On this day 250 years ago in Portsmouth, Royal Governor John Wentworth of New Hampshire wrote to the British Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth about the “inflammatory spirit” in the colony. Wentworth reported that “a cry about liberty will captivate and bear sway with the populace . . . as there is no power to restrain their impetuosity.”

Source: Norton, Mary Beth, 1774 the Long Year of Revolution, New York: Vintage Books, 2021 at p. 245.