It was time for action. On the 18th of April, 1775, in the night, the choicest corps of the garrison of Boston went out of the town, by order of General Gage, governor of Massachusetts. The soldiers were as yet ignorant of their destination, but the "Sons of Liberty" had divined it. The governor had caused the gates of Boston to be shut. Some of the inhabitants, however, had found means of escape. They had spread the alarm in the country, and already the men were repairing to the posts designated beforehand. As the royal troops, approaching from Lexington, were confident of laying hands on two of the principal agitators, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, they stumbled in the night against a body of militia who guarded the way. The Americans remaining immovable before the command to withdraw, the English soldiers, led by their officers, fired. Some men fell. The war between England and America was entered on. The same evening Colonel Smith, in seeking to take possession of the supply depot formed at Concord, saw himself successively attacked by detachments hastily raised in all the villages. He retired in disorder, even as far as the shelter of the cannon of Boston. Some days later the town was besieged by an American army, and Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, appointed Washington general-in-chief of all the forces of the united colonies--"of all those which have been or which shall be raised there, and of all others which shall volunteer their services or shall join the army in order to defend American liberty and repulse every attack directed against her."
"There is a spectacle as fine as, and not less salutary than, that of a virtuous man struggling with adversity: it is the spectacle of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and assuring its triumph. God reserved this good fortune for George Washington." [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: M. Guizot, _Etude sur Washington_.]
[Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America; page 13; http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60668]
Born on the 22nd of February, on the banks of the Potomac, at Bridge's Creek in Virginia, the new general belonged to a good family of Virginia planters, descended from those country gentlemen who had formerly caused the English revolution. He lost his father at an early age, and was brought up by his mother, a distinguished woman, for whom he always preserved as much tenderness as respect. He had undergone in his youth a free and rough life as a land-surveyor. At the age of nineteen, during the war in Canada, he had taken his place in the militia of his country, and we have seen him fighting brilliantly by the side of General Braddock. When the war ended, his haughty discontent concerning a question of military rank brought him home again. His eldest brother was dead, and had left him the Mount Vernon estate. He settled there, became a great agriculturist and sportsman, was loved and esteemed of everybody, and was already the object of the confidence as well as the hopes of his fellow-citizens.