The colonies now sent some of their best men to Philadelphia to consider what should be done.  As this meeting was made up of those who had come from all parts of the country, it took the name of the General or Continental Congress.[14]

About this time, too, a great change took place; for the people throughout the country began to call themselves Americans, and to speak of the English troops that the king sent over here as British soldiers.

In Boston General Gage had command of these soldiers.  He knew that the Americans were getting ready to fight, and that they had stored up powder and ball at Concord,[15] about twenty miles from Boston.  One night he secretly sent out a lot of soldiers to march to Concord and destroy what they found there.

[Footnote 14:  Congress:  this word means a meeting or assembly of persons.  The General or Continental Congress was an assembly of certain persons sent usually by all of the thirteen American colonies to meet at Philadelphia or Baltimore, to decide what should be done by the whole country.  The first Congress met in 1774, or shortly before the Revolution began, and after that from time to time until near the close of the Revolution.]

[Footnote 15:  Concord (Con’cord).]

134.  Paul Revere;[16] the fight at Lexington and Concord; Bunker Hill.—­But Paul Revere, a Boston man, was on the watch; and as soon as he found out which way the British were going, he set off at a gallop for Lexington, on the road to Concord.  All the way out, he roused people from their sleep, with the cry, “The British are coming!”

[Illustration:  PAUL REVERE’S RIDE.]

When the king’s soldiers reached Lexington, they found the Americans, under Captain Parker, ready for them.  Captain Parker said to his men, “Don’t fire unless you are fired on; but if they want a war, let it begin here.”  The fighting did begin there, April 19th, 1775; and when the British left the town on their way to Concord, seven Americans lay dead on the grass in front of the village church.  At Concord, that same day, there was still harder fighting; and on the way back to Boston, a large number of the British were killed.

The next month, June 17th, 1775 a battle was fought on Bunker Hill in Charlestown, just outside of Boston.  General Gage thought the Yankees wouldn’t fight, but they did fight, in a way that General Gage never forgot; and though they had at last to retreat because their powder gave out, yet the British lost more than a thousand men.  The contest at Bunker Hill was the first great battle of the Revolution; that is, of that war which overturned the British power in America, and made us a free people.  Many Englishmen thought the king was wrong.  They would not fight against us, and he was obliged to hire a large number of German soldiers to send to America.  These Germans had to fight us whether they wanted to or not, for their king forced them to come.