Bunker Hill

committee advised against it, and Oliver finally scribbled on the resignation letter they thrust before him, “My house being surrounded by 4,000 people, in compliance with their commands I sign my name Thomas Oliver.”
    McNeil, the trader from Connecticut who had spent the previous night in Shrewsbury, watched as Oliver’s signed declaration was “handed along the lines and read publicly at proper distances till the whole body of the people were made to hear it.” Soon, McNeil recalled, “the solemn silence” was replaced by “a cheerful murmur or general universal voice of joy.” It was about six in the evening, an hour before sunset, and as the people scattered in various directions, the thunder rolled and it began to rain.
    That what came to be called the Powder Alarm did not live up to the rumors it inspired stands as a tribute to Warren’s ability to mediate a most challenging and potentially explosive situation as well as to the steadiness of the country people who traveled to Cambridge on that Friday in September 1774. Their refusal to indulge in violence, and the almost surreal sense of courtesy that underlay that resolve, speaks to the complexity of the emotions that the events of the past spring and summer had evoked among them. At least at this stage, they were not willing to fire the first shot.
    —
    As became clear in the weeks ahead, much remained to be done if the provincials had any hope of successfully meeting the threat presented by Gage’s ever-growing army in Boston. They needed a better intelligence network so that they could anticipate the regulars’ next move before it happened. They also needed to restructure the militia. Many of the older officers were loyalists who had no interest in opposing the British regulars. Changes needed to be made in the officer corps in almost every town’s militia; new systems for training and outfitting the militiamen also had to be implemented.
    But perhaps the most important lesson learned in the aftermath of the Powder Alarm was that even if Boston had first opposed British tyranny, the country people outside the city were the ones now leading the resistance movement. Instead of feeling as if the resolute crowd had threatened his own authority as a political leader, Joseph Warren embraced this most recent development as evidence of a new and exciting era. In a letter to Samuel Adams at the Continental Congress, Warren reported that what he’d witnessed at Cambridge had inspired in him “the most exalted idea of the resolution and intrepidity of the inhabitants.” This ability to maintain his poise within the ineluctable pull of seemingly chaotic events would serve him well in the months ahead.
    —
    Samuel Adams and the other three delegates from Massachusetts quickly realized that many at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia did not trust them. New Englanders, it was said, were “intemperate and rash,” and secretly lusted for “a total independency”—not just from Great Britain but from the rest of the colonies as well. Once the mother country had been defeated, it was asserted, the New Englanders would then declare war on the colonies to the south and establish themselves as the brutal sovereigns of all America. To counteract this concern, Samuel Adams realized that it was absolutely essential that his colony remain on the defensive. Massachusetts must remain the victim, no matter what.
    And then, on Tuesday, September 6, came word of the Powder Alarm. Traveling from town to town along the eastern seaboard, the rumor had made it to Philadelphia in a mere five days. In Connecticut, a letter written by Israel Putnam falsely claiming that in addition to the six provincials killed, Boston was being bombarded by British artillery as tens of thousands of colonial militiamen marched toward the burning city, was copied and carried all the way to Philadelphia.
    Philadelphians reacted much as the New Englanders had done. “All is confusion,” reported Silas Deane, a delegate from Connecticut. “Every tongue pronounces revenge. The bells toll muffled, and the people run as in a case of extremity, they know not where or why.” Delegates who had been divided into two camps—those who wanted to repair the breach with Britain and those who favored the continued push for colonial liberties—found themselves speaking with a single voice. “War! war! war! was the cry,” John Adams wrote, “and it was pronounced in a tone which would have