_b_. The early life of George Washington (Scudder's _Washington)._
_c_. The Boston Tea Party (Fiske's _War of Independence)._
_d_. The Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Fiske's _War of Independence;_ Lossing's _Field-Book)._
This section is not only the most important but the most difficult of any so far considered. Its successful teaching requires more preparation than any earlier section. The teacher is advised carefully to peruse Channing's _Students' History_, ch. iv, and to state in simple, clear language, the difference between the ideas on representation which prevailed in England and in the colonies. Another point to make clear is the legal supremacy of Parliament. The outbreak was hastened by the stupid use of legal rights which the supremacy of Parliament placed in the hands of Britain's rulers, who acted often in defiance of the real public opinion of the mass of the inhabitants of Great Britain.
References.--Fiske's _War of Independence;_ Higginson's _Larger History_, 249-293; McMaster's _With the Fathers._
Home Readings.--Scudder's _Washington_; Holmes's _Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill;_ Cooper's _Lionel Lincoln_ (Bunker Hill); Cooper's _Spy_ (campaigns around New York); Cooper's _Pilot_ (the war on the sea); Drake's _Burgoyne's Invasion; _Coffin's _Boys of '76_; Abbot's _Blue Jackets of '76_; Abbot's _Paul Jones_, Lossing's _Two Spies._
133. Advantages of the British.--At first sight it seems as if the Americans were very foolish to fight the British. There were five or six times as many people in the British Isles as there were in the continental colonies. The British government had a great standing army. The Americans had no regular army. The British government had a great navy. The Americans had no navy. The British government had quantities of powder, guns, and clothing, while the Americans had scarcely any military stores of any kind. Indeed, there were so few guns in the colonies that one British officer thought if the few colonial gunsmiths could be bribed to go away, the Americans would have no guns to fight with after a few months of warfare.
[Illustration: GRAND UNION FLAG. Hoisted at Cambridge, January, 1776. The British Union and thirteen stripes,]