The First Sparks: Proclamation of 1763

BEFORE LEXINGTON, BEFORE CONCORD, THE FIRST REBELLION BEGAN IN THE MOUNTAIN GAPS OF PENNSYLVANIA. In 1763, the Pennsylvania frontier is ablaze. For Garrick MacIntyre and the settlers of the Conococheague Valley, survival means holding the clearings with a long rifle while watching the eastern authorities in Philadelphia turn their backs on the backcountry. When Colonel Henry Bouquet leads a army into the trackless timber of the Ohio Country, Garrick marches with the provincial levies, witnessing the agonizing return of stolen children at the Muskingum River. But when the army returns, a new threat emerges-not from the forest, but from the merchant houses of the East. Determined to reopen the lucrative fur trade at any cost, merchant Josiah Hopkins readies eighty packhorses laden with gunpowder and hatchets for the wilderness. With the government refusing to act, Garrick and a desperate band of freeholders paint their faces black and melt into the hemlocks of Sideling Hill. What begins as a raid to destroy a powder train soon escalates into an armed siege against the King's redcoats-and a fierce declaration that the backcountry will no longer be ruled by eastern ink.