"with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy ... all Military stores ... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property." Gage used his discretion and did not issue written orders for the arrest of rebel leaders, as he feared doing so might spark an uprising. American preparations On March 30, 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress issued the following resolution: The rebellion's leaders—with the exception of Paul Revere and Joseph Warren—had all left Boston by April 8. They had received word of Dartmouth's secret instructions to General Gage from sources in London well before they reached Gage himself. Adams and Hancock had fled Boston to the home of one of Hancock's relatives, Jonas Clarke, where they thought they would be safe from the immediate threat of arrest. The Massachusetts militias had indeed been gathering a stock of weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord and much further west in Worcester. An expedition from Boston to Concord was widely anticipated. After a large contingent of regulars alarmed the countryside by an expedition from Boston to Watertown on March 30, The Pennsylvania Journal, a newspaper in Philadelphia, reported, "It was supposed they were going to Concord, where the Provincial Congress is now sitting. A quantity of provisions and warlike stores are lodged there. ... It is ... said they are intending to go out again soon." On April 18, Paul Revere began the "midnight ride" to Concord to warn the inhabitants that the British appeared to be planning an expedition. The ride was finished by Samuel Prescott. Upon hearing Prescott's news, the townspeople decided to remove the stores and distribute them among other towns nearby. The colonists were also aware that April 19 would be the date of the expedition, despite Gage's efforts to keep the details hidden from all the British rank and file and even from the officers who would command the mission. There is reasonable speculation that the confidential source of this intelligence was Margaret Gage, General Gage's New Jersey-born wife, who had sympathies with the Colonial cause and a friendly relationship with Warren. Between 9 and 10 pm on the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren told Revere and William Dawes that the British troops were about to embark in boats from Boston bound for Cambridge and the road to Lexington and Concord. Warren's