On this day 250 years ago in Milton, Massachusetts, the Suffolk County Convention of delegates from Boston and surrounding towns met. The Convention adopted a resolution that because “the civil government of the Province is not yet placed upon a constitutional foundation,” taxes from Boston and the surrounding towns should be paid to the Treasurer and removed ten miles inland from Boston or any seaport instead of being turned over to the Provincial government.
Month: February 2025
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Parliament passed Lord North’s “Conciliatory Resolution.” Although it promised to revoke taxes on any Colony that agreed to tax itself, the American revolution had become about much more than taxes and it would arrive in the Colonies only after Lexington and Concord. This was too little too late:
Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that when the Governour, Council, and Assembly, or General Court, of any of his Majesty’s Provinces or Colonies in America, shall propose to make provision, according to the condition, circumstances, and situation of such Province or Colony, for contributing their proportion to the common defence, (such proportion to be raised under the authority of the General Court, or General Assembly of such Province or Colony, and disposable by Parliament,) and shall engage to make provision also for the support of the Civil Government, and the Administration of Justice, in such Province or Colony, it will be proper if such proposal shall be approved by his Majesty and the two Houses of Parliament, and for so long as such provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear, in respect of such Province or Colony, to levy any Duty, Tax, or Assessment, or to impose any farther Duty, Tax, or Assessment, except only such Duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy or to impose for the regulation of commerce; the nett produce of the duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of such Province or Colony respectively.
Source: https://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UA47VCCY1LBJUK1
In Massachusetts, “Novanglus” (aka John Adams) quoted legal scholars that
“the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man.
“I will not take upon me to enumerate all the cases in which this may be done, but . . . when he or they . . . assume a power . . . that the law does not give; or turn that which the law does give, to an end different and contrary to that which is intended by it.
“The same course is justly used against a legal magistrate, who takes upon him to exercise a power which the law does not give: for in that respect he is a private man, . . . and may be restrained as well as any other, because he is not set up to do what he lists, but what the law appoints for the good of the people; and as he has no other power than what the law allows, so the same law limits and directs the exercise of that which he has.”
Applying the legal principles to Massachusetts, Adams contended:
The port bill, charter bill, murder bill, Quebec bill, making all together such a frightful system, as would have terrified any people, who did not prefer liberty to life, were all concerted at once: but all this art and violence have not succeeded. This people under great trials and dangers, have discovered great abilities and virtues, and that nothing is so terrible to them as the loss of their liberties. If these arts and violences are persisted in, and still greater concerted, and carried on against them, the world will see that their fortitude, patience and magnanimity will rise in proportion.
Source: “VI. To the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay, 27 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0072-0007. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 288–307.]
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On this day 250 years ago in Salem, Massachusetts, Patriot militia confronted a detachment of the British Army in an event that is now called the “Salem Gunpowder Raid” or “Leslie’s Retreat.” This raid almost, but did not, start the Revolutionary War.
Colonel Alexander Leslie sailed on the HMS Lively with a detachment of approximately 250 men of the 64th Regiment of Foot the short distance from Boston to Marblehead, Massachusetts landing at mid-afternoon. Their mission was to march from Marblehead to the adjacent town of Salem and to seize cannon (not gunpowder) that General Gage’s spies reported were hidden in a barn in Salem.
Unfortunately for Gage and Leslie, the Patriots knew the British were coming. Patriot spies organized by Paul Revere passed along word that the British were embarking to sail to Marblehead and then would raid Salem. As soon as the Lively docked at the harbor Major John Pedrick of the Marblehead Militia raced to Salem with word that the “Regulars were coming” ahead of the British march and the Marblehead Militia was called to arms. When the British detachment marched into Salem, men had poured out of church (it was a Sunday) and gathered in the streets of Salem. Except for a few hidden pistols, the Militia of Salem did not bring their muskets to church so the crowd was unarmed albeit numerous. They did however pull up the drawbridge on the King’s Highway over the North River in Salem. The barn where they knew the British were heading was on the north side of the river, not that it mattered because the Patriots had already removed the munitions stored in the barn to other hidden locations.
But the Patriots were ready to make a stand. They refused Leslie’s orders to lower the drawbridge and began destroying boats in the river that would allow the British to cross. The unarmed crowd surrounding the British taunted the soldiers. When Leslie demanded the location of the hidden cannon and arms, Richard Derby, who owned, and had helped conceal, some of the weapons replied “Find them if you can. Take them if you can. They will never be surrendered.” The British fixed bayonets and advanced to try and intimidate the crowd. Joseph Whicher, the foreman of a distillery in town, bared his chest and was “Sufficiently pricked to draw blood,” according to later historian. Whicher would be the only casualty of the day, and he proudly showed off his scar for the rest of his life. Sarah Tarrant leaned out the window of her house and dared the British to shoot her.
The frustrated Colonel Leslie threatened to order his troops to open fire on the unarmed crowd. Salem Militia Captain John Felt was at the front of the crowd and shouted back “If you do fire, you will all be dead men.” Felt was not bluffing and Leslie knew it. Although the immediate crowd was unarmed, on the north side of the bridge the Salem Militia had turned out under arms and were joined by the Militia from nearby Danvers. And behind Leslie’s detachment the Marblehead Militia had turned out and a thousand militiamen under Col. Azor Orne blocked the road back to Leslie’s ship. Thousands of militia under arms from the surrounding towns were rushing to Salem and Marblehead.
Leslie was no fool and the Patriots had no intention of attacking the troops unless the British fired first. So Leslie negotiated a deal with Colonel David Mason of the Salem Militia and Rev. Thomas Barnard Jr. If the Patriots lowered the bridge so Leslie could march to the barn in accordance with his orders, he would turn the column around and march back to his ship in Marblehead without searching anything. Both sides honored the deal, but the British column had to march back to the ship to the jeers of the Patriots in ignominious defeat.
Also on this day, three “mechanicks” who were gathering intelligence on British troops in Boston at the direction of Paul Revere were arrested and sent to Castle Island in Boston Bay to be incarcerated by the Royal Navy.
https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/579-the-salem-affair
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=48471
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/february-26-1775/id1788369259?i=1000696118264
Fischer, David Hackett, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York, 1994) at pp. 59-64.
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On this day 250 years ago from Mount Vernon, Virginia, George Washington wrote to Governor Dunmore’s agent John Connolly at Fort Pitt:
With us here, things wear a disagreeable aspect; and the minds of men are exceedingly disturbed at the measures of the British government. The King’s Speech and Address of both Houses, prognosticate nothing favourable to us
Eight months later Connolly would be arrested in Maryland under Washington’s orders while he was traveling to Fort Pitt to organize Indians and Loyalists to invade Virginia, and would remain a prisoner for most of the War.
Source: “From George Washington to John Connolly, 25 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0207. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774 – 15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 273–274.]
Also on that day in Williamsburg, Virginia, Dixon & Hunter’s Virginia Gazette published a report that:
The following Gentlemen are elected Delegates to attend the convention to be held at Richmond on the 20th of next month: DUDLEY DIGGES and THOMAS NELSON, jun. Esquires, to represent the county of York, and JOHN BOWDOIN and JOHN BURTON, Esquires, to represent the county of Northampton.
Digges would serve as an elected official throughout the War and would be elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, but would be captured by British raiders in 1781. Nelson would become a signer of the Declaration of Independence and then Governor of Virginia and as Governor commanded Virginia militia at Yorktown where he authorized the bombardment of his home and Digges’ home, which both still stand in Yorktown and can be visited today. Bowdoin and Burton did not have similarly high profile careers, but Bowdoin served in the Virginia legislature for the duration of the War and Burton served through 1776.
Source: https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/todayin1770s/index.cfm
Also on that day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to Abigail Adams to congratulate her husband John Adams on the essays he wrote under the pseudonym “Novanglus” opposing the “Corrupt influance Which has brought one of the finest Countrys in the World to the Verge of Distruction.”
Source: “Mercy Otis Warren to Abigail Adams, 25 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0123. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 186–188.]
And on that day the Committees of Correspondence of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Medford, Lexington, Watertown, Brookline and Concord in Massachusetts jointly pledged to prevent anyone from supplying the British troops in Boston with horses, cattle, oats, “timber, boards, spars, pickets, tentpoles, canvas, bricks, iron, waggons, carts, carriages, intrenching tools, or any materials for making any of the carriages or implements aforesaid.”
Source: Boston Committee of Correspondence, “Boston, February 25, 1775,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/a1035e5fbf7300b2e40d073a33b58f7b.
And on that day in London, the radical Whig publication The Crisis published this remarkable denunciation of British Prime Minister Lord North and defense of American rights:
You have, my Lord, by the most cruel Oppressions, drove the Americans to a State of Desperation, you have destroyed their Charters, invaded their Rights, imposed Taxes contrary to every principle of Justice, and to every idea of Representation, and by blockading the Port of Boston, reduced near Thirty Thousand People in easy Circumstances, to a State of dependence upon the Charity and Benevolence of their Fellow-Subjects; and now, rare CONDESCENSION, a SUSPENSION, of the several American Acts, or in other Words, Ministerial Oppression and Villainy is to be granted them, provided they will raise a REVENUE in America, still subject to the CONTROUL of the King and Parliament in England: This Suspension Scheme, my Lord, will not do, the Americans will have a REPEAL of ALL the Acts they complain of, and a full restoration of all their CHARTERS, RIGHTS, LIBERTIES, and PREVILIGES, before they grant you a single Farthing, and then not subject to the controul of a Banditti of Rotten Members in St. Stephen’s Chapel, of your appointing, for where would be the difference, between their Taxing themselves, Subject to the Controul, and at the DISPOSAL of the King and Parliament, HERE; or of the House of Commons in England Taxing them in the first Instance, there would be none, my Lord, and they would still be in the same situation they are now; still subjects to the Will of the King, and the Corrupt influence of the Crown, this Scheme, my Lord, appears to me as ridiculous and absurd, as the Negative still vested in the Court of Aldermen, in the City of London, which gives a Power to a Majority of Twenty-Six, to set aside the Choice of Seven Thousand Liverymen, in the Election of their Mayors. Be assured, my Lord, this new Plan must fall to the Ground, with all your former ones in this Business; the Day of Trial is at Hand, the Americans will be firm, they will have a confirmation of all their Rights; they will have a redress of all their Grievances; they will levy their own Taxes, not Subject, to any controuling Power; and they will fix the Constitutional Liberty of America, upon a Foundation not be again shaken by YOU, nor any PUSILANIMOUS, WEAK, WICKED, or CRUEL TYRANT.
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On this day 250 years ago in Savannah, Georgia, Royal Governor Sir James Wright reported to Lord Dartmouth that a customs collector who had seized smuggled hogsheads of molasses and sugar with the help of sailors from the Royal Navy was attacked by “a large number of people, with their faces smutted and armed with Pistols and Cutlasses, in a very riotous and unlawful manner.” Wright further reported that the customs collector was tarred and feathered and he and the sailors were thrown in the river by the mob, with one of the sailors drowned. Whether this assault on a British official and Royal Navy sailors was part of a criminal enterprise, or part of the American resistance to British rule is unclear. But if the latter, the Royal Navy sailor may have been the first Briton to die in the Revolutionary War.
Source: Norton at p. 319.
Also on that day in Virginia, Richard Henry Lee wrote to his brother Arthur Lee in London that the “wicked violence of the Ministry is so clearly expressed, as to leave no doubt of their fatal determination to ruin both Countries, unless a powerful and timely check is interposed by the Body of the people” and that the American people are “resolved to defend their liberties ad infinitum” and that “the means of repelling force by force are universally adopting” citing as example Virginia’s frontier counties:
This one County of Fincastle can furnish 1000 Rifle Men that for their number make the most formidable light Infantry in the World. The six frontier Counties can produce 6000 of these Men who from their amazing hardihood, their method of living so long in the woods without carrying provisions with them, the exceeding quickness with which they can march to distant parts, and above all, the dexterity to which they have arrived in the use of the Rifle Gun. There is not one of these Men who wish a distance less than 200 yards or a larger object than an Orange. – Every shot is fatal.
Sources: Norton at p. 313; https://allthingsliberty.com/2015/03/a-posture-of-defense-virginias-journey-from-nonimportation-to-armed-resistance/#_ednref9; file:///Users/kevin/Downloads/American%20Revolution%20Chronology%20%20(2).pdf
Also on that date the Committee of Columbia County, New York adopted resolutions in opposition to the British government.
Source: https://www.wgpfoundation.org/historic-markers/pratt-house-2/
And also on this day in Boston, Governor Gage received an anonymous, and erroneous report about the whereabouts of four brass cannon that the Patriots had secretly removed from Boston. The report claimed that the “Field pieces [were] in an old store, or Barn, near the landing place at Salem, … [and] are to be removed in a few days.”
Source: https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/579-the-salem-affair
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On this day 250 years ago in New York City, Alexander Hamilton’s The Farmer Refuted was published. Hamilton made the following points in his pamphlet responding to a Loyalist pamphlet supporting Parliament’s authority over the American colonies:
there is a supreme intelligence, who rules the world, and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures . . . .
This is what is called the law of nature . . . Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He . . . invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.
. . .
To usurp dominion over a people, . . . or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience.
. . .
The constitution of Great Britain is very properly called a limitted monarchy, the people having reserved to themselves a share in the legislature, as a check upon the regal authority, to prevent its degenerating into despotism and tyranny.
. . .
The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavouring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear. They do not aim at gaining their fidelity and obedience, by making them flourishing, prosperous and happy; but by rendering them abject and dispirited. They think it necessary to intimidate and awe them, to make every accession to their own power, and to impair the people’s as much as possible.
. . .
We might soon expect the martial law, universally prevalent to the abolition of trials by juries, the Habeas Corpus act, and every other bulwark of personal safety, in order to overawe the honest assertors of their country’s cause. A numerous train of court dependents would be created and supported at our expence.
. . .
The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty, is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
Upon this principle, colonists as well as other men, have a right to civil liberty: For, if it be conducive to the happiness of society (and reason and experience testify that it is) it is evident, that every society, of whatsoever kind, has an absolute and perfect right to it, which can never be with-held without cruelty and injustice.
. . .
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
. . .
Judicial proceedings may be so ordered, as to render our lives and properties dependent on the will and caprice of court favourites and tools. A wide field for bribery and corruption, of every kind, would be opened; and the most enormous exactions would take shelter under the garb of law. It is unnecessary to enter into a particular detail of the different methods, in which all this might be effected; every man’s own imagination will suggest to him a multiplicity of instances.
Rigorous, oppressive and tyrannical laws may be thought expedient, as instruments to humble our rebellious tempers, and oblige us to submit to further exertions of authority, ’till the claim to bind us, in all cases whatsoever, be fully complied with. This no doubt would be a work of time. The steps would be gradual and perhaps imperceptible; but they would be sure and effectual.
. . .
The resistance we are making . . . will be deemed virtuous and laudable, by every ingenuous mind.
. . .
I am inviolably attached to the essential rights of mankind, and the true interests of society. I consider civil liberty, in a genuine unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial blessings. I am convinced, that the whole human race is intitled to it; and, that it can be wrested from no part of them, without the blackest and most aggravated guilt.
I verily believe also, that the best way to secure a permanent and happy union, between Great-Britain and the colonies, is to permit the latter to be as free, as they desire. To abridge their liberties, or to exercise any power over them, which they are unwilling to submit to, would be a perpetual source of discontent and animosity.
Source: “The Farmer Refuted, &c., [23 February] 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0057. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 1, 1768–1778, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 81–165.]
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On this day 250 years ago, in Staunton, Virginia, the freeholders of Augusta County met to select delegates to the Second Virginia Convention and
thought proper to refer the choice of their delegates to the judgment of the committee, who, thus authorized by the general voice of the people, met at the courthouse . . . and unanimously chose Mr. Thomas Lewis and captain Samuel M’Dowell to represent them in the ensuing convention.Instructions were then ordered to be drawn up by the reverend Alexander Balmain, Mr. Sampson Matthews, captain Alexander M’Clenachan, Mr. Michael Bowyer, Mr. William Lewis, and captain George Matthews,
“The Augusta Resolves” instructed Delegates Thomas Lewis and Samuel McDowell that King George’s
title to the imperial crown of Great Britain rests on no other foundation than the liberty, and whose glory is inseparable from the happiness, of all his subjects. . . . Many of us and our forefathers left their native land, explored this once savage wilderness, to enjoy the free exercise of the rights of conscience, and of human nature. These rights we are fully resolved, with our lives and fortunes, inviolably to preserve, nor will we surrender such inestimable blessings, the purchase of toil and danger, to any minister, to any parliament, or any body of men upon earth, by whom we are not represented, and in whose decisions therefore we have no voice.
. . .
as we are determined to maintain unimpaired that liberty which is the gift of Heaven to the subjects ofBritain’s empire, we will most cordially join our countrymen in such measures as may be deemed wise and necessary to secure and perpetuate the ancient, just, and legal rights of this colony, and all British America.
Source: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/672b0c83-5d0c-4bed-85f0-57599c7a60b1/content Appendix C
Today, February 22, 2025 at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton there will be a panel discussion about the significance of the Augusta Resolves and Augusta County’s role in the Revolution to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Augusta Resolves.. https://visitstaunton.com/event/augusta-resolves/
An original copy of the Augusta Resolves broadside will later be on display at the Augusta County Circuit Courthouse Record Room from February 24-28, 2025. https://rocktownnow.com/news/218812-original-augusta-county-resolves-to-be-displayed-in-courthouse/
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On this day 250 years ago at Mount Vernon, Virginia, Captain Thomas Marshall of the Fauquier County Independent Company dined (i.e., had lunch because dinner was the mid-day meal then) with George Washington and formally offered Washington command of the Fauquier Company. That evening William Grayson lodged with Washington and presumably discussed the Prince William County Independent Company. Grayson was the captain of the Prince William Company, which had also asked Washington to take command.
Source: “[Diary entry: 21 February 1775],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0005-0003-0020. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, p. 309.]; https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/revolutionary-war/250-years-ago-day
Also on this day, in Philadelphia, William Milnor wrote to Washington to confirm that he had ordered sashes, “Gorgets, Shoulder Knots &c” for the uniforms of the officers of the Prince William Company, “The Books Containing the Mannual Exercise &c.” for the Fairfax Company, and “One hundred Stand . . . of Musquets”.
Source: “To George Washington from William Milnor, 21 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0202. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774 – 15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 270–271.]
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On this day 250 years ago in Newport, Rhode Island the Newport Mercury reported that “Last Tuesday the militia of this town were mustered and exercised, when they performed extremely well, considering there has not been a muster here before upwards of ten years.”
Source: https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/01/the-organization-of-the-rhode-island-militia-1774-1783/#_edn16 n.17
Also on that day in Wilmington, North Carolina, Francis Clayton Deputy Chairman of “the Joint committees for the town of Wilmington and county of New-Hanover” wrote to James Kenan of the Duplin County Committee, to propose that the committees send representatives to each other’s committee meetings to coordinate on “several matters of much concern to American welfare, agitated”. Clayton would continue to lead the Committee in Wilmington throughout the Revolution and Kenan would serve as the commander of the Duplin militia in multiple battles of the War rising to the rank of Brigadier General.
Source: https://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr09-0353
On that day in Alexandria, Virginia, George Washington and other voters of Fairfax County to elect delegates to the Second Virginia Convention. Washington was elected as one of the delegates.
Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/revolutionary-war/250-years-ago-day
Also on that day in Boston, Thomas Cushing would write to Benjamin Franklin in London that Americans were “as firm and United as ever” and Joseph Warren would write to Arthur Lee in London that:
It is truly astonishing that the Administration should have a doubt of the resolution of the Americans to make the last appeal, rather than submit to wear the yoke prepared for their necks. . . . It is time for Britain to take some serious steps towards a reconciliation with her Colonies. The people here are weary of watching the measures of those who are endeavouring to enslave them; . . . They even sometimes speak of an open rupture with Great Britain, as a state preferable to the present uncertain condition of affairs; and although it is true that the people have yet a very warm affection for the British Nation, yet it sensibly decays. They are loyal subjects to the King; but they conceive that they do not swerve from their allegiance, by opposing any measures taken by any man or set of men, to deprive them of their liberties. They conceive that they are the King’ s enemies, who would destroy the Constitution; for the King is annihilated when the Constitution is destroyed.
It is not yet too late to accommodate the dispute amicably; but I am of opinion that if once General Gage should lead his Troops into the country, with a design to enforce the late Acts of Parliament, Great Britain may take her leave, at least of the New England Colonies, and, if I mistake not, of all America.
Source: https://leefamilyarchive.org/joseph-warren-to-arthur-lee-20-february-1775/; Norton at p. 313.
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On this day 250 years ago off the coast of Mysore in India, 2 boats of Sultan Hyder Ali attacked the HMS Seahorse but were defeated. This engagement is most remembered in history because it was the first combat experienced by 16-year-old Midshipman Horatio Nelson. Of relevance to this blog it is important to remember that a considerable portion of the British Navy and British Army were engaged in warfare in India from the very beginning of the Revolutionary War until after its conclusion in 1783, and that Hyder Ali was a formidable threat to British forces throughout the Revolution.
Sources:https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Horacio_Nelson; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/february-19-1775/id1788369259?i=1000693864186
On This Day In The Revolution 