Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. I'liiNiiin In The Unitarian Review, March, 1876. CAN we easily ascribe too much historical importance to the siege of Boston ? It is true that, measured by the number of men employed and the munitions of war expended, it was not a great event. It is equally true that no brilliant military movements marked its course, unless, indeed, we except from this statement the occupation of Dorchester Heights. Neither did anything tragic lend to its closing hours pathetic interest. It was its real significance, the consequences which hung on victory or defeat, which have kept it fresh in the world’s memory. When the army under Washington settled down on the hills which girt Boston, the question was not, Shall a petty provincial town be cleared of military intruders, or shall the little colony of which it is a part be permitted henceforth to govern itself according to its chartered rights ? The problem was weightier: Should the foundations of this Western republic be laid in that generation, or wait a more favorable hour ? The assertion is a strong one, but it has in it at least the elements of probability. New England was then, for various reasons, the heart of the Revolution. Mercantile in grain, a system of mediaeval monopolies ? called on the English statute-book Navigation Laws ? had pressed like lead upon the neck of her commerce. Long before 1775 there was a great and wide discontentwithin her borders. But the people who endured this wrong were of the stock of those Puritans who, from religious faith and political convictions alike, held that there were limitations both to royal and legislative power. They were of the same race as the men who drew the sword at Naseby and Marston Moor to defend legal rights, ? who sent Charles I. to the scaffold,…
