4. The battle of Bunker Hill, meantime, took place (June, 1775). 5. King George III now declared the colonists rebels, shut their ports, and sent troops from Germany to subdue them. 6. An expedition of the patriots for the conquest of Canada failed (1775- 76). 7. But the British were forced to leave Boston (March, 1776). 8. British attacks on North Carolina and South Carolina came to naught. 9. July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted. [Illustration: BATTLE OF LEXINGTON.] FOOTNOTES [1] Samuel Adams was born in Boston in 1722, graduated from Harvard College, and took so active a part in town politics that he has been called "the Man of the Town Meeting." From 1765 to 1774 he was a member of the Massachusetts Assembly, and for some years its clerk. He was a member of the committee sent to demand the removal of the soldiers after the massacre of 1770, and of that sent to demand the resignations of the men appointed to receive the tea, and presided over the town meeting that demanded the return of the tea ships to England. He was a member of the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence. After the Revolution he was lieutenant governor and then governor of Massachusetts, and died in 1803. [2] Revere went by way of Charlestown (map, p. 160), first crossing the river from Boston in a rowboat. As there was danger that his boat might be stopped by the British warships, two lanterns were shown from the belfry of the North Church as a signal to his friends in Charlestown; and when he landed there at midnight, he found the patriots astir, ready to give the alarm if he had not appeared. Read "Paul Revere's Ride" in Longfellow's _Tales of a Wayside Inn_. [3] In 1774 the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts ordered one quarter of all the militiamen to be enlisted for emergency service. They came to be known as minutemen, and in 1775 the Continental Congress recommended "that one fourth part of the militia in every colony, be selected for minutemen ... to be ready on the shortest notice, to march to any place where their assistance may be required." [4] Just before the fight began Adams and Hancock left Lexington and set out to attend the Congress at Philadelphia. [5] Read Emerson's _Concord Hymn_; also Cooper's admirable description of the day's fighting in _Lionel Lincoln_. [6] Ethan Allen was born in Connecticut in 1737, and went to Vermont about 1769. Vermont was then claimed by New York and New Hampshire, and when New York tried to enforce her authority, the settlers in "New Hampshire Grants" resisted, and organized as the "Green Mountain Boys" with Allen as leader. At Fort Ticonderoga Allen found the garrison asleep. The British commandant, awakened by the noise at his door, came out and was ordered to surrender the fort. "By what authority?" he asked. "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress," said Allen.