Samuel Adams had slept at the house of the Rev. Jonas Clark. Before
sunrise the detachment sent to seize him was close at hand. While they
advanced, he escaped; and as he walked across the fields toward Woburn, to
the sound of the guns of Lexington, he exclaimed, in a burst of passionate
triumph, "What a glorious morning is this!"
Massachusetts became the hot-bed of rebellion because of this unwonted
alliance between liberality and sacerdotalism. Liberality was her
birthright; for liberalism is the offspring of intellectual variation,
which makes mutual toleration of opinion a necessity; but that her church
should have been radical at this crisis was due to the action of a long
chain of memorable causes.
The exiles of the Reformation were enthusiasts, for none would then have
dared defy the pains of heresy, in whom the instinct onward was feebler
than the fear of death; yet when the wanderers reached America the mental
growth of the majority had culminated, and they had passed into the age of
routine; and exactly in proportion as their youthful inspiration had been
fervid was their later formalism intense. But similar causes acting on the
human mechanism produce like results; hence bigotry and ambition fed by
power led to persecution. Then, as the despotism of the preachers
deepened, their victims groaning in their dungeons, or furrowed by their
lash, implored the aid of England, who, in defence of freedom and of law,
crushed the theocracy at a blow.
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