The Founders' Second Amendment

by Stephen P. Halbrook

  30. New York Journal; or, the General Advertiser, January 12, 1775, at 3, col. 1.

  31. New York Journal, January 5, 1775, at 3, col. 3.

  32. Postscript to the Pennsylvania Packet, March 1775, vol. IV, no. 177, at 1, col. 2.

  33. Pennsylvania Packet, January 9, 1775, vol. IV, no. 168.

  34. Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 1, at 1066. See also Frank A. Mumby, George III and The American Revolution (London: Constable & Co., 1924), 365–66.

  35. Cobett, Parliamentary History of England, vol. 18, at 512.

  36. Force, American Archives, 4th series, vol. 1, at 1070.

  37. Ibid., vol. 1, at 1070–71.

  38. Ibid., vol. 1, at 1071.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Pennsylvania Journal, December 14, 1774, at 1, col. 2.

  41. New York Journal, January 12, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  42. Pennsylvania Packet, January 16, 1775; Virginia Gazette, February 4, 1775, at 1, col. 3. Reprinted in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 1, at 1078.

  43. Pennsylvania Reporter, March 6, 1775, vol. IV, no. 176.

  44. New York Journal, February 9, 1775, at 1, col. 2.

  45. John Adams, Novanglus, no. II, February 6, 1775, in The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, C. Bradley Thompson ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 157.

  46. James Burgh, Political Disquisitions (London: Edward & Charles Dilly, 1774), vol. 2, at 475–76. The quote appeared, e.g., in the New York Journal, February 9, 1775, at 1, col. 3.

  47. Postscript to the Pennsylvania Reporter, February 4, 1775.

  48. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 59–63.

  49. Journal of Proceedings of Convention Held at Richmond (Williamsburg: J. Dixon, 1775), 34. Also in the Virginia Gazette, April 1, 1775, at 2, cols. 1–2.

  50. Journal of Proceedings, 10.

  51. Ibid., 11.

  52. Ibid., 17.

  53. John Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, Esq., of Boston, 1172–1776, Winthrop Sargent ed. (Cambridge: John Wilson & Sons, 1866), 88.

  54. Frederick MacKenzie, A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston, Being the Diary of Lieutenant Frederick MacKenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, January 5--April 30, 1775, Allen French ed. (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1926; reprinted 1969), 42.

  55. Robert Pierpont was born in London, England, in 1621, and died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1684. See genealogical records at http://users.rcn.com/lmerrell/d0003/g0000216.htm#I0926 (accessed December 10, 2007).

  56. Deposition, unsigned, by Robert Pierpont, Boston, March 20, 1775 (in handwriting of William Cooper), in Papers of Samuel Adams, 1635–1826: Photostats from the Collection in the New York Public Library (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1929), vol. 7.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Connecticut Courant, April 3, 1775, at 2, col. 2. Also in New York Journal, March 30, 1775, at 3, col. 2.

  60. Newport Mercury (Rhode Island), April 10, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  61. Postscript to Pennsylvania Reporter, April 1775, at 4, col. 1.

  62. Letter of April 11, 1775, in Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, 89.

  63. John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution . . . As Relating to South Carolina (Charleston, 1821), vol. 1, at 166.

  64. New-Hampshire Gazette, January 27, 1775, at 1, col. 3.

  65. New York Journal, April 13, 1775, at 1, col. 3.

  66. Ibid., at 3, col. 1. Also in Pennsylvania Reporter, April 17, 1775, at 3, col. 2. Reprinted in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 1, at 1202.

  67. Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976), 113.

  68. Pennsylvania Reporter, April 17, 1775, at 2, col. 3.

  69. New York Journal, June 15, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  70. Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 2, at 276. Regarding the reference to “British Ships,” this included American ships because they were still flying the British flag. Miller, Sir Joseph Yorke and Anglo-Dutch Relations, 40.

  71. Gage to Pownall, June 3, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 2, at 681.

  72. Miller, Sir Joseph Yorke and Anglo-Dutch Relations, 40–41.

  73. Virginia Gazette, November 24, 1774, at 1, col. 3, and at 2, col. 1.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. Essex Gazette, April 25, 1775, at 3, col. 3.

  2. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 15, 1775, cols. 2–3.

  3. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 1, 1775, at 5, col. 1.

  4. Pitcairn to Gage, April 26, 1775, in Bernhard Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 1766–1715 (New York: Free Press, 1975; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 333.

  5. Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976), 61, 69–70.

  6. Essex Gazette, April 25, 1775, at 3, col. 3.

  7. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, 69.

  8. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1865), 453.

  9. Allen French, General Gage’s Informers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932), 9–33.

  10. Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 454.

  11. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 231–32.

  12. David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 103.

  13. Ibid., 133–34.

  14. Ibid., 126, 169.

  15. Andrew Carroll, Letters of a Nation (New York: Kodansha International, 1997), 53.

  16. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, 130.

  17. Ibid., 120–23.

  18. Ibid., 131.

  19. Frederick MacKenzie, A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston, Being the Diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, January 5–April 30, 1775, Allen French ed. (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1926; reprinted 1969), 62. This unnamed officer’s account was published with MacKenzie’s diary.

  20. Ibid., 64.

  21. Ibid., 67.

  22. “Many experienced hunters carried long-barreled muskets and fowling pieces, and used them with deadly accuracy.” Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 413 n.58.

  23. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 161.

  24. Ibid., 160.

  25. Ibid., 286. In 1998, the musket was bound by a trigger lock as required by the Massachusetts Gun Control Act passed that year. This was soon revised to delete the requirement as applied to antique firearms. Mass. Acts 1998, Chapter 180, amended by Acts 1999, Chapter 1, § 4.

  26. Percy to General Edward Harvey, April 20, 1775, in Hugh Percy, Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776, Charles Knowles Bolton ed. (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 52–53.

  27. Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View, Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz eds. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), 118. The book was originally written in 1781.

  28. Ibid., 120.

  29. M. L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1980), 298, quoting letter from unknown author in Wm. & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. 10 (1953), at 106.

  30. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 170.

  31. Ibid., 251.

  32. Ibid., 289.

  33. Massachusetts Spy (Worcester), May 3, 1775, at 3, col. 2.

  34. The British in Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 39.

  35. MacKenzie, A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston, 56.

  36. Ibid., 57.

  37. Ibid., 58.

  38. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 243–44.

  39. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 1, 1775, at 3, col. 2.

  40. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 408.

  41. Ibid., 321.

  42. DAJA-10 (27–1A), Memorandum for Staff Judge Advocate, U.S. Army Special Forces Command (ABN), Fort Bragg, NC 28307–5215, 24 June 1999, Subject: M24 and SR-25 Sniper Weapons Systems; Legal Review, p. 3, n.3.


  43. Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 1775, in The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775, Clarence E. Carter ed. (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1931–33), vol. 1, at 396.

  44. John Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant 1759–1762, 1764–1779 (Boston: W. B. Clarke Co., 1903), 293.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Attested Copy of Proceedings Between Gage and Selectmen, April 22, 1775, in Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 1, col. 3, and at 4, col. 1.

  47. Allen French, The Day of Lexington and Concord, the Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1925), 56.

  48. Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 396–97.

  49. Attested Copy of Proceedings Between Gage and Selectmen, April 23, 1775, in Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 4, col. 2.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Ibid., at 4, col. 3 (April 23, 1775).

  52. Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 293.

  53. John Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, Esq., of Boston, 1772–1776, Winthrop Sargent ed. (Cambridge: John Wilson & Sons, 1866), 92.

  54. The British in Boston, 38.

  55. Letter to a Gentleman in Newport, Rhode-Island, datelined Roxbury, April 28, 1775, in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 2, at 430.

  56. Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1775, at 3, col. 1.

  57. Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy, May 19, 1775, at 6, col. 2.

  58. Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 293–94.

  59. Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1903), 95.

  60. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1948–57), vol. 3, at 576.

  61. Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), vol. 1, at 506.

  62. Letters to author from Massachusetts Historical Society, November 25, 1988, and William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, January 30, 1989, which houses the Gage Collection.

  63. Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 95.

  64. Illustration in Stephen P. Halbrook, A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 19.

  65. Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 294.

  66. David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), vol. 1, at xliii.

  67. Papers of James Madison, Charles F. Hobson et al. eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), vol. 13, at 233.

  68. Ramsay, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 176.

  69. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1779, Worthington Chauncey Ford ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), vol. 2, at 151. Also in Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  70. Ramsay, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 177.

  71. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 8, 1775, at 3, col. 1.

  72. The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775 (Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, 1838), 167.

  73. Ibid., 172–73.

  74. Attested Copy of the Proceedings Between Gage and Selectmen, April 30, 1775, in Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 4, col. 3.

  75. Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, 184.

  76. Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, 93.

  77. Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, 213.

  78. Gage to Dartmouth, May 13, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 397–98.

  79. Frothingham, Lift and Times of Joseph Warren, 483–84.

  80. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1805; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), vol. 1, at 106–7.

  81. “Extract of a Letter to a Gentlemen in Philadelphia, dated Boston, May 21, 1775,” in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 2, at 666.

  82. Massachusetts Spy, May 17, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  83. Ibid., at 3, col. 3.

  84. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 1, 1775, at 2, col. 3.

  85. Journals of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Convention, Committee of Safety and Council of Safety of the State of New York: 1775–1776–1777 (Albany: Thurlow Weed, 1842), vol. 2, at 10.

  86. Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, 225; The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), vol. 3, at 213.

  87. Gage to Hillsborough, November 10, 1770, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 278.

  88. Peter Edes, “Diary Kept in Boston Gaol,” June 19, 1775, ms., Massachusetts Historical Society, cited in Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 273, 416 n.44.

  89. Dartmouth to Gage, April 15, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 2, at 191.

  90. Gage to Dartmouth, June 12, 1775, ibid., vol. 1, at 404.

  91. Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post Boy, June 21, 1775, at 3, cols. 1–2.

  92. John R. Alden, General Gage in America (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969), 263–64.

  93. Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, 330–31.

  94. Ibid.

  95. Pennsylvania Evening Post, June 27, 1775, at 1, cols. 1–2.

  96. Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 4, col. 1. Also in New York Journal or General Advertiser, July 13, 1775, at 4, col. 1.

  97. Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 95.

  98. Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: S. Converse, 1828) (“gun”).

  99. George C. Neumann, The History of Weapons of the American Revolution (New York: Bonanza Books, 1967), 14, 22.

  100. Ibid., 22, 134–35.

  101. Ibid., 36, 38.

  102. Ibid., 150–51.

  103. Ibid., 216–17.

  104. Ibid., 217.

  105. See also Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526–1783 (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2000); M. L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492–1792 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980).

  106. Ramsay, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 178.

  107. Ibid., vol. 1, at 190.

  108. Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Edmund C. Burnett ed. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1921), vol. 1, at 134.

  109. Adams to Warren, June 27, 1775, in ibid., at n.5. Elsewhere, Adams wrote about the riflemen that “they use a peculiar kind of musket, called a rifle. It has a circular . . . grooves within the barrel, and carries a ball with great exactness to great distances. They are the most accurate marksmen in the world.” Familiar Letters of John and His Wift Abigail Adams During the Revolution, Charles F. Adams ed. (Boston, 1857), 65–66.

  110. Letter dated June 16(?), 1775, in The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784, L. H. Butterfield et al. eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 86.

  111. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 154–56.

  112. Ramsay, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 207.

  113. Gage to Dartmouth, June 25, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 407.

  114. New York Journal, August 31, 1775, at 1, col. 4. Also in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 2, at 1027.

  115. Madison to Bradford, June 19, 1775, The Papers of James Madison, William T. Hutchinson et al. eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), vol. 1, at 153.

  116. Joe D. Huddleston, Colonial Riflemen in the American Revolution (York, Pa.: George Shumway, 1978), 19.

  117. Virginia Gazette, July 22, 1775, at 3, col. 2. The article is datelined “Philadelphia, July 11,” but the incident appears to have originated
“in one of our frontier counties” in Virginia. This version stated in part: “He, with a piece of chalk, drew on a board the figure of a nose of the common size, which he placed at the distance of one hundred and fifty yards, declaring that those who should come nearest the mark should be enlisted, when sixty odd hit the object.”

  118. Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, Dated Philadelphia, June 20, 1775, in Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 2, at 1033.

  119. Ibid., vol. 2, at 1034.

  120. London Chronicle, August 17, 1775, quoted in Huddleston, Colonial Riflemen in the American Revolution, 25.

  121. Also entitled “The Twelve United Colonies, by their Delegates in Congress, to the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” the item was printed as a Postscript to the Pennsylvania Packet, July 17, 1775. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1779, vol. 2, at 169.

  122. Connecticut Courant, June 19, 1775, at 4, col. 2.

  123. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1779, vol. 2, at 140–57.

  124. Ibid., vol. 2, at 151. Also printed throughout the colonies, e.g., Connecticut Courant, July 17, 1775, at 2, col. 1.

  125. Ibid., vol. 2, at 151.

  126. Ibid., vol. 2, at 136–37.

  127. Gage to Dartmouth, July 24, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 409.

  128. Gage to Dartmouth, September 20, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 416.

  129. The address was not actually entered into the Journals of the Continental Congress, but was first published in the Pennsylvania Packet, August 7, 1775, and then reprinted. E.g., Connecticut Courant, August 21, 1775, at 1, col. 3. See Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1779, vol. 2, at 112, 116.

  130. John Joachim Zubly, Great Britain’s Right to Tax . . . By a Swiss (Philadelphia: [Henry] Miller, 1775), 13.

  131. Ibid.,15.

  132. Ibid., 17–18.

  133. Virginia Gazette, June 24, 1775, at 1, col. 1; New York Journal, June 24, 1775, at 1, col. 1; Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), July 20, 1775, at 1, col. 2.

  134. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 1, 1775, at 4, col. 1.

  135. Postscript to the Pennsylvania Packet, vol. IV, at 1, col. 1.

  136. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 1, 1775, at 3, col. 1.

  137. New York Journal, May 4, 1775, at 2, col. 3.

  138. New York Journal, May 11, 1775, at 1, cols. 2–3.