The citizens of Massachusetts refused to obey the enactments of the Governor, and all the colonies in America sooner or later came to the support of Massachusetts. And that is no matter for our wonder, seeing that they must have felt that what was done to Massachusetts to-day might be done to them to-morrow. They must quickly have realised that their best hope of liberty lay in opposing a united front to the servitude that threatened them. It might seem but a slender hope; yet we may remember that those colonists of a new world were far more apt to make {142} good fighters than agriculturists or townsfolk in a long settled land. They were still surrounded by hostile tribes of Red Indians. Many of themselves, and most of their forefathers, must have lived with rifle ever ready at hand, for protection against sudden attack, while they went about their tasks of peace. They were doubtless quick-witted, as men needs must be who are constantly facing new conditions. They were tough, determined men, and in their struggle to be free they found a man to lead them--George Washington. Of their tough quality the British soldiers made experience in the first serious clash of arms at Bunker's Hill. I cannot tell you, in a story of barest outlines like this, the details of the long drawn-out fighting, how the cause of the colonists' freedom seemed now and again all but lost, how the fortunes of the war went this way and that. For its changes were scarcely less remarkable than those of the Seven Years' War in Europe. The quality that served the colonists best and enabled them to win through was that essentially British quality of refusing to believe themselves defeated. They endured with an extraordinary steadfastness and they recovered themselves when beaten to the ground with a marvellous resilience. Even after fighting had begun, a reconciliation might have been made had the counsels of Lord Chatham prevailed at home. George Washington was representative of the great landowners of Virginia. By their traditions, and also owing to the fact that their state lay far south of that Massachusetts which was the immediate sufferer by the British tyranny, the Virginians clung more closely and longer to the mother country than any of the other colonial children. But their clinging was of no use. Chatham's good counsel was rejected. Washington, as leader of the nation in war, was probably the more looked up to {143} because he had tried so hard for peace. His face now was set as firmly towards the prosecution of the war as it had been towards peace while any hope of favourable peace was left. And every year of the war's duration revealed more and more his rare character for wisdom, determination, and moderation. [Sidenote: Course of the War]