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To: freeandfreezing
"...we are just as proud of the New Hampshire militiamen who attacked and took control of a British fort in December of 1774, seizing gun powder, firearms, and cannons for the use of the Americans seeking freedom."

Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten that Fort William and Mary is in New Hampshire.
Going back to the Boston Massacre in 1770 there were many incidents which soured relations between Great Britain and her American colonies.
1774 saw two, we could say, "dry runs" for the battles of Lexington & Concord -- the September Powder Alarm at Somerville Massachusetts and the December seizure of powder & shot at Fort William & Mary, near Portsmouth NH.
Both incidents involved the storage & removal of American arms & ammunition, and neither included battles between British regulars and American militia.

In the case of Fort William & Mary, much of the material stored there, along with the provincial troops (not British regulars) guarding it, was authorized & paid for by the New Hampshire Provincial Assembly (House of Representatives) from taxes collected on New Hampshirites.
And the Portsmouth mob assembled to attack the fort and seize its weapons was just that, a mob, though their actions did eventually help force withdrawal of the British governor from Portsmouth.

Your own link says this:

But then there's this: This suggests to me that patriots took what they thought was theirs, left the rest for the Brits.
23 posted on 04/20/2020 9:38:30 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
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To: BroJoeK
The article I posted has a lot of detail about the actions. There wasn't much of a battle between the British at Fort William and Mary although they did fire upon the American militiamen, and there was a good bit of fighting, including people being cut with bayonets and one lucky Brit avoided death when the American's pistol misfired.

The British did fire a number of cannon rounds, none of which luckily killed any Americans.

I would consider a situation where cannons are being fired and people are trying to kill each other a battle, but it clearly was not of the scale of the later fighting in Massachusetts.

The Americans took more of the powder than the British felt belonged to them, the article I posted has the details on that.

Some cannons were left behind due to the Americans retreat in the face of arriving British warships and marines. The Americans took smaller cannons that they could move quickly.

The entire article I posted is worth reading, some of the issues like moving the cannons upstream against the ice provide a view into life in the 1700s.

25 posted on 04/20/2020 9:46:04 AM PDT by freeandfreezing
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