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First Offensive of the Revolution
May 10, 1775 Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen, with about 80 men, attack Fort Ticonderoga capturing the British soldiers and the artillery housed there. The fort controls the north/south route between Albany and Montreal over lakes Champlain and George. While this victory meant control of a strong, strategic fort, the more important significance of this…
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The Gunpowder Incident
On April 21, 1775, the people of Virginia were alerted that the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had removed the gun powder stores from the public powder magazine in Williamsburg, VA during the night and moved it to a ship of the Royal Navy. Thanks to Patrick Henry’s speech to the Second Virginia Convention, militias in…
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Shot Heard Around the World
April 19, 1775 British Lt. Col. Francis Smith with 700 troops began moving towards Concord, Massachusetts with orders to confiscate the colonist’s arms and powder stockpiled there. A detachment of the light infantry under Major John Pitcairn were met on the green in Lexington by Captain John Parker and around 80 Minutemen in parade formation.…
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Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
In the fight for American Independence, few moments were so pivotal as Patrick Henry’s speech on the floor of the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. In Massachusetts they had already seen the British strip the colony of its right to self-rule. As things escalated in the…
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Our Country is in Danger but not to be despaired of
That personal freedom is the natural right of every man; and that property, or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labour, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction. And no man, or body of man, can without being guilty…
