On the Verge...
In April of 1775, the "shot heard 'round the world" was the pivotal event that fully ignited a colonial rebellion.
By the new year, the rebellion had been taken up by all 13 colonies and settled into something worse than defeat: uncertainty.
Washington's army surrounded British-controlled Boston, but couldn't break the siege.
Congress debated endlessly while soldiers went home instead of re-enlisting as supplies ran out.
No one could say what they were fighting for—not really. Rights as Englishmen? A better deal from Parliament? Something else entirely?
January 1776 would answer their questions.
New Year's Day, Cambridge
Washington stood outside his headquarters and watched a new flag climb the pole. Thirteen red and white stripes, stacked like the colonies themselves — separate but aligned. In the corner, the British Union Jack.
It was the first flag to represent all thirteen colonies in a single political or military cause, and Washington had chosen it carefully. Congress hadn't authorized independence. They'd authorized defensive action. Thus, the flag reflected what his orders required: we stand together, but we're still... British.
Across the siege lines in Boston, British officers trained their spyglasses on the new banner and smiled at the sight of the Union Jack; flying enemy colors made it safe to assume the Americans were signaling surrender.
The assumption was even more plausible in light of the King's recent actions: an August '75 Proclamation of Rebellion and an October '75 "Rebellion Speech" to Parliament...
The Americans hadn't heard about the speech, though. Not yet.
Washington saw something different in those thirteen stripes anyway, even if no one dared say it out loud.
Somewhere in the Berkshires, Early January
Henry Knox was fairly certain he was going to die in these mountains.
The twenty-five-year-old bookseller from Boston had talked his way into the most ridiculous assignment of the war: haul a captured train of nearly sixty tons of British artillery about three hundred miles to Cambridge in the dead of winter.
He'd never moved a cannon in his life.
He'd read about it, sure — he'd read everything in his bookshop — but reading and doing were different things.
Forty-two sleds. Eighty oxen. Fifty-nine guns, some weighing over a ton. The Berkshires... in January.
His men called it the "noble train of artillery." Knox wondered if it wasn't a noble suicide.
On January 5, the ice on the Mohawk River gave way. Sleds crashed through. Guns sank. Knox's teamsters — farmers and laborers who'd signed on for wages — dove into water so cold it could stop a person's heart. They hauled the cannons back up, built new sleds, and kept moving.
Knox didn't know if any of this mattered. Every night he fell asleep wondering if he'd made a terrible mistake.
Philadelphia, January 9
Thomas Paine sat in his rented room sweating over a finished manuscript and a problem.
The pamphlet was forty-seven pages of treason written in the kind of plain language an average farmer or shopkeeper could understand — and in it were things that could get him hanged.
His words attacked King George III personally — called monarchy itself a fraud — and argued that Americans should govern themselves.
Paine had nothing to lose, which made him scared, but dangerous.
He was thirty-eight, broke, and felt like he'd failed at everything he tried in England: corset-making, teaching, tax collecting, marriage. He'd arrived in Philadelphia fourteen months earlier with a letter from Benjamin Franklin and exactly zero prospects.
But experience was his teacher. He'd seen how the system worked. He'd watched British officials grow fat on corruption while ordinary people starved. He'd been fired for suggesting tax collectors deserved better pay. He'd learned that power, in the hands of people who inherited it, was likely to become cruelty with a crown.
So he'd written it all down. Not as theory, but as truth.
He titled it "Common Sense" and published it anonymously.
Philadelphia, January 10
The pamphlet appeared in bookshops; anyone with two shillings could pick up a copy. By that afternoon, people were reading it aloud in taverns: "Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived."
Paine didn't argue about taxes or representation. He went deeper. Why should anyone rule by birth? What made a king's son any more fit to govern than you or me? "One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion."
People laughed. Then they stopped laughing and read some more.
Paine painted a picture of America as something new — a place where ordinary people made the decisions, where merit mattered more than bloodline, where government existed to serve the people instead of the other way around: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The birthday of a new world is at hand."
Within days, the pamphlet was everywhere. Printed, reprinted, passed hand to hand. Read aloud to people who couldn't read. Debated in churches and argued over in kitchens.
People suddenly had words for what they'd been living through but couldn't stop to name.
Cambridge, Mid-January
Washington read "Common Sense," then wrote to a friend: it was "working a powerful change in the minds of many men."
Around camp, soldiers shared copies until the pages fell apart. Officers read passages aloud at mess. The pamphlet was doing something Washington's orders hadn't been able to — it was giving soldiers a reason to stay.
Washington studied his maps again. Dorchester Heights. High ground south of Boston, overlooking the harbor. If he had men and artillery, he could force the British out without a battle.
But he didn't have artillery.
The Hudson Valley, January 18
Knox's convoy reached the frozen Hudson. The river was a mile wide, covered in ice that groaned under its own weight.
The teamsters stared. The oxen shifted nervously.
Knox ordered the first sled forward.
The ice held. Barely. One sled at a time, they nervously crossed — sixty tons of iron moving across frozen water, every man holding his breath. When the last sled reached the far bank, Knox allowed himself to believe, for the first time, that this might actually work.
They were still a week from Cambridge.
Philadelphia, Late January
"Common Sense" had sold over a hundred thousand copies in three weeks - one in twenty-five people owned it, and ten times that many had heard it read aloud. John Adams, who'd been arguing about independence in Congress for months, admitted that Paine had done in weeks what Adams couldn't do in a year. The pamphlet was changing the conversation. Not "how do we fix our relationship with Britain?" but "why do we need the British at all?"
Then the ships arrived from London...
Colonial Ports, January 25
British newspapers from London carried the full text of the venomous speech King George III had delivered to Parliament back in October: "His Majesty’s most gracious speech to both Houses of Parliament, on Thursday the 26th of October, 1775."
Beyond a whispered rumor, no one in America had seen it yet. Crowds gathered as it was read aloud.
"The rebellious war now levied is become more general, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire."
He didn't stop there.
"Those who have long too successfully laboured to inflame my people in America by gross misrepresentations, and to infuse into their minds a system of opinions repugnant to the true constitution of the colonies, and to their subordinate relation to Great Britain, now openly avow their revolt, hostility, and rebellion."
The King had previously called the colonial leaders "dangerous and ill-designing men" who had deceived loyal subjects.
He now dismissed their grievances as the work of traitors.
"They have raised troops, and are collecting a naval force; they have seized the public revenue, and assumed to themselves legislative, executive, and judicial powers, which they already exercise in the most arbitrary manner."
Then came the threat.
"It is now become the part of wisdom to put a speedy end to these disorders by the most decisive exertions."
He announced additional troops. Foreign mercenaries — German soldiers hired to kill Americans on American soil.
"For this purpose, I have increased my naval establishment, and greatly augmented my land forces; but in such a manner as may be the least burthensome [sic] to my kingdoms."
The "least burdensome." He would crush them efficiently.
No offer of negotiation. No acknowledgment of grievances. Just hostile promises of imminent violence.
Crowds everywhere stood silent.
For months, moderates had clung to the idea that Parliament was the problem, not the King. That if they could just reach him and explain their position, he'd intervene on their behalf.
The King had just called them traitors and sworn to crush them with mercenaries.
Everything Paine had written about monarchy — the cruelty, the indifference, the tyranny — had just been proven true.
Masses of colonists walked away from those readings with their minds made up.
Cambridge, January 24
Knox rode into camp at the head of his impossible convoy.
Washington walked the line of sleds, inspecting each item.
Cannons. Mortars. Howitzers. Enough firepower to end the siege.
Knox stood there, exhausted and filthy, waiting for the general to say something.
Washington looked at him. "Well done, Colonel."
He turned back to his maps. Dorchester Heights; Thanks to Knox, the position would work now.
Not Going Back
That January, something shifted.
"Common Sense" gave the rebellion a philosophy. It wasn't about taxes, representation, or even rights anymore. It was about whether people could govern themselves. Whether they needed a king at all. The idea spread like wildfire, and once people heard it... they couldn't unhear it.
The King slammed the door on reconciliation - the thing Paine's critics said was impossible. Moderates who'd spent months hoping for compromise now faced a choice: submit or fight. Most chose to fight.
And Knox had delivered the means.
Washington now had guns. He had the position. He had men who understood what they were fighting for.
The Grand Union Flag still flew over Cambridge, that British Union Jack in the corner a reminder of what they'd been.
But the thirteen stripes underneath meant something different now.
January had started with a question the colonies had been asking for months: can we fix relations with the King?
It ended with a different question entirely: how quickly can we be rid of him?
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