When did the anger really start to build the most in the colonies against the British?

Well, Massachusetts was ahead of its time, the people in Worcester, because they were the ones to suffer this real crackdown because Boston was kind of the focal point and then the Boston Tea Party.

And then they actually, Britain revoked the Massachusetts Charter of 1691.

They took away their constitution.

So the initial cause for all this was having their constitution taken away.

What would we do if our constitution were taken away? We'd be pretty damn upset.

Rightfully, and they were, and they said, no way, we're not doing it.

It's not something that can be done overnight, correct?

Right.

And, uh, rightfully, and they were, and they said, "No way.

We're not doing it." And so basically throughout the countryside of Massachusetts in the, in, uh, late 1774 and early 1775, they, they, they, they shed British rule.

So at the time of Lexington and Concord, 95% of, of, uh, of Massachusetts, it's outside British control.

And what Lexington and Concord did, that was an attempt by the British Crown to take the colony back.

Well, that was the first armed warfare- And once you have warfare, a lot of people join it.

The Ma- Massachusetts did, then the New England colonies joined in, and then the, then the rest of the colonies joined in.

It's not something that can be done overnight, correct?

In fact, the British even thought about sending soldiers to Worcester months before the shot heard 'round the world, but they eventually concluded Worcester was too far from Boston, too powerful, too dangerous.

This is the greatest irony for the people of Worcester.

He says the fact that there was no bloodshed, that's why the revolts in Worcester and Western Mass for that matter, are so overlooked.

It's just, I'm gonna use the word ridiculous.

[laughs] It's so clear where the heart of the resistance was, and it's a story of who we are as a people.

There's a committee that puts this together, correct?

Well, yeah, the committee that puts it together.

First of all, the committee that actually drafted it was five people, including Thomas Jefferson.

And Thomas Jefferson got a lot of what he was saying from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was drafted primarily by George Mason and which had just been published in Philadelphia, right there.

a few days before they wrote this.

But they weren't just responding to other people wanting this.

They were actually instructed.

Right.

There's a committee that puts this together, correct?

Well, yeah.

The, the committee is, uh, that puts it together, first of all, the committee that after, actually drafted it was five people, including Thomas Jefferson.

And Thomas Jefferson got a lot of what he was saying from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was drafted primarily by George Mason, and which had just been published in Philadelphia right, uh, a few days before they wrote this.

But they weren't just responding to other people wanting this, they were actually instructed.

The Continental Congress was following instructions from their states.

Remember, all of these, all these, uh, uh, people were representing states, and their states had instructed them to vote for independence, and those states in many cases were responding to local communities within those states, instructing them to instruct Congress to declare independence.

Right.

In the morning, they begin a journey into the unknown.

You want to attack a walled city several hundred miles away.

First, you have to get there.

Well, there is one river in Maine which actually kind of takes you a large way up there, the Kennebec River.

So they say, "Okay, we'll get these boats", they call them bateaux, flat-bottom boats, "and we'll load all our supplies on these boats and kind of tug them along the river." That's a lot of stuff you have to load.

All the provisions, the gunpowder, everything.

How are you gonna keep the gunpowder dry? How do you really supply an army of several hundred or thousand people with food going through a wilderness? Now winter is coming on.

Some of the rank and file survivors might envy the dead.

But some think there's too much focus on Adams, and that this distracts attention from the so-called Boston mob, the ordinary men and women who want their grievances heard.

The whole point of the whole revolutionary period was to broaden the base of who the people were.

Popular sovereignty, that's what the whole thing is about.

Boston's a seaport teeming with rough-and-tumble guys, and it's not a gentle place, and these people are kind of rowdy, and they drink a lot, and they grouse.

And when you actually get political engagements, they're much more prone to using violence.

So ironically, you have this popular image that, uh, Samuel Adams was revving up the crowd to do their thing, and it was exactly the reverse.

The leadership is trying to calm them down because they say, "This isn't gonna get us anywhere."

A shoemaker with a troubled past, Hughes is one of life's underdogs.