Life of Count Rumford. 77 



Thomas, which Petition the Committee referred to the Con- 

 gress, where we went and sent it in to them sitting at Water- 

 town Meeting-house. We dined at Leonard's; so the matter 

 was deferred for the present." 



We must remind ourselves that this was at one of 

 the most critical and anxious stages in the course of 

 events which resulted in opening the Revolutionary War. 

 Large bodies of minute-men and soldiers from all the 

 New England Provinces were gathered in Cambridge, 

 and on the hills in its neighborhood, under the com- 

 mand of General Ward. The Provincial Congress was in 

 session, overwhelmed with business, as it had assumed 

 full legislative functions independently of the control 

 of the royal Governor or his subordinates. The people 

 had in their town meetings resolved to recognize the 

 authority of this Congress and to pay their taxes to the 

 treasurer appointed by it, while they helped by other 

 popular measures to confirm and increase that authority. 

 The object was to confine the British forces to the 

 peninsula of Boston, leaving them no exit but by the 

 sea, and, if possible, to embarrass that. This made it 

 necessary to guard and fortify nearly a whole circle of 

 territory, extending round from the heights of Dorches- 

 ter to those of Chelsea. Aspirants for commissions in 

 the American army were numerous and in warm rivalry. 

 If Major Thompson were, as he affirmed, impatient to 

 assume his military office, or to secure a higher one, we 

 can well imagine how he must have fretted under the 

 confinement which not only restrained his liberty and 

 subjected him to indignity, but also threatened to be an 

 insuperable obstacle to his attainment of his object. If 

 his after course was largely decided by resentment and 

 the sense of having been outraged, we must look for the 



