After the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts militiamen converged upon Cambridge with hopes to lay siege to Boston, which was held by the British. Needing somewhere to sleep, they demanded that Harvard College dismiss its students and hand over its dormitories to the revolutionaries. By May, Harvard obliged the rebels, sending its students into the countryside to continue their studies, while the militias formed an encampment on the college campus.5 For adventure, for glory, for freedom, Job Sumner told Harvard he wouldn’t keep studying amid a great revolution, and he enlisted in what became
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