NANTUCKET IN THE WAR OF THE 

 REVOLUTION 



WHEN, with the War of the Revolution 

 at hand, the Americans began arming 

 themselves, and the British authorities 

 were considering plans for coercing them, a 

 committee of the House of Parliament was di- 

 rected to consider the condition of affairs among 

 the people of Nantucket. The facts related 

 before this committee proved so interesting to 

 the British public that Dodsley's Annual Reg- 

 ister of London (1775) printed a resume of the 

 testimony from which the following paragraph is 

 taken : 



"The case of the inhabitants was particularly 

 hard. This extraordinary people, amounting to 

 between five and six thousand in number, nine- 

 tenths of whom are Quakers, inhabit a barren 

 island, fifteen miles long by three broad, the 

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