<P> On March 30, 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress issued the following resolution: </P> <P> Whenever the army under command of General Gage, or any part thereof to the number of five hundred, shall march out of the town of Boston, with artillery and baggage, it ought to be deemed a design to carry into execution by force the late acts of Parliament, the attempting of which, by the resolve of the late honourable Continental Congress, ought to be opposed; and therefore the military force of the Province ought to be assembled, and an army of observation immediately formed, to act solely on the defensive so long as it can be justified on the principles of reason and self - preservation . </P> <P> The rebellion's leaders--with the exception of Paul Revere and Joseph Warren--had all left Boston by April 8 . They had received word of Dartmouth's secret instructions to General Gage from sources in London well before they reached Gage himself . Adams and Hancock had fled Boston to the home of one of Hancock's relatives in Lexington, where they thought they would be safe from the immediate threat of arrest . </P> <P> The Massachusetts militias had indeed been gathering a stock of weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord and much further west in Worcester . An expedition from Boston to Concord was widely anticipated . After a large contingent of regulars alarmed the countryside by an expedition from Boston to Watertown on March 30, The Pennsylvania Journal, a newspaper in Philadelphia, reported, "It was supposed they were going to Concord, where the Provincial Congress is now sitting . A quantity of provisions and warlike stores are lodged there...It is...said they are intending to go out again soon ." </P>

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