In July, 1774, Girard sailed for New York with a small cargo of coffee and sugar. It was a stirring time in the history of the American Colonies. For a dozen years the free spirit of the Americans had chafed under the oppression of British rule. Open fighting had occurred in Boston in 1770, when, in a fight between the populace and the British soldiers, three men were killed and eight were wounded. Two years later the British revenue schooner Gaspee was seized and burned by the people of Rhode Island, and in 1773 the citizens of Boston, disguised as Indians, emptied into the water of Boston Harbor 342 chests of tea from an English merchantman, as a protest against taxation without representation in Parliament. In retaliation, acts obnoxious to the people of Massachusetts were passed by the British Government; and in answer to these, on September 5, 1774, the Continental Congress was assembled at Philadelphia, and a declaration of rights was drawn up and published, defining the spirit of the American Colonies and indicating the consequences which must follow further interference with the liberty of the American people to levy their own taxes and make their own laws in their own Colonial assemblies. Backing words with deeds, the Colony of Massachusetts set up its own government in defiance of General Gage, the British representative, and placed at its head John Hancock, an influential merchant of Boston. Twelve thousand volunteer militiamen were organized,—of whom about one third were known as “minute men,” or soldiers ready to march or fight at a minute’s notice,—and stores and ammunition were collected. Into such a scene sailed the young French boy with his cargo of sugar and coffee; and it is not surprising that his liberty-loving spirit sympathized with the indomitable determination of the colonists to rid themselves of the yoke of an old-world nation, and led him to seek employment in New York City, with some merchants there who traded with San Domingo. First as mate and soon as captain, Girard steadily sailed back and forth between New York and the trading town of Le Cap in San Domingo. As captain of the little vessel, he was allowed by the owners the privilege of carrying a limited store of goods for his own venture, in addition to the regular cargo. His capital was small, but no opportunity to increase it was ever allowed to pass, and each voyage showed a steadily increasing profit to the credit of the youthful trader.