representation in Parliament, was absolutely intolerable
without representation, and the Stamp
Act in 1765 struck the first note of intense opposition.
Thenceforward the political clouds grew
darker and the warning incidents multiplied.

And yet, as a people, Americans were walking as
if their personal plans lay easily in their own control.
Scores of young men were fitting themselves for
ordinary callings, Nathan Hale among them. His
father's plans combining with his own appeared to
be that he was to teach for a while, and then follow
his brother Enoch into the ministry. As it proved,
his days as a teacher were numbered. He was
never to enter a pulpit, though he was to utter one
sentence that, graven upon bronze or granite, will
last while America lasts. He was to teach, by his
last, unpremeditated words, and by an example
more potent than any other in American history,
what all generations of Americans must venerate
--the sublimity of a complete sacrifice.

Smoldering discontent on the part of the Americans,
waxing stronger and stronger for a decade, and
the aggressive course of action on the part of the
British authorities, finally culminated in a sudden
outbreak, as matches applied to gunpowder; and
on the igth of April, 1775, the first blood of the
American Revolution was shed. Settlement after

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