One evening early in the war a mob gathered on Bowling Green. Led by the Sons of Liberty and helped by some of the soldiers, the crowd tore down the king's statue and broke it into bits. Bonfires were blazing in the streets and by the light of these ropes were thrown over the king and his charger and both were pulled down and dragged through the streets. An entry in Washington's Orderly Book at this time, forbidding his soldiers to take part in anything like a riot, shows that he did not fully approve of this proceeding. But the people were very much excited. It was the night of the 9th of July, 1776, and news of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had just reached New York that afternoon. At evening rollcall the Declaration was read at the head of each brigade of the army and "was received with loud huzzas." Independence was declared in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, and that day has been kept ever since as the birthday of the United States, but news traveled so slowly before the telegraph was invented that it was not known in New York until Monday, the 9th. Then bells rang, and as night drew on people lighted bonfires to show their joy, and not content with this, they hurried away to Bowling Green and pulled down the statue of the king and cut off his head. They acted at once on the statement of the famous Declaration which they had just heard read to them, that "A prince whose character is marked by every act that may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." Once off his pedestal, however, the king suddenly became valuable and precious to them, for he, as well as his horse, was made mostly of lead and he could be melted down and run into bullets. Lead was dear and scarce, and bullets were needed in the army. The king's troops now "will probably have _melted majesty_ fired at them," some one wrote in a letter to General Gates. So the pieces of the statue were carefully saved and most of it was sent away secretly by ox-cart, so it is said, up into the Connecticut hills to the home of General Wolcott in Litchfield, for safe keeping. The general was returning there himself about this time from Philadelphia, and perhaps he took charge of its transportation. We shall hear of it again in Litchfield, for this story, which begins in New York, ends in Connecticut.