In his 1899 book John Adams: The Statesman of the American Revolution and Other Essays, lawyer, historian, and librarian Mellon Chamberlain includes part of an interview he conducted in 1843 with Captain Levi Preston (1756-1850). In his youth, Preston had fought the British at Concord on April 19, 1775. The interview is somewhat amusing as we detect Chamberlain’s increasing frustration as he searches for the reason Preston took up arms. He asks whether Preston had felt oppressed or had fought to oppose the Stamp Act or the tea-tax. When Preston replies in the negative to these questions, Chamberlain says:

“Then I suppose you had been reading Harrington or Sidney and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty.” 

“Never heard of ‘em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watt’s Psalms and Hymns, and the Almanack.”

“Well, then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to the fight?”

“Young man, what we meant in going for those red-coats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They (the British) didn’t mean we should.”