.

On April 8, 1689, the drums beat to arms, the streets of Boston were soon filled with armed men, and several thousand more were on the march within a few miles of town. Now was witnessed one of the marvels of the world, and that was the instant organization of ununiformed, sturdy, fighting men, maddened almost to fury and yet under reasonably good military restraint.

Most of these angry volunteers, who were upon the street in apparent disorder, were seasoned Indian fighters who had so desperately encountered King Philip's Narragansett Indians a little more than a dozen years before. In carrying on that war the Colony compelled every able-bodied man to furnish and keep in order his own gun and gunpowder, and to private ownership of guns and ammunition in thousands of homes, we no doubt owe the wonderful success of Boston's revolution in April, 1689, when the people, under the lead of a committee of leading citizens, took the law into their own hands and instinctively obeyed the orders of a few Captains.

The story is now briefly told. King James' Governor, Sir Edmund Andros, with his two or three hundred soldiers, was no match for these terrible Indian fighters, who fell into military order almost miraculously, and the Red Coats surrendered to them without blood shed. The proud Royal Governor-General and his officers were placed in confinement in Castle William in Boston Harbor, and were very soon sent as prisoners to their homes in England. This appears to have been the first American re-call of a ruler and will ever stand as the most successful re-call in American history.

The people were now free, and in a short time their former government was restored by their own acts, and, upon the final accession, a short time later, of King William and Queen Mary, the Massachusetts Colonists were once more in practical control of their own affairs.

The real loyalty of Massachusetts was given a remarkable test in 1690, one year later, by the dispatch of a home-made and home-