"On April 24, General Gage sent his account of the confrontations at Lexington and Concord aboard the 200-ton, cargo-ladened Sukey to Lord Barrington, the Secretary of War and to the Earl of Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. His letter to Lord Barrington, written on the 22nd, began with an understated opening sentence: ‘"I have now nothing to trouble your Lordship with, but of an affair that happened here on the 19th instant." Something must have quickly changed his perception of the confrontations because the next day he sent a dispatch to Admiral Graves asking that
"Captn [John] Bishop to examine every letter on board her those directed for Docr [Benjamin] Franklin, [Arthur] Lee, [William Bollan] Borland &c to be sent to Boston; any other Suspicious letters to be put under Cover to the Secretary of State, and given to Lieut [Joseph] Nun, Capn Bishop telling his Lordship, that he was directed in this Critical Juncture, to send him the Inclosed for his perusal, as they might contain some Intelligence of the Rebels here –"
Determined to get the colony's version of the confrontations to England first, on April 22 the Second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts appointed a committee of nine to take depositions, "from which a full account of the Transactions of the Troops under General Gage, in their route to and from Concord, etc … on Wednesday last, may be collected." The committee interviewed 97 people in three days and secured signed, sworn statements from all of them. Each person deposed was administered an oath by a justice of the peace whose "good faith" was certified by a notary public. The main point of all the depositions was that no provincial at either Lexington or Concord fired until the British had fired first. On April 25, the Provincial Congress rushed to have the depositions included in "A Narrative, of the Excursions and Ravages of the King's Troops Under the Command of General Gage, on the nineteenth of April, 1777: Together with the Depositions taken by order of Congress." The account was written by Benjamin Church, Elbridge Gerry and Thomas Cushing it was printed by Isaiah Thomas of Worcester…"
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