A hush of eager expectancy and an almost breathless waiting for some mysterious summons to real battle, seemed to pervade both north and south alike, when a glow in the east indicated the signal waited for, and even prayed for. The very winds of heaven seemed to bear the sound and flame of the first conflict in arms. In six days it reached Maryland. Intermediate Colonies, in turn, had responded to the summons, “To arms.” Greene’s Kentish Guards started for Boston, at the next break of day. The citizens of Rhode Island caught his inspiration, took possession of more than forty British cannon, and asserted their right and purpose to control all Colonial stores. New York organized a Committee of Public Safety,—first of a hundred, and then of a thousand,—of her representative men, as a solid guaranty of her ardent sympathy with the opening struggle, declaring that “all the horrors of civil war could not enforce her submission to the acts of the British crown.” The Custom-house and the City Hall were seized by the patriots. Arming and drilling were immediate; and even by candle-light and until late hours, every night, impassioned groups of boys, as well as men, rehearsed to eager listeners the story of the first blood shed at Concord and Lexington; and strong men exchanged vows of companionship in arms, whatever might betide. Lawyers and ministers, doctors and teachers, merchants and artisans, laborers and seamen, mingled together as one in spirit and one in action. An “Association for the defence of Colonial Rights” was formed, and on the twenty-second of May the Colonial Assembly was succeeded by a Provincial Congress, and the new order of government went into full effect. In New Jersey, the people, no less prompt, practical, and earnest, seized one hundred thousand dollars belonging to the Provincial treasury, and devoted it to raising troops for defending the liberties of the people. The news reached Philadelphia on the twenty-fourth of April, and there, also, was no rest, until action took emphatic form. Prominent men, as in New York, eagerly tendered service and accepted command, so that on the first day of May the Pennsylvania Assembly made an appropriation of money to raise troops. Benjamin Franklin, but just returned from England, was made chairman of a Committee of Safety, and the whole city was aroused in hearty support of the common cause. The very Tory families which afterwards ministered to General Howe’s wants, and flattered Benedict Arnold by their courtesies, did not venture to stem the patriotic sentiment of the hour.