On this day 250 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rev. John Eliot wrote that “it is now too late to think of any other method of obtaining redress than by the dint of the sword.”

Source: Norton at 337.

On that day in Boston, John Andrews wrote that

we are all in confusion at present, the streets and Neck Lin’d with waggons carrying off the effects of the inhabitants, who are either affraid, mad. crazy or infatuated — which term you please — . . . immagining to themselves that they shall be liable to every evil that can be enumerated, if they tarry in town

. . .

Several young tradesmen have left town, to join the American Army, as they call it. and others of a higher sphere in life, am told, have sent up their names to the congress for commissions. I hear they have provided stores, ammunition, tent equipage and provissions for an army to consist of thirty thousand men.

Source: https://archive.org/details/lettersofjohnand00andr/page/88/mode/2up