would be dining with Knowles later that day, and asked them to persuade the townspeople to stop the riot, promising that it was within his power "to set all things right" with their assistance. That day the General Court adopted a series of resolutions condemning the riots, instructing the militia of its duty to maintain order, ordering the release of the hostages, and urging the governor to promise the townspeople "that all due care shall be taken for maintaining their just rights and Liberties, and for redressing all and every Grievance." By the end of the next day the militia had turned out, the mob had dispersed, the hostages had returned to their ships, and the impressed Massachusetts residents had been freed. Knowles and his squadron sailed for the West Indies on 30 November, "to the joy of the rest of the town." Aftermath In the course of the riots, eleven men were arrested: five sailors, four laborers, a bookkeeper, and a carpenter. Three of them were fined, and the rest were acquitted. The General Court passed several more resolutions for appearances' sake, condemning the riots and offering a reward for the ringleaders. A few days after the riot, a pamphlet about the incident was published under the pseudonym Amicus Patrie ("a friend of the country"). The author, thought by some historians to have been a young Samuel Adams (a cousin of the future second U.S. President John Adams), used Lockean reasoning to defend the rioters, arguing that they had a natural right to resist impressment: "For when they are suddenly attack'd, without the least Warning, and by they know not whom; I think they are treated as in a State of Nature, and have a natural Right, to treat their Oppressors, as under such Circumstances." This was the first time a natural rights argument was used to justify resistance to the authority of the Crown by American colonists, which was beginning to be perceived as foreign and tyrannical. Thus the Knowles Riot indirectly contributed to political ideas and arguments that were used in the American Revolutionary War, thirty years later. In December of that year, a physician named William Douglass, known for writing polemical pamphlets, published a history of the American colonies in which he attacked Knowles: Mr Knowles as a sea Commander perhaps may be noted in the future history of our colony for his unprecedented arrogance by