The General Assembly by David Barton

Only three days later, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott made their famous ride; and the next morning, April 19, the British began their march against Lexington and Concord which resulted in the “shot heard ‘round the world.’ ” The following day, British troops commenced military action In Virginia, seizing both public supplies and the Colonists’ gunpowder stored in Williamsburg. Patrick Henry, unwilling to allow the British action to go unchecked, gathered the local militia, and on May 2 addressed them in an impassioned speech which inflamed their patriotism by calling up before them the fields of Lexington and Concord still warm with the blood of their brethren; he showed them that the object of the British ministry was to render the colonies powerless by seizing their military stores; that the late plunder of the magazine at Williamsburg was only part of the general system of warfare that the moment had come when they must decide whether they would assert their freedom or basely submit to be slaves.

He reminded them of the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire which guided the children of Israel; of the water gushing from the rock at Horeb; of the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, and then, with his eye uplifted, his arms aloft, and his whole soul burning with inspiration, declared that he same God still ruled in the heavens; that he was watching from his throne the oppressions of His people in America and that He was still strong to deliver and mighty to save. When word of the skirmishes in Massachusetts and Virginia reached Connecticut, the General Assembly secretly instructed Colonel Ethan Allen to enlist a group of men to disable Ticonderoga, a British stronghold in New York.

Late in the evening on May 9, 1775, Allen and his Green Mountain Boys approached the unsuspecting garrison, quietly capturing the sentries and securing the barracks of sleeping British soldiers. Allen then pushed on to camp headquarters and roused the commandant, Captain De La Place.

Allen himself described what next occurred: The Captain came immediately to the door with his small clothes in his hand when I ordered him to deliver to me the fort, instantly. He asked me by what authority I demanded it. I answered him “In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” The fort was then handed over to Allen without the loss of a single life. On June 12, Congress declared a day of prayer and fasting, 84 of which John Adams told his wife Abigail: We have appointed a continental fast. Millions will be upon their knees at once before their great Creator, imploring his forgiveness and blessing; his smiles on American councils and arms. On June 29, John Witherspoon soon to become a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a group of ministers in New York and Pennsylvania issued this admonition to American patriots: