Note 543 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Stedman, who was not present, and most British writers, say the Americans fired first, as did Pitcairn, whose representations, as reported by Stiles in his diary, are given by Frothingham (p. 62), and by Irving (Life of Washington, i. 393). One tory, on talking with the British soldiers afterwards, was satisfied that they were the aggressors. (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiii. 60.) Hudson, in a paper on Pitcairn in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xvii. 318, examines the question. (Cf. Frothingham's Warren, 488; Evelyns in America, 299, 303; Mahon's England, vi. 36.) A deposition of one Sylvanus Wood, taken in 1826, says that the stories in this country of the Americans firing first were started long after the event. Dawson (i. 22) prints this document.