In the warm summer weather this did not much matter but bleak
autumn and harsh winter would bring bitter privation. The sick in
particular suffered severely, for the hospitals were badly
equipped.
A deep conviction inspired many of the volunteers. They regarded
as brutal tyranny the tax on tea, considered in England as a mild
expedient for raising needed revenue for defense in the colonies.
The men of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, meeting in September,
1774, had declared in high-flown terms that the proposed tax came
from a parricide who held a dagger at their bosoms and that those
who resisted him would earn praises to eternity. From nearly
every colony came similar utterances, and flaming resentment at
injustice filled the volunteer army. Many a soldier would not
touch a cup of tea because tea had been the ruin of his country.
Some wore pinned to their hats or coats the words "Liberty or
Death" and talked of resisting tyranny until "time shall be no
more." It was a dark day for the motherland when so many of her
sons believed that she was the enemy of liberty. The iron of this
conviction entered into the soul of the American nation; at
Gettysburg, nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln, in a noble
utterance which touched the heart of humanity, could appeal to
the days of the Revolution, when "our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty.
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