On this day 250 years ago, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety orders the removal of 2 cannon from Boston that had been hidden away by William Dawes and other Patriots in Boston. Dawes would be better known a few months later as the second rider with Paul Revere who warned John Hancock, Samuel Adams and the Massachusetts militia that the British were marching out of Boston.

Sources: https://www.c-span.org/video/?414549-1/beginning-revolutionary-war“; https://historyofmassachusetts.org/william-dawes/

Also on that day an anonymous author in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey wrote a letter entitled “Y” to “Z” on Political Apostasy. This letter excoriated “Z” who had been a leader of opposition to the Stamp Act in Essex County but had switched sides to write an article defending Parliament’s authority to enact the Intolerable Acts. “Y” asserted that “nine-tenths of” the inhabitants of Elizabeth Town “approved of what was done [by the Continental Congress], and of the opposition to the acts of Parliament.” He further described American Patriots as “a brave and spirited people, tenacious of their just rights and liberties, and who are oppressed by the machinations of a wicked and abandoned ministry, aided by a corrupt and venal part of [the British] legislature.”