sentences:  He began to express the growing rift with Great Britain in terms of slavery, stating in the summer of 1774 that the British authorities were "endeavouring by every piece of Art & despotism to fix the Shackles of Slavry" upon the colonies.Two years later, on taking command of the Continental Army at Cambridge at the start of the American Revolutionary War, he wrote in orders to his troops that "it is a noble Cause we are engaged in, it is the Cause of virtue and mankind...freedom or Slavery must be the result of our conduct.