I was reading up on the cause of the american revolution and low and behold to my surprise. The famous Paul Revere ride and the battles of concord and lexington were over an order given by General Thomas Gage, military governor of Massachusetts, to confiscate weapons and destroy the ammunition of the americans at Concord. When the Boston Committee of Safety learned of this plan, it sent Paul Revere and William Dawes to alert the countryside and gather the Minute Men. "The British are Coming!" And when they came to confiscate bullets, they got them, one at a time. Hope that puts it the Revolution in context. Other issues may have been paraded, but it wasn't until they came for our guns that we fought.
a McGraw-Hill history text book, but you can use google too. Lookup "Lexington" or "Concord" they were moving to take munitions from the residents. This included local guns, and ammo. It was the Committee of Safety who sent off Paul Revere. They learned of the plans by General Gage to seize the munitions from Concord. The americans then lost the battle at Lexington, but made a stand at Concord and won. And after blood was spilled the revolution was under way. here's wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord "Dartmouth's instructions and Gage's orders On April 14, 1775, Gage received instructions from Secretary of State Earl of Dartmouth to disarm the rebels, who had supposedly hidden weapons in Concord, and to imprison the rebellion's leaders. Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in his orders." With just about every non-british loving yank was a reb.
I was thrown by your initial paragraph - the cause of the American Revolution. But the specific timing, and the relationship of the Gage order to the battles of Concord and Lexington, were unknown to me. Thanks - very interesting.