89 



Thursday^ January 1<S, 1855. 



Evening Meeting. Rev. John L. Russell, Vice President, 

 in the chair. 



Record and list of donations read ; — after which Charles M. 

 Endicott occupied the hour with an account of 



Leslie's Retreat, or the Resistance to British Arms, 

 at the North Bridge in Salem., on Sunday, P. M., 

 February 28, 1775. 



[Note. It is much to be regretted, that antiquarian research, had not 

 been directed to this affair, before the principal actors in the scene were 

 gathered to their fathers. Before the task was undertaken by any one, 

 the twilight of uncertainty had cast its shadows over a large portion of 

 the incidents connected with it, and the night of forgetfulness, we have 

 reason to conclude, had also shrouded many in total oblivion. The 

 fragments spared by the hand of time, beside the very imperfect 

 accounts published at the period, are now only met with in tradition 

 or upon the trembling lips of extreme old age, which 



" Tells what it knows, as if it knew it not, 

 And wliat it remembers, seems to have forgot." 



The following account however is believed to embrace all the 

 principal facts in the case ; and we have endeavored to cull from the 

 materials in our possession such as appeared the most authentic and 

 reliable ; and to avoid as much as possible drawing upon the imagina- 

 tion of others, or of our own, at the risk of making the account tame 

 and uninteresting.] 



" PRO ARIS ET FOCIS." 



Salem, the mother of the Massachusetts Colony, and the 

 oldest town, save Plymouth, within the present jurisdiction of 

 the commonwealth, was rich in historical interest long before 

 the period of the American Revolution. In her soil were 

 imprinted the first footsteps of the Massachusetts Colony. She 



ESSEX INST. PROCEED. 12. 



