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Jefferson was not the type. Like so many of the leading revolutionaries, he was a scholar and a meditative man, and he detested what he called "the morbid rage of debate". But there was another man who lived by it--Patrick Henry, half Scots and half Welsh, a formidable merger in itself, a people's lawyer with a smoldering eye, a querulous voice and a marvelous gift of the gab. His speeches were soon forgotten, but not his knack for a trumpet phrase. "Give me liberty or give me death". He lived, by the way, to a ripe old age. His tongue was bold enough to get him declared an outlaw, and within a month, a congress of the rebel colonists met in Philadelphia and the impulse to take up arms spread to the other colonies, most famously, to conquered Massachusetts.

It was on this bridge that a few farmers took their stand against a British raiding party, and the war was on. This was not a head-on battle. The British officer in command had been sent from Boston to capture hidden stores of arms, but he was newly promoted, and spoiling for blood. He met few rebels and he kept his men waiting on the bridge till they were hopelessly outnumbered. He captured a few barrels of flour.

This sad and muddled incident would surely not have been enough to create a heroic myth, but some of the expressions of that myth are moving and memorable, because we shouldn't forget that the rebels thought of themselves for quite a long time as Englishmen who'd been badly abused and felt even a kind of sympathy for the other Englishmen who'd been sent over to fight them.

I'll never forget the first time that I walked along the Main Street of New England Town, not so very far from here, and saw a plaque sunk in the wall of a cemetery, and on it, it said these words:" In defense of American independence at the Battle of Ridgefield, April 27th, 1777, died eight patriots, who were laid in this ground, companioned by 16 British soldiers. Living their enemies, dying their guests."

When I receive my deathly wound,
I bid farewell to England's ground.
My wife and children shall mourn for me,
Whilst I lie dead in America here.

The British arrived as a professional army, expecting to fight set battles. Unfortunately, the Americans were at once too shrewd and too untrained to oblige them. First of all, as John Adams said:" the colonials divided up into one third that took two arms to support the Revolution, one third that was either openly or secretly loyal to the British and another third that didn't give a damn."

So, against the professional army of Britain with some German mercenaries, there stood, on the other side, some French volunteers, but mainly a large improvised army of farmers, mechanics, tradesmen, parsons, lawyers, grocers, hunters, trappers, conmen, thieves, hoodlums. "Never", said the sorrowing commander "such a rabble dignified by the name of army."