real object of every class of the people, till the despair of obtaining it,' &c. … The only way to dispose of testimony like this, is to impeach the persons who have given it." _L. Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, volume 1, pages 64-66._ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-September). Revolution in South Carolina. See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1775. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April). The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution. Lexington. Concord. "On April 19, 1775, the Committees of safety could only count up twelve field-pieces in Massachusetts; and there had been collected in that colony 21,549 fire-arms, 17,441 pounds of powder, 22,191 pounds of ball, 144,699 flints, 10,108 bayonets, 11,979 pouches, 15,000 canteens. There were also 17,000 pounds of salt fish, 35,000 pounds of rice, with large quantities of beef and pork. Viewed as an evidence of the forethought of the colonists, these statistics are remarkable; but there was something heroic and indeed almost pathetic in the project of going to war with the British government on the strength of twelve field-pieces and seventeen thousand pounds of salt fish. Yet when, on the night of the 18th of April, 1775, Paul Revere rode beneath the bright moonlight through Lexington to Concord, with Dawes and Prescott for comrades, he was carrying the signal for the independence of a nation. He had seen across the Charles River the two lights from the church-steeple in Boston which were to show that a British force was going out to seize the patriotic supplies at Concord; he had warned Hancock and Adams at Reverend Jonas Clark's parsonage in Lexington, and had rejected Sergeant Monroe's caution against unnecessary noise, with the rejoinder, 'You'll have noise enough here before long—the regulars are coming out.' As he galloped on his way the regulars were advancing with steady step behind him, soon warned of their own danger by alarm-bells and signal-guns. When Revere was captured by some British officers who happened to be near Concord, Colonel Smith, the commander of the expedition, had already halted, ordered Pitcairn forward, and sent back prudently for reinforcements. It was a night of terror to all the neighboring Middlesex towns, for no one knew what excesses the angry British troops might commit on their return march. The best picture we have of this alarm is in the narrative of a Cambridge woman, Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, describing 'the horrors of that midnight cry,' as she calls it. The women of that town were roused by the beat of drums and ringing of bells; they hastily gathered their children together and fled to the outlying farm-houses; seventy or eighty of them were at Fresh Pond, within hearing of the guns at Menotomy, now Arlington.