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Updated: June 12, 2025
Whilst the war was carried on thus vigorously in the north, the southern colonies were not entirely unemployed. The convention of Virginia determined to raise two regiments of regular troops for one year, and to enlist a part of the militia as minute-men.
Some were worn with wounds and sickness; all were poor and unpaid; and Congress had no means to pay them. Many among them felt that they had small chance to repair their broken fortunes if they returned to the homes they had abandoned seven weary years before, when the guns of the minute-men first called them to battle. The Ohio Company.
Secession now amounted to a furor. It was not the work of leaders, but the spirit which pervaded the ranks of the people, who clamored because events did not move fast enough. The "minute-men" declared Mr. Toombs' letter was a backdown. They called him a traitor, and wanted to vote him a tin sword. Congress, upon reassembling, devoted itself to measures of compromise.
Samuel Adams said it, and one of Sergeant Munroe's men ran to the green, seized the bell-rope, and set the meetinghouse bell to clanging, sending the alarm far and wide upon the still night air. In the farmhouses candles were quickly lighted, and the minute-men, who had agreed to obey a summons at a moment's warning, came running with musket, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn, to the rendezvous.
At the commencement of the Revolutionary war, being a zealous Whig, he raised and commanded a company of minute-men, as they were called, and marched to the siege of Boston. Here he rendered important service, being stationed at Dorchester Heights, and engaged in fortifying that position.
Officers were trying to rally them, threatening to cut them down with their swords if they did not show a bold front to the minute-men, but the Yankees seemed to be everywhere and yet nowhere. Bullets were coming from every direction, yet the British could see no men in line, no ranks at which they could take aim or charge with the bayonet.
Through the stormy period preceding the War of the Revolution, the public sentiment of Worcester sustained the rights of the Colonies, and when, on the 19th of April, 1773, the messenger of war, on his white horse, dashed through the town, shouting, "To arms! to arms! the war is begun," the response was immediate; the bell was rung, cannon fired, and the minute-men, true to name, rallied on the Common, where they were paraded by Capt.
The horseman turns, and is off along the road again before the captain of the Medford minute-men has shut the window. It is but a short fourteen miles to Lexington; but there are a dozen or twenty farmhouses along the way, and at each of them the horseman must pause and deliver his message; so that it is just midnight as he comes in sight of the outskirts of the humble village.
"Perhaps not literally so, my dear father; but the minute-men of Massachusetts, and His Majesty's forces, have met and fought. This I know, full well; for my own regiment was in the field, and, I hope it is unnecessary to add, that its second officer was not absent."
Once more he took aim, as did others, and several redcoats fell. Before he could reload, the serried ranks disappeared, marching rapidly towards Lexington. The minute-men hastened on, and at the tavern of Mr. Brooks he sent another bullet into the ranks of the retreating foe.
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