During the night, the popular leaders sent expresses to the neighboring towns, bearing intelligence of what had occurred, and summoning people from their beds to go to the aid of Boston; but as the efforts to restore quiet were proving successful, the summons was countermanded. This action accounts for the numbers who, very early in the morning of the sixth of March, flocked into the town. They could learn details of the tragedy from the actors in it,--could see the blood, the brains even, of the slaughtered inhabitants,--could hear the groans of the wounded,--could view the bodies of the dead. This terrible revelation of the work of arbitrary power, to a people habitually tender of regard for human life, naturally shocked the sensibilities of all; and thus the public temper was again wrought up to a fearful pitch of indignation. It required the strongest moral influence to restrain the rash, and to guide in the forms of law a righteous demand for a redress of grievance and for future security. The Lieutenant-Governor, during the night, had summoned such members of the Council as were within reach to meet in the Council-Chamber in the morning; and on joining them, he found the Selectmen, with most of the justices of the county, waiting for him, to represent, as he says, "their opinion of the absolute necessity of the troops being at a distance, that there might be no intercourse between the inhabitants and them, in order to prevent a further effusion of blood." Such was the logic of events which now forced the seventeen months' question of the removal of the troops on the civil and military authorities with an imperativeness that could not be resisted. The question, however, came up now in a new shape. To put it in the simplest way, and in the very words used on that day,--the people were so excited by the shedding of blood on the preceding night, that they were resolved no longer to acquiesce in the decision of the constituted authorities as to the troops; but, failing in other means, they were determined to effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed rebellion or otherwise. Not that any conspiracy existed; not that any plan had been matured to do this; but circumstances had transferred the question from the domain of reason to that of physical force; and the only point with the crown officials, during this whole day's deliberations, was, whether they would be justified in what appeared to them lowering the national standard at the demand of a power which they habitually represented as "the faction," or whether they might venture to take the responsibility of resisting the demand and of meeting the consequences. Well might John Adams say, "This was a dangerous and difficult crisis."