The Battle of Lexington and Concord was the first battle of the American War for Independence and followed an effort by the British to confiscate the arms of the colonists. The first skirmish, at Lexington, ended in a dismal massacre, but the colonists won their revenge at Concord, forcing the British back to Boston in the second engagement. But the engagements, while small, were not insignificant. Indeed, “the shot heard round the world” was fired at Lexington, and the world would never be the same again.

Background

Tensions between Great Britain and her colonies had been brewing for some time, as the British government oppressed the rights and liberties of the King’s subjects in North America. But things were brought to a head by the British tax on tea. It was not the trivial amount of the tax that offended the colonists, for it was a mere three pence, which was the same amount the colonists would have to pay should they have it smuggled in to avoid the tax.[i] Rather, it was the principle behind the tax; the colonists maintained that Parliament had no authority to tax them whatsoever, because they were subjects of King George III, and of their own colonial governments, and possessed no political relationship to Parliament whatsoever.

The Patriots met to decide what to do about the British ship, Dartmouth, that had docked in Boston Harbor loaded with tea on November 14^th, 1773. It was decided to demand that the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson return the tea to England, but he refused. Two more tea loaded vessels joined the Dartmouth in Boston harbor. The patriots again met on May 16^th, and it was resolved to dump the tea into Boston harbor. This was greeted enthusiastically by the participants in the meeting at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. And a loud war whoop sounded from the doorway where a group of Patriots, calling themselves the “Sons of Liberty” had gathered. Disguised as Indians, they streamed down Milk Street, Hutchinson Street, and onto Griffin’s Wharf. Alongside the wharf, lay the three British ships, Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, with 226 chests of tea aboard valued at 25,000 pounds. The sons of Liberty, which included the famous patriot Paul Revere, to be discussed later, in this essay, boarded the British ships in orderly fashion and opening the hatches, dashed open the tea chests with their tomahawks, and then dumped them into Boston harbor, in an event that was to become known as the “Boston Tea Party.”

Response to the actions of the Sons of Liberty was stern. The British government, undaunted by this popular resistance to their unjust and oppressive tax, stepped up and increased their tyranny. The “Intolerable Acts” were passed to punish all the Colonies, and in regard to Boston specifically, the harbor was closed, which had the effect of putting many Bostonians out of work and doing nothing to endear them to the British government. As a response to the Intolerable Acts, the colonists formed the First Continental Congress, and King George III sent more troops to Boston, along with a new governor to replace Thomas Hutchinson. The replacement, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, was no stranger to America, having come to America in 1775 and taken part in the French and Indian War. He had been present at the disastrous defeat of the Braddock Expedition, and at Ticonderoga. His wife was an American, and he was good natured and peaceable, handsome and dignified, and was pleasing in his manners. However, if the Crown hoped that the appointment of Gage would help reduce tensions between Boston and the mother country, they were sorely mistaken. Boston had still not forgiven Gage for his role in the Boston Massacre, and in any case, Gage had come under orders to close Boston harbor, and otherwise restrict the liberties of the Massachusetts colony. Gage received a cordial reception, but it was only on the surface. All of New England was simmering with resistance to tyranny, and Britain knew it. King George III wrote that “The New England Governments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are subject to this country or independent.” Rather than backing down, King George III was going to press the matter with force. The British army strength in North America was to be built up to 10,000 men. Gage had 4,000 British regulars in Boston at the time in nine regiments. In Boston Harbor, Gage had the renowned British navy at his disposal in the form of four ships of the line, besides frigates, sloops and transports, from which he drew 460 marines. In order to quell the simmering rebellion, it would be first necessary to disarm the patriots which had been stockpiling arms and ammunition in readiness. Gage resolved to seize or destroy the arms cache at Concord, sixteen miles north of Boston, which the patriots had there, and which included cannons, in addition to small arms. On the way, as the British passed through Lexington, a village six miles short of Concord, they would arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams whom they regarded as ringleaders of rebellion.

British and American Preparations

Gage began preparations on April 15^th, covering his actions with the line that the unusual activity was for the training of his troops: “to learn exercise and new evolution…till further orders,” in the general orders of Gage. But such an excuse did not fool the patriots, who guessed correctly that Gage was collecting boats from the transport ships in Boston harbor, for over water movement of forces across Back Bay to East Cambridge, and from there, overland to Concord.[ii] There were many eyes the patriots had available, for there were many unemployed men in and around Boston, whom were more than happy to observe British movements and report them to the Committee of Public Safety, whose leader was Dr. Joseph Warren. A select group of men served as watchmen for the colonial cause and were headed by silversmith Paul Revere. In Revere’s words, this group “was upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories.” By twos and threes, Revere’s watchmen patrolled the streets and observed, in the words of Revere: “the boats belonging to the transports…all launched and carried under the sterns of the men of war. (They had previously been hauled up and repaired). We likewise found that the grenadiers and light infantry were all taken off duty.”  Warren thus knew what the British were up to, even as they were stepping from their barracks. And American intelligence was bolstered not only by knowledge of the British expedition, but its destination. Loose lips not only sink ships, but military expeditions, too, as the British were to find out to their dismay. The British writer Stedman records:

As there is nothing that so much avails as secrecy of design and celerity of execution : Nor, on the contrary, so hurtful as unnecessary openness and procrastination. General Gage on the evening of the eighteenth of April told lord Percy, that he intended to send a detachment to seize the stores at Concord, and to give the command to colonel Smith, “who knew that he was to go, but not where.” He meant it to be a secret expedition, and begged of lord Percy to keep it a profound secret. this nobleman was passing from the general’s quarters home to his own, perceiving eight or ten men conversing together on the common, he made up to them; when one of the men said- “the British troops have marched, but they will miss their aim.” “What aim?” said Lord Percy. Why,” the man replied, ” the cannon at Concord.” Lord Percy immediately returned on his steps, and acquainted General Gage, not without marks of surprise and disapprobation, of what he had just heard. The general said that his confidence had been betrayed, for that he had communicated his design to one person only besides his lordship.[iii]

The next morning, Warren sent Paul Revere to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, for the British expedition was probably meant to arrest or assassinate them, in addition to seizing the arms and ammunition at Concord. Revere’s ride was made without incident, and returning to Boston that night, stopped off in Charlestown to meet with Colonel William Conant, the local commander of the militia, and some other men. Revere promised to try and reach Charlestown when the British left Boston on their expedition. However, “in case Gage should be so thorough as to prevent messengers leaving Boston when his troops were in motion,”[iv] Revere would alert Charlestown by another means. In his words: “…if the British went out by water, we would show two lanterns in the North Church steeple, and if by land, one, as a signal; for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to cross the Charles River or get over Boston neck.” Not much happened over the next two days, as Gage completed his arrangements, choosing 800 men for his expedition, grenadiers and light infantry, the flower of his 4,000-man army. The route that Gage planned to take from Boston common, across the water to Cambridge, and then through Menotomy, and Lexington, and finally to Concord, was the shortest route to the destination and had the advantage of secrecy, but it was hampered by the delays of boats and marshes and zig-zag roads, [v] and in any case, Gage had already lost the element of surprise. By nightfall on April 18^th, the British troops were prepared to embark. Dr. Warren now sent for William Dawes, an American express rider, and an “adept smuggler and master of disguise,”[vi] and for Paul Revere. Dawes arrived first, and was immediately dispatched to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, and then onto Concord, to alert the townspeople there, and to alert the colonial militias in nearby towns as well. When Revere arrived, he found that Dawes had already been dispatched to Lexington, by land route. Unsure if Dawes would be able to leave Boston, Warren was going to send Revere on the same mission by a second route. Ward explains:

There were two roads leading to Concord. One was by way of the Neck towards Roxbury, then around to Cambridge and Menotomy – now Arlington – then on through Lexington; it was much the longer. The other went from Charlestown to Medford and then to Menotomy, where it joined the other.[vii]

Revere took the shorter route, Dawes the longer. Leaving Dr. Warren, Revere called upon a friend to make sure the lanterns were shown in the steeple of the North Church. In Revere’s words he then

…went home, took my boats and surtout, and went to the north part of the town, where I had kept a boat; two friends rowed me across Charles River, a little to the eastward where the Somerset man of war lay. It was then a young flood, the ship was winding, and the moon was rising. They landed on my Charleston side. When I got to town, I met Colonel Conant, and several others, they said they had seen our signals. I told them what was acting, and went to get me a horse. I got a horse of Deacon Larkin. When the the horse was preparing, Richard Devens, esq. who was one of the Committee of Safety, came to me, and told me, that he came down the road from Lexington, after sundown, that evening; that he met ten British officers, all well mounted, and armed, going up the road.

 

 

These officers, Devens warned Revere about had been dispatched by Gage to intercept any American messengers. Revere now set off at 11:00 pm. Dawes met with no delays or interruptions, but Revere, attempting to turn off the main road and take a crossroad through Medford, ran into a pair of British officers, waiting under a tree. “One tried to get ahead of me, the other to take me.’’ He reported. Revere outran them. He “turned his horse very quick and galloped toward Charlestown neck and then pushed for the Medford Road.” Reaching the town of Medford, Revere awoke the captain of the minutemen, and after then he shouted the alarm to every almost every house he passed, until he reached Lexington. At Clarke’s house, eight minutemen stood guard to protect the patriot leaders. The sergeant, named Munroe, informed him the family was asleep and asked not to make so much noise. “Noise!” Revere cried. “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out.” Upon receipt of this information, Hancock and Adams prepared for quick escape.[viii] Revere inquired about Dawes, but they replied he had not yet arrived, and Revere supposed that he had been captured by the British officers. However, after half an hour, Dawes did arrive. The two men refreshed themselves and set off for Concord. They were joined on the way by Dr. Samuel Prescott, of Concord, who was returning from courting a sweetheart. “A high son of liberty,” according to Revere, he asked to go along, adding that the people between Lexington and Concord knew him and would be able to vouch for the warnings Revere and Dawes verbally delivered.  The three went on to Concord, shouting the alarm to the houses they passed. Nearly halfway between the two towns, they encountered “two British officers, and two more emerged from a field beside the road.”[ix] They rode up with pistols in their hands. Cursing, they ordered the men to stop. “If you go an inch further, you are a dead man.” The three men attempted to go through them, but the men “kept before us,” Revere reported, threatening to shoot them if they did turn off the road into a pasture at gunpoint. Ward records:

Dawes wheeled his horse about and rode hard back to Lexington. Revere and Prescott were ordered at pistol point, to turn off the road into a pasture lot. Doing this, they immediately put spurs on their horses to escape in different directions.[x]

Prescott, by jumping his horse over a fence, managed to escape, but Revere, riding for a nearby wood, was overtaken by six British officers who were concealed there. It turned out they had three other prisoners, three men who had been sent out from Lexington by Munroe to observe the approach of the enemy. Revere was dismounted and interrogated by his captors, whom he informed that the minutemen were assembling at Lexington five hundred strong. The British did not long keep Revere a prisoner. Riding toward Lexington, at a quick pace, they forced him to swap horses with one of him, and insulted him, threatening to shoot him if he attempted to escape or if he insulted them. Half a mile from the Lexington church meetinghouse, they heard a gun being fired. A British officer asked Revere what this was for, and Revere replied that it was to alarm the country roundabout. A volley of gunfire was then heard, and the British cut the bridle and saddle of the horse Revere was riding and let him go.

March to Lexington

In the meantime, the British were marching toward Lexington. Gage’s expedition to seize the colonial arms at Concord comprised eight hundred British grenadiers and light infantry. They had moved silently through the Boston streets and embarked aboard the waiting boats, in which they were rowed across the Back Bay, to Lechmere Point. Here, they waded ashore, and in wet clothing in the cool New England night, uncomfortably halted in a dirty road, according to British officer, Lieutenant John Barker, and waited for provisions from the boats. The march was begun at 2:00 by wading through a long ford. It was an unpleasant beginning to the march toward Concord. In command of the expedition was Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, a “gallant old officer.”[xi] Smith has also been described, however, as “plump, overage, and fussily inefficient,” and it was not to his credit that the beginning of the expedition was slow, for as French records “had they saved two hours, or even one, they would have passed through Lexington before daylight, could have started back to Boston earlier, and many events of the day would have been different.”[xii] Colonel Smith was determined to avoid secrecy, and therefore avoided the bridge across Willis Creek, lest the tramping of the British feet upon the bridge might give them away, and instead took them through the water of Willis Creek instead.[xiii] And so, the British marched on through the cool night, wet to the waist. Ward records:

Sometime after two o’clock, they halted in Somerville to let the men drink at a well. Then they went on, picking up prisoners here and there to prevent an alarm. Cambridge was next; then, at three o’clock, Menotomy, where three members of the Provincial Congress heard their tramp-tramp, fled from their beds in the nightgear, and hid in a field of corn stubble…Now they were drawing near to Lexington. All through the night, as they passed through town after town, men awoke, dressed, took to horse, and rode away to call out the thousands who were finally to overwhelm these redcoats.[xiv]

 

British soldiers could hear church bells ringing, calling the minutemen and militia to arms, and warning gunshots could he heard as well. Pitcairn and Smith soon learned that despite their best attempts at secrecy, their expedition was known to the colonials. Upon this knowledge, Smith detached Pitcairn with six companies of light infantry to spearhead the advance. He also took the prudent course of sending “a messenger to Gage, telling him of the general alarm, and asking for support. It was the wisest thing that he did that day; without it, neither he nor any of his men would have returned to Boston.”[xv] The officers evidently believed Revere’s report of five hundred minutemen.

       Skirmish at Lexington Green

Revere’s alarm had roused Captain Jonas Parker and his company of minutemen at Lexington, which assembled at the usual place of parade. The purpose of this assembly, wrote Jonas Clarke, pastor of the Church of Lexington, and a member of the company, “was not with any design of commencing hostilities upon the King’s troops, but to consult what might be done for our own and the people’s safety. And also, to be ready for whatever service providence might call us out to, upon this alarming occasion, in case overt acts of violence, or open hostilities should be committed by this mercenary band of armed and bloodthirsty oppressors.” Parker was forty-five, a former member of Rogers Rangers during the French and Indian War, and other members of his company were veterans of that war as well. Two messengers were sent out toward Cambridge to gain intelligence of the British, if possible. Not all of the men who answered the summons were armed, and so Parker ordered those men to arm themselves from the magazine in the church meetinghouse, where weapons were stored. Parker then assembled the men on the north end of Lexington Common, near Beford Road in single file. Of the two messengers sent out, one returned between 3 and 4 in the morning with the news that there was no British to be found on the roads either from Charlestown or Cambridge, but the second was prevented from doing so, for the British suddenly and unexpectedly appeared at his place of observation. Pitcairn’s spearhead of light infantry was pursuing a quick march. Aware of the alarm, he took what measures he could to prevent the warning being carried to Lexington.

His extreme advance guard, the point, as it is called today, was, as is usual and proper, proceeding along the sides of the road rather than the middle, and concealing themselves from anyone that approached, the soldiers closed in upon him and made him prisoner. Thus one by one, the men sent out from Lexington for news were gathered in, until as Thaddeus Bowmen, likewise scouting, approached the marching column, his horse, perceiving soldiers sitting on either side of the road, refused to pass them. The unsuspicious Bowman was still endeavoring to urge his horse forward, when he saw Pitcairn’s detachment coming toward him. Turning about, he galloped to give the alarm.[xvi]

Upon receipt of the first message, Parker’s company was dismissed with orders to reassemble upon the beating of the drum. Some minutemen returned to nearby homes, others to a nearby tavern. At 4:30 am, the British reached the town of Lexington, and the minutemen became aware of their approach. Alarm guns were fired. The minutemen tore out of the tavern at a run and others came sprinting from their houses. Parker assembled seventy men on the village green, in two lines somewhat spaced from each other. “Lexington Green was a triangle bordered by roads. The road from Concord ran along its base. Parker’s men were drawn up not more than a hundred yards from this road, by which the British must march.”[xvii] Seeking an armed engagement would be the height of madness, considering that Parker had a mere seventy men against the eight hundred of the British. Parker’s stand, Clarke informs us, was …not with any design of opposing so superior a force, much less to commence hostilities, but only with a view to determine what to do, when and where to meet, and to dismiss and disperse.” Hearing the drum beating to call the minutemen onto the village green, Pitcairn, commanding the advance from horseback, halted his men and ordered them to prime and load their muskets. This was a slow process, and by the time it was finished, Smith, with his men, was close behind.[xviii]

As the road to Concord entered Lexington, it passed between two hills…and going always level, reached the green…The main road continued straight on, but the road to Bedford branched to the right, and in the angle thus made stood in 1775 the barnlike meetinghouse, just beyond which was its freestanding belfry. Behind these and towards the right, with less than a dozen houses standing at its borders, was the open green on which Pitcairn saw Parker’s little company.[xix]

The mounted officers, including Pitcairn, galloped round the meetinghouse, and the British foot soldiers marched directly towards the minutemen at the double-quick, shouting and raising huzzahs. “Don’t fire unless fired upon!” Parker commanded his men, in words that were soon to become immortal. “But if they want to have a war, let it begin here!” But as the British came nearer, Parker thought better of the stand of his minutemen and his show of force. He ordered his men to disperse and most importantly, not to fire. Major Pitcairn was also ordering his men not to fire. “Soldiers, don’t fire!” He cried. “Keep your ranks! Surround and disarm them!” The minutemen began to break ranks, and to disperse, “though not so speedily,” Clarke wrote, “as they might have done.” The British were on their way to Concord to confiscate arms and ammunition, and Pitcairn therefore had no thoughts of letting these minutemen leave the green with their muskets in hand. He and several two other officers, one of whom was Smith, advanced to the front of the dispersing body of minutemen. “Ye villains, ye rebels, disperse!” one of them shouted. The minutemen were indeed dispersing, but apparently not fast enough for the British officers, one of whom, Clarke reported, cried, “Lay down your arms; d—n you! Why don’t you lay down your arms!” Pitcairn gave “several repetitions of those positive orders to the men, not to fire, etc.,” and turned to order his men to disarm the minutemen. It was at this moment that a gunshot rang out, a gunshot that would indeed, as a poet would state figuratively, be heard round the world. The source of that gunshot has been the subject of much debate, as both the British and the Americans would subsequently accuse of each other of firing that first shot that precipitated the skirmish, perhaps better described as a massacre, upon Lexington Green. Pitcairn reported that “some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall fired four of five shots at the soldiers…and at the same time several shots were fired from a meeting house on our left.” Lieutenant Barker reported that “on our coming near them, they fired on us two shots…” A document in the London Gazette dated June 10^th, 1775, reported that “several guns were fired upon the King’s troops from behind a stone wall, and also from the meetinghouse and other houses…” A British lieutenant reported that “I heard Major Pitcairn’s voice call out, “Soldiers, don’t fire, keep your ranks, form and surround them.” Instantly, some of the villains who got over the edge fired at us…”

The patriots, on the other hand, were adamant that the British fired first. Depositions of 34 minutemen were taken on the 25^th of April before three justices of the peace, and all were in agreement with each other that the British fired first. “…the company began to disperse, whilst our backs were turned on the troops, we were fired on them…not a gun was fired by a person in our company on the regulars to our knowledge before they fired on us…” That all 34 of these depositions is in agreement with each other on this one point is powerful evidence of the assertion that the British fired first. Sylvannus Wood, one of the militiamen, agreed as well: “There was not a gun fired by any of Captain Parker’s company, within my knowledge. I was so situated that I must have known it, had anything of the kind taken place before a total dispersion of our company.”[xx] The British accounts that credit multiple shots being fired are difficult to swallow considering the fact that the Americans had not only been commanded by Parker not to fire unless fired upon, but “for months had been told, even by their ministers, that they were not to fire first.”[xxi] Furthermore, French points out that “not a man of those who stood there had raised his gun to fire. No man in any wisdom would have fired a shot while his comrades were under the very muzzles of the British.”[xxii] Certainly not, multiple soldiers armed with single shot weapons, each firing a single shot, as the British accounts claim. In addition, not all British writers accept the general British version of the events. Edmund Burke wrote that: “Indeed, it seems evident, that a single company of militia, standing, it may be said, under the muzzles of our soldiers’ guns, would have been sufficient pledges to prevent any outrage from their friends and neighbors in the adjoining houses.”[xxiii]

Pitcairn has been accused of firing the first shot personally, but this does not square with his orders to his troops to withhold fire, nor of his actions afterword to stop their firing. But while Pitcairn was not the bloodthirsty monster, later Americans would peg him as, another British officer certainly was, for it was a British officer who fired that first shot. That this is so is attested to Jonas Clarke, who was there as an eyewitness. He wrote that after three British officers advanced, on horseback, to the front of the minutemen, “the second of these officers, about this time, fired a pistol towards the militia, as they were dispersing.” Paul Revere corroborated Clarke’s account, writing, “When we had got about 100 Yards from the meetinghouse the British Troops appeared on both sides of the meetinghouse. In their front was an officer on horseback. They made a short halt; when I saw, and heard, a gun fired, which appeared to be a pistol.” This may have been an accidental discharge or a warning shot, and not one directed by British murderous malice.[xxiv]

But the next British act most certainly was. Clarke records: “The foremost [of the several officers who had ridden to within 5 of 6 rods of Parker’s dispersing company] who was within a few yards of our men, brandishing his sword, and then pointing towards them, with a loud voice said to the troops, “Fire! By God, fire!” The British troops, it should be pointed out, were after their miserable night march, in an ugly and surly mood. Many of them and the younger officers wanted to “have at” what they considered “d—ed dogs,” and were champing at the bit to do so. Indeed, many of these officers considered themselves justified by the authority of Parliament to consider the minutemen as rebels and seeing that they did not lay down their arms, and that they were dispersing rather slowly, probably figured that there could no great problem with shooting a few down like dogs. The first platoon in the British ranks opened fire with a volley, but they did not sight their muskets, and the musket balls sailed over the heads of the colonists. Wood supposed that the British muskets were “charged only with powder,” and thus attributed the failure of the British to hit anyone with the first volley, the fire of which, Pitcairn said, was “scattered.” Pitcairn attempted to halt the fire of his troops. He “struck his staff or sword downward, with all earnestness as a signal to forbear or cease firing,” but the angry and surly British troops would not hear him, instead firing another volley, of “heavy and close fire,” Clarke would describe it, or as Sutherland reported it, “smart fire.”  And they kept on shooting too, “so long as any of them [the minutemen] were within reach.”

The volley tore through Parker’s dispersing men, for this time the redcoats were not aiming high. About eight of the minutemen managed to return the British fire. Two shots struck Pitcairn’s horse, and another ball struck a private named Johnson, of the British 10^th light infantry, in the leg, wounding him. Through the smoke, the British now charged. Only one man stood firm to meet their charge, the gallant minuteman Jonas Parker. Though shot, he bravely stood his ground, reloading the musket with which he had already fired at the British, who now bayoneted him to death where he stood. The rest of the minutemen fled for their lives, the British firing at them as long as they were in range. And so ended the little skirmish. When the smoke cleared, eight minutemen lay dead on the ground and ten had been wounded, although these latter were all able to escape.  The British had “some difficulty” according to Barker, reforming their disorderly ranks, for the British soldiers “were so wild they could hear no orders.” The troops had not listened to Pitcairn, but Colonel Smith had better success with them. When at last they were formed up, under his “hard eye and lashing tongue,” and firing had ceased, they gave three huzzahs, fired a victory volley and resumed their march to Concord, Smith’s main body having come up. Animated by the skirmish, the spirits of the British soldiers began to rise, and now that they had pushed aside this flimsy opposition, it would be an easy matter, they supposed to seize the weapons at Concord. They would be back in Boston, they thought, by the afternoon. But Providence and the colonists had other thoughts for them in mind.

American Preparations at Concord

Dr. Prescott, who had escaped when Revere was captured, had brought the news between 1 am and 2 am to the town of Concord.[xxv] The alarm bell was rung, and Captain James Barrett, of the Concord militia, described as “lame and elderly,”[xxvi] “…began assembling his minutemen; he also sent out messengers to summon detachments from neighboring communities.”[xxvii] Uncertain of the news, despite Prescott’s views, a messenger, Reuben Brown, was sent by Concord to Lexington to learn what had happened. In the meantime, the inhabitants of Concord set about to hide the arms and ammunition at Concord to keep it from falling into the hands of the advancing redcoats. Small cannons and muskets were buried, musket balls, flints, and cartridges were concealed under feathers, and powder was hidden in the woods outside town.[xxviii] By various means, therefore, the military stores in Concord, were hidden and dispersed. It was not merely Lexington and Concord that had been warned of the British expedition, but the whole country roundabout had been alerted. “The alarm had gone forth, not only by Revere and Dawes to Lexington, but far and wide throughout eastern Massachusetts. Conant and his friends at Charlestown took care of the country roundabout; and from town to town, as the news came, riders carried it on posthaste.”[xxix]

Minuteman companies from the towns of Eastern Massachusetts thus began to converge on Concord, coming to the aid of their brethren in that town. The first of the companies to arrive was the one from the town of Lincoln, commanded by Captain William Smith. They brought the first news to Concord of the Lexington skirmish. Other companies arrived, and before sunrise, there was, as Corporal Amos Barrett, a Concord minuteman reported, “some 150 of us and more.” It was decided to conduct a reconnaissance in force, or as Barrett put it, “we thought we would go out and meet the British.” The four little companies of minutemen and militia marched “down towards Lexington about a mile and a half,” before they spotted the approaching British in the morning light. Both sides were marching to the tune of the fifes and drums, leading Barrett to note that both sides had “grand music.” As the minutemen were outnumbered, the companies were ordered to about face and withdrew. Reuben Brown barely returned before the British reached Concord. The minutemen pulled back to the first ridge overlooking the town. Pastor William Emerson reported: “Scarcely had we formed before we saw the British troops at the distance of a quarter of a mile, glittering in arms, advancing towards us with the greatest celerity. Some were for making a stand, notwithstanding the superiority of their number, but others, more prudent, thought best to retreat till our strength should be equal to the enemy’s by recruits from neighboring towns that were continually coming to our assistance.”

Prudently, therefore, the minutemen withdrew to a second ridge “80 rods further north,” in Clarke’s words, “about a mile from the town,” which overlooked the North Bridge. Meanwhile, the British reached Concord, between seven and eight in the morning. The march from Lexington to Concord had been made without incident. Colonel Smith had detached his light infantry as flankers to clear the first ridge, while the grenadiers stuck to the road. Arriving just as the minutemen were evacuating, they “fixed…bayonets and immediately charged them up the hill, in order to disperse them…and pursued them with charged bayonets…” despite the “smart fire” from the retiring minutemen.

The British at Concord

The British now entered Concord. A detachment was ordered to occupy the north bridge, and other detachments were detached to other parts of the town to destroy the arms and ammunition stored in the town, the objective of the expedition. Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn went to the town cemetery and stood among the tombstones, while Pitcairn inspected the surrounding area thorough his spyglass and Smith studied his maps. On the second ridge, meanwhile, Barrett was holding a council of war with his officers. It was decided to retreat to a third position, Punkatassat Hill, across the North Bridge, there to await reinforcements from the neighboring towns. Smith sent seven companies of light infantry after the minutemen presently retreating over the north bridge, while the grenadiers conducted a door-to-door search for the hidden American arms and ammunition. Pitcairn and the British officers ordered themselves food and drink and scrupulously paid for what they took, giving the grenadiers firm instructions not to molest private property or the persons of the townspeople. However, this was apparently due to British expediency and not principle, because the British had little respect for private property, as we shall shortly see. The British did not find much of what they were looking for, because the townspeople had succeeded in burying or hiding most of it.

Nevertheless, they did locate some of the hidden military stores. Breaking into the jail, which they found bolted, the British soldiers found three 24 pounder iron cannons, which they disabled by breaking the trunnions off. In the malthouse, the Brits found a hundred barrels of flour. They broke open some of these barrels but dumped most of them into the millpond. Five hundred pounds of musket balls were also found, and also dumped into the millpond, as were some cannonballs. The Grenadiers also burned sixteen gun carriages, and some tools. They also set the blacksmith shop and courthouse on fire, but quickly extinguished the blaze. Credit for saving the courthouse must go the elderly widow, Martha Moulton. This heroic patriotic matron confronted the British and urged them to extinguish the fire, bringing a pail of water to the fire herself. The British, perhaps moved by the elderly woman’s zeal, complied. But while the British generally treated the townspeople well, there were exceptions, and a few of them were roughly treated and even threatened with murder by the redcoats.

On the whole, it was a poor return for the British effort, for the search was not very successful and the American loss in military stores and goods quite small. The grenadiers also cut down the Liberty pole. The townspeople of Concord were quite hostile to the British, and one old man even had the courage, or perhaps, foolhardiness, to strike Major Pitcairn. In Wright’s Tavern, a bitter Pitcairn, or perhaps Colonel Smith, (for whom it would be more in character), plunged a finger into his mug and observing the liquid splash out, stated that was the way that Yankee blood would spill before nightfall. Yankee blood would indeed spill before nightfall, but so would British blood – and more of it.

  Skirmish at the North Bridge

The British search of Concord was interrupted by firing from the North Bridge. Seeing the smoke rising from the fires in the town, Colonel Barrett had consulted with his officers, one of whom, Joseph Hosmer, his adjutant, cried “Will you let them burn the town down?” Naturally, Barrett could not have permitted that, and so he and his officers resolved to “march into the middle of the town for its defense or die in the attempt.”[xxx] By this time, Barrett’s men had been joined by minutemen from the towns of Acton, Lincoln, and Bedford, as well as other towns. As the militia and minutemen arrived, Hosmer was “forming the soldiers as they arrived, the minute companies on the right and the militia on the left, facing the bridge.”[xxxi] “Their reinforcements had augmented sufficiently to induce a growing feeling of aggressiveness.”[xxxii] At the bridge, three British companies of light infantry were stationed under the command of a Captain Walter Laurie. Seeing the approaching patriots, Laurie moved his men across the bridge and left a few there to destroy the bridge and thus to keep the minutemen from following. Barrett now ordered Major John Buttrick to lead the attack, and his men moved down toward the north bridge, shouting to the men tearing up the bridge to desist. The soldiers complied and retired to their own ranks. Laurie now drew up his men to resist the Americans, who occupied the bridge. Young and uncertain, Laurie waited until the minutemen and militia were nearly upon him before doing so. Barker reported “that the rebels had got so near him that his people were obliged to form the best way they could.”

He sent a desperate message to Colonel Smith for reinforcements. Indeed, the patriots, some 450 in number, outnumbered his own 100 men. To make matters worse, Laurie’s men were jammed into the narrow road, and only the front rank was capable of firing. Buttrick had been given orders by Barrett that he was not to fire first, but that his men were only to fire if the British commenced shooting first. The British opened fire first, and unlike Lexington, there was no confusion this time. The British opened a fire of “dropping shots,” which landed in the water, and then they fired a volley, which wounded two men and killed Captain Isaac Davis, of a company of Action men, and Abner Hosmer, also from Acton, who took a ball through the head. “Fire, fellow soldiers!” Buttrick now cried, “For God’s sake, fire!” The patriots did, and their volley killed three British privates, and wounded four officers, a sergeant, and four privates. The skirmish at the bridge was over within three minutes. The British fled in disorder back towards Concord. The wounded were able to join their fleeing comrades, “a-running and hobbling about,” a patriot eyewitness wrote. All except one that is. British reports of this engagement would later condemn the patriots for their “cruelty and barbarity” for they “scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded men who fell into their hands.” The patriots did no such thing, the rumor mill being started by the act of a young boy who brained the one British wounded man who had been left behind with a hatchet as he tried to rise from the ground. The incident was regrettable, but it was certainly not sanctioned by the patriots, and the British reports exaggerated the incident, and attempted to paint the patriots as bloodthirsty savages, which assuredly they were not. Indeed, such a label would be better used to describe the British than the Americans.

 The British Retreat back to Boston

Rather than pursue the British, the minutemen and militia took cover behind a stone wall, near the next hill, awaiting the advance of the British, but they never did not come close enough for the patriots to open fire upon them. Colonel Smith spent the next two hours reforming his troops, a delay of time that would nearly prove fatal to the expedition. For the Americans were receiving reinforcements with the passage of time, and as the minutes ticked away, more and more minutemen and militia to hurrying to the scene from thirty miles around, leaving their plows and axes, and workshops, and heading for Concord.[xxxiii] Indeed, thousands of such men were converging on the roads to Lexington, muskets in their hands. The British finally began their retreat to Boston at around noon. The two hours’ delay was justified, on their part, to permit their troops to rest, for they were exceedingly tired, and Smith was in expectation of reinforcements. Nevertheless, the passage of time brought more and more reinforcements to the American banner. Smith and Pitcairn were about to discover they had stirred up a hornet’s nest, to say the least.

The first mile of the retreat passed with no action on either side, but this was no omen of good fortune, for at Merriam’s Corner on the road to Lexington, another skirmish took place. The patriots who had fought the British at Concord hurried to that location, and encountered a British flanking party, as “those on the side of the road nearer the house passed by.”[xxxiv] The British wheeled and fired a volley, which was aimed too high. The American aim was better, and two men were killed and several wounded.  And thus began the running battle that would become known as the battle of Concord or the retreat from Concord, the American revenge for the one-sided skirmish at Lexington Green. The British column marched on. Near Merriam’s Corner the road narrowed as it passed over a small brook. The surrounding countryside was densely wooded at this point, and from the groves of trees the Americans were thick and numerous, and poured a deadly fire onto the bridge, packed tightly with crossing redcoats.[xxxv] “They were waylaid and a great many killed,” Amos Barrett wrote, “When I got there, a great many lay dead and the road was bloody.”  The British pressed on. “The Americans hurried to get ahead, take cover, and fire again.”[xxxvi] The American ranks were continually swelling as new companies of minutemen and militia hastened to the scene.  “It seemed as if men came down from the clouds,” one British soldier described it. The British ranks, on the other hand, were thinning, as the gunfire of the patriots took its gradual toll. From behind every rock and tree as the British marched, they were sniped at by the patriots. Their gunfire was not particularly accurate (most of the militia and minutemen had not practiced much with the musket due to a shortage of gunpowder), but it did not have to be. What it lacked in accuracy it made up for in volume and in sheer numbers of shooters. Brits went down, dead and wounded. “From houses and barns, from behind walls, rocks and trees came flashes of flame and puffs of smoke, and redcoats dropped, to lie where they fell, the wounded to keep on as best they could, and as long as they could.”[xxxvii] British spirits began to dampen. They had marched from Lexington, full of triumph with martial music blaring, fifers and drummers blaring. Now the fifes and drums were silent, and the British tramped silently along, growing angrier and frustrated at the situation. British witness Lieutenant Barker described it:

They were all lined with people who kept an incessant fire upon us, as we did too upon them, but not with the same advantage, for they were so concealed there was hardly any seeing them: in this way we marched between nine and ten miles, their number increasing from all parts while ours was reducing by deaths, wounds, and fatigue; and we were totally surrounded with such an incessant fire as it was impossible to conceive; our ammunition was likewise near expended.[xxxviii]

Ward describes the growing frustration of the British:

To some of the British, it was a new sort of warfare, not the kind they had drilled for, where men faced each other and shot it out, where a bayonet charge might prove decisive. It was dishonorable, this hiding and shooting at men who could not even see you. It was downright savagery. Their anger was fierce, the more bitter because it had so little vent in reprisal.[xxxix]

Smith and Pitcairn did what they could. While the grenadiers kept to the road, the light infantry formed flanking parties and strove to dislodge the Americans from their cover and rid the tree groves, stone walls, and buildings of the farmers that sniped from behind them. “Our flankers were more numerous and further from the main body,” British officer, Ensign DeBerniere reported. Ward records:

The flanking parties, well back from the road, were sometimes forgotten by the too eager Americans, who were between them and the main column. Many were shot in the back as they were drawing trigger from behind a wall or tree. The flankers took a heavy toll of their adversaries.[xl]

But “heavy toll” though the flanking parties took, it was not nearly enough to save the British column, in which disorder prevailed, and was fast becoming a mob. Soldiers left ranks to for the purpose of “ransacking roadside houses and taverns for meat and drink.”[xli] The light infantry began to grow exhausted from their flanking efforts, and even the grenadiers, the cream of the crop of the British army, began to waver under the mounting toll of casualties and the psychological strain of this sort of fighting.  Clarke reports that they “having lost numbers in killed, wounded, and prisoners that fell into our hands, they began to be, not only fatigued, but greatly disheartened.” The fire was relentless, and heavy in volume, and despite the best efforts of the tired light infantry, the woods, and houses, and fences still teemed with enemy musketeers, mad as hornets, and as futile to repel.

“When one minuteman company had used its ammunition, another company appeared just down the road. The way to Lexington was a six mile gantlet, with a hail of bullets scoring the regulars on both aides…Each wall and shrub and tree seemed to spit fire. Scarlet coated bodies sprawled in the dust.”[xlii] Ensign DeBerniere reported that “all the hills on each side of us were covered with rebels – there could not be less than 5,000; so that they kept the road always lined and a very hot fire on us without intermission.” This British officer had seriously overestimated the numbers of patriots. The numbers of minutemen and militia were closer to 2,000 in number.    Discipline in the British ranks broke down as they neared Lexington. Morale was low. Unable to fight back effectively, and greatly outnumbered, it was obvious that Smith and Pitcairn would soon to be forced to surrender their forces or be cut to pieces. Indeed, both Smith and Pitcairn who wounded by that time. Smith was hit in the leg by a musket ball. Pitcairn’s horse threw him, and dashed into the American ranks, taking with it two of Pitcairn’s pistols. Pitcairn escaped capture, but his arm was injured. And they were not the only ones. DeBeniere reports that “a number of officers were also wounded.” “Our ammunition began to fail, and the light companies were so fatigued with flanking they were scarce able to act, and a great number of wounded scarce able to get forward, made a great confusion,” DeBerniere reported. The troops began to run, not march, there was “little order,” reported DeBerniere. Finally, they reached Lexington. Smith now halted his men and attempted to reform his disorganized ranks, posting a rear guard to hold back the Americans. But the attempt was unsuccessful. The officers attempted to stop the men and form them two deep, but “the confusion increased rather than lessened.” Not until the officers got to the front and presenting bayonets, informed the men that if they advanced, they would die, did they “form under a heavy fire.” The British rearguard failed to protect the British, for it “was driven in, and the rout continued.” Destruction of Smith and Pitcairn’s force would have happened then and there, if salvation had not come to the exhausted and demoralized British in the nick of time, at that very crucial moment.

The savior of the British that afternoon was General Earl Hugh Percy, a thirty-two-year-old “alert, highly professional soldier.”[xliii] As we have seen, Smith had dispatched to General Gage a request for reinforcements upon marching to Lexington, as he realized that the whole country was stirring at his approach. General Gage reacted promptly by ordering the 1rst Brigade, which comprised eight companies from three regiments, and two detachments of Royal Marines, along with two 6-pound fieldpieces. In all, the relief force numbered about 1,000 men, and was under the command of General Percy. The relief force was late in getting to Pitcairn and Smith’s aid, however. Due to a series of errors, the relief force did not start out toward Lexington until 9 am, rather than 5 am, as it should have. This delay of four hours very nearly proved fatal to Pitcairn and Smith’s expedition. Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie of the Welsh Fusiliers, part of the relief force recorded that it marched out of Boston “by the neck, and…through Roxbury, Cambridge and Menotomy, towards Lexington.” It was observed that the houses appeared to be shut up, and “few or no people were to be seen.” Nearing Lexington, at about 2:00 pm, some “straggling shots” were heard about a mile in Percy’s front, and throughout the next half hour the fire increased. At half past 2:00 pm, Percy had neared the church at Lexington, and the “firing was plainer and more frequent.” Percy now took “in the situation in one quick, careful, glance…”[xliv] He wasted no time in making his dispositions. Percy deployed his soldiers in a large square formation across the road, the sides of the square extending up the hills that lay parallel to it. Within this well-chosen site, guarded by sharpshooters, and by fieldpieces, Smith’s soldiers could find safety.”[xlv]

“The grenadiers and light infantry perceived the 1rst Brigade drawn up for their support…they shouted repeatedly, and the firing ceased for a short time.” The weary soldiers of Smith’s command were indeed glad to Percy’s relief force. “We had been flattered ever since the morning,” Barker wrote, “with expectations of the brigade coming out, but at this time had given up all hopes of it.” Now, with their lost hopes suddenly coming true, the weary British used their last dregs of strength to stagger into the protection of Percy’s square where they collapsed in their exhaustion. They “were so much exhausted with fatigue, that they were obliged to lie down for rest upon the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like those of dogs after a chase.”[xlvi] Firing ceased for a short time. Jonas Clarke recorded that the British enjoyed a” seasonable respite.” Mackenzie reported that:

We could observe a considerable number of the rebels, but they were much scattered, and not above 50 of them to be seen in a body in any place. Many lay concealed behind the stone walls and fences. They appeared most numerous on the road near the church, and in a wood in the front, and on the left flank of the line where our regiment was posted. A few cannon shot were fired at those on, and near the road, and dispersed them.[xlvii]

One ball went through the church, and the cannon fire was sufficient to induce the minutemen and militia to back off, for they had a healthy respect for British artillery. Percy was aware that the return march back to Boston would be exceedingly hazardous to the British. Some of the British pursued, but then stopped by the swamp, entered the village and looted some houses, burning a cluster of farm buildings.[xlviii] It was a harbinger of worse crimes against a property to come. Convinced that he would have to face no frontal attacks, for his force was too strong to permit the Americans to launch attacks of that kind, he felt reassured as to that danger. He waited for a half hour, to give the exhausted men of Smith’s command time to rest and to also to eat rations, furnished for them from the troops of his own command. It was not until 3:45 pm, that he resumed the march, placing Smith’s troops in the van, the most protected place in the formation. Before this, however, fighting had resumed. The patriots grew impatient waiting for Smith’s men to finish eating and resting. The flank companies had already been fired upon “by the rebels most advanced,” wrote Mackenzie. “A brisk fire was returned, but without much effect.” The British were already being seriously harassed during this time. Ward writes that:

All this while, the Americans were dodging here and there, creeping around the enemy’s flanks, appearing and disappearing as they took cover behind trees, walls, and houses, sniping or firing small volleys and inflicting much injury upon the massed British troops.[xlix]

“During this time,” Mackenzie wrote, “the rebels endeavored to gain our flanks, and crept into the covered ground on either side, and as close as they could in front, firing now and then in perfect security. We advanced a few of our best marksmen who fired at those who showed themselves.” For a time after the British resumed the march, the Americans hung back, being sufficiently intimidated by the large numbers of the enemy, and the strong units posted on the British flanks. The march proceeded slowly and afforded the British ample opportunity to loot roadside houses. For his part, Percy made no move to stop his soldiers, for “he evidently wished to terrorize the countryside.”[l] But the respite for the British was only temporary. The patriots were growing bolder and more aggressive, for they were receiving reinforcements too. Mackenzie reported:

“As the country for many miles round Boston and in the neighborhood of Lexington and Concord, had by this time had notice of what was doing, as well as by the firing, as from expresses which had been from Boston and from the adjacent places in all directions, numbers of armed men on foot and on horseback, were continually coming from all parts guided by the fire, and before the column had advanced a mile on the road, we were fired at from all quarters, but particularly from the houses on the roadside, and the adjacent stone walls. Several of the troops were killed and wounded in this way…”

Percy turned his 6-pounders against the patriots pressing his rear guard, and succeeded in dispersing them, but only temporarily. Those patriots who got too close to the British rear, or too close on the flanks were taken care of by the flanking parties. Percy ordered captured minutemen and militia to be shot, and the houses in which they fired from or sought shelter to be burned. His men hardly needed encouragement. Enraged at the losses they were taking from an unseen enemy, they “forced open many of the houses from which the fire proceeded and put to death all those found in them.” And Barker recorded, “We were obliged to force almost every house on the road, for the rebels had taken possession of them, and galled us exceedingly. “All that were in the houses were put to death.” And several houses were put to the torch. “Out of these homes,” DeBernice wrote: “they kept up a very heavy fire, but our troops broke into them, and killed vast numbers; the soldiers showed great bravery in this place, forcing houses from whence came a heavy fire, and killing great numbers of the rebels.” It wasn’t quite as many as DeBernice supposed. At Menotomy, through which the British marched, only some forty men on each side were killed, in close, often hand to hand, combat.[li] In one of these houses, they found a dozen minutemen, too few to stand against the British, who had retreated there. The redcoats bayoneted all of them and plundered the house. Percy attempted to systematically torch every house in Menotomy, but the patriots pressed so closely upon his rear, that he had time only to start the fires, and not to fan them into conflagrations, for the patriots as soon as he had moved off, would extinguish the blazes.[lii] As the British reached Cambridge, the numbers of patriots and the rate of their fire increased. “Although they did not show themselves openly in a body in any part, except on the road in our rear, our men threw away their fire very inconsiderately, and without being certain of its effect; this emboldened them and induced them to draw nearer.” Indeed, the patriots were discovering that the British fire was not very accurate, and thus encouraged, they drew closer. However, Percy again used his cannons to cause them to pull back.

This mile and a quarter in Cambridge proved to be one of continual battle, also. The Americans were ever on the alert, and growing more and more active as they realized more and more the real meaning of the invasion. The sight of many of the British soldiers loaded down with plunder; the curling smoke and flames from American dwellings; the dying and the dead, some of them horribly mutilated, scattered all along the highway, were at last inspiring an intense feeling of hatred, and a longing for a satisfying vengeance. Percy’s army experienced practically the same sensations. Trained as soldiers to the usages of open warfare, they deemed the frontier method of fighting as unfair and cowardly. They held in contempt the man who should remain concealed in safety and shoot down one who was compelled to remain in the open. Undoubtedly, too, the memory of a comrade, lying at the North Bridge with that ugly hatchet death-wound in the head, aroused the most savage instincts, that seemed to cry for brutal retaliation.[liii]

At 7:00 pm, the British turned toward Boston by way of Charlestown, a shorter route that afforded better protection from the Americans.

During the whole of the march from Lexington, the rebels kept up an incessant regular fire from all points at the column, which was the more galling as our flank parties, which at first were placed at sufficient distances to cover the march of it, were at last, from the different obstructions they occasionally met with, obliged to keep close to it. Our men had very few opportunities of getting good shots at the Rebels, as they hardly ever fired, but from cover of a stone wall, from behind a tree, or out of a house, and the moment the had fired, the lay down out of sight until they had loaded again, or the column had passed. In the road indeed in our rear, they were most numerous and came on pretty close, frequently calling out, “King Hancock, forever.”[liv]

The patriots were pressing very closely upon the column as much as they were able. Percy recorded that “many of them concealed themselves in houses and advanced to within 10 yards to fire at me and other officers, though they were morally certain of being put to death themselves in an instant.”[lv] To deal with these men, Percy’s flankers had to root them out of the houses in which they had taken refuge. He did not burn the houses, although his men did loot them, for he was anxious to get back to Boston as quickly as possible. But if only a few houses were set on fire, the British trashed and damaged nearly every one of them they passed and looted most all of them. Reverend William Gordon of Roxbury reported:

Many houses were plundered of everything valuable that could be taken away, and what could not be carried off was destroyed; looking glasses, pots, pans, etc., were broke all to pieces; doors when not fastened, sashes and windows wantonly damaged and destroyed.

Mackenzie wrote:

Many houses were plundered by the soldiers, notwithstanding the efforts of the officers to prevent it. I have no doubt this inflamed the rebels and made many of them follow us farther than they otherwise would have done. By all accounts some soldiers who stayed too long in the houses, were killed in the very act of plundering by those who lay concealed in them.[lvi]

Barker, on the other hand, did not absolve at least some of the officers from the depredations of the soldiers. He wrote of the soldiers:

Though they showed no want of courage, yet they were so wild and irregular, that there was no keeping ‘em in order…the plundering was shameful; many hardly thought of anything else; what was worse they were encouraged by some officers.”

But plundering and destruction of property were not the only atrocities the British committed. At Charlestown, they also committed a murder. Coburn explains:

At Charlestown Common, on the corner of the road to the Penny Ferry which crossed the mystic River to Everett, stood the home of William Barber, sea captain. His family consisted of his wife, Anne Hay, and their thirteen children. One of them, Edward, fourteen years old, sat at the window, looking out upon the brilliant pageant of marching soldiers in the road. Many of the soldiers must have seen him for he was not in hiding. One did, at all events, and with that thirst for killing someone, even though but a boy, shot him and saw him fall back into the room dead. Thus, Edward Barber, became Charlestown’s martyr of April 19^th.[lvii]

And this was not the only murder committed by the British that day. Back at Menotomy, they had murdered two unarmed men.[lviii]  In summary, Jonas Clarke records:

In the retreat of the king’s troops from Concord to Lexington, they ravaged and plundered as they had opportunity, more or less, in most of the houses that were upon the road. But after they were joined by Percy’s brigade in Lexington, it seemed as if all the little remains of humanity had left them; and rage and revenge had taken the reins, and knew no bounds!  — Clothing, furniture, provisions, goods, plundered, broken, carried off, or destroyed! – Buildings (especially dwelling houses) abused, defaced, battered, shattered, and almost ruined! – And as if this had not been enough, numbers of them doomed to the flames! – Three dwelling houses, two shops and a barn were laid to ashes in Lexington! – Many others were set on fire, in this town, in Cambridge, &c. and must have shared the same fate, had the close pursuit of the provincials not prevented, and the flames been seasonably quenched! – Add to all this; the unarmed, the aged and infirm, who were unable to flee, are inhumanely stabbed and murdered in their habitations! – Yea, even women in child-bed, with their helpless babes in their arms, do not escape the horrible alternative, of being even cruelly murdered in their beds, burnt in their habitations, or turned into their streets to perish with cold, nakedness and distress! – But I forbear – words are too insignificant to express, the horrid barbarities of that distressing day!

 

Aftermath

As dusk was falling, the exhausted British troops finally crossed the neck into Boston. Percy set up a defensive line across the neck. The patriots had no desire to mount a frontal attack, and so decided to call it a day. And so, the expedition ended, “ill planned and ill executed,” Barker would report of it. British losses totaled 73 killed, and over 200 wounded and missing, while the loss to the minutemen and militia was 49 men killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing. For the patriots the news was electrifying. “The most shocking New England ever beheld,” John Adams would describe the event. The first shot fired at Lexington had indeed been heard around the world, and it would never be the same again. The American War for Independence had begun, and a great struggle for liberty against tyranny was in the making. Thus far, the struggle against tyranny had been waged with pen and with voice, and by petty violence, smuggling, and the like. But now, that a gun grab had been stopped, by force of arms, the point of no return had been crossed. Though the colonists still considered themselves Englishmen, King George III considered them rebels, and he wasn’t about to listen to their grievances. And so the path inexorably led to independence and to the founding of the greatest and freest nation the world has ever seen. And in this battle, the American minutemen and militia held their own and performed well against the best disciplined troops of the King of England. This lesson was not lost on the Americans, for they, unsatisfied with merely chasing the British back to Boston, began surrounding Boston, which they cut off and besieged. Although the shortcomings of militia and minutemen would show themselves in later engagements, and a Continental army would have to be formed to take the field against the British, the battle nevertheless proved the truth of that phrase “a well-regulated militia, being necessary to a free state…” May Americans yet again heed that message!

Endnotes

[i] Rupert Furneaux, The Pictorial History of the American Revolution As Told By Eyewitnesses and Participants (Chicago, Illinois: J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company, 1973) p. 21

[ii] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:32

[iii] Charles Stedman, The History of the Origin, Progress and Termination of the American War (London, England: J. Murray, J. Debrett, Piccadilly, and J. Kerby, 1794) I: 119

[iv] Allen French The Day of Lexington and Concord (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925) p. 66

[v] Ibid p. 67

[vi] Francis Russell Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill (New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Company., Inc. 1963) p. 12

[vii] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:34

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Ibid p. 36

[x] Ibid p. 36

[xi] Rupert Furneaux, The Pictorial History of the American Revolution As Told By Eyewitnesses and Participants (Chicago, Illinois: J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company, 1973) p. 27

[xii] Allen French The Day of Lexington and Concord (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925) p. 101

[xiii] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:36

[xiv] Ibid

[xv] Allen French The Day of Lexington and Concord (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925) p. 104

[xvi] Ibid p. 104

[xvii]  Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:37

[xviii]Allen French The Day of Lexington and Concord (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925) p.  105

[xix] Ibid p. 107

[xx] Quoted in Furneaux p. 29

[xxi] Allen French The Day of Lexington and Concord (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1925) p.  111

[xxii] Ibid p. 110

[xxiii] Quoted in Ibid

[xxiv] If a warning shot or an accidental discharge, and not an act of malice, it is possible that Pitcairn could have fired it, though unlikely.

[xxv] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:40

[xxvi] Francis Russell Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill (New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Company., Inc. 1963) p. 22

[xxvii] Ibid

[xxviii] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:41

 

[xxix] Ibid p. 40

[xxx] Ibid p. 43

[xxxi] Frank Warren Coburn The Battle of April 19^th, 1775 In Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts (Lexington, Massachusetts: Frank Warren Coburn, 1912) p. 80

[xxxii] Ibid

[xxxiii] Francis Russell Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill (New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Company., Inc. 1963) p. 28

[xxxiv] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:45

[xxxv] Ibid

[xxxvi] Ibid

[xxxvii] Ibid

[xxxviii] Rupert Furneaux, The Pictorial History of the American Revolution As Told By Eyewitnesses and Participants (Chicago, Illinois: J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company, 1973) p. 38

[xxxix] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:45

[xl] Ibid

[xli] Ibid

[xlii] Francis Russell Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill (New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Company., Inc. 1963) p. 30

[xliii] Ibid p. 32

[xliv] Ibid

[xlv] Ibid

[xlvi] Charles Stedman, The History of the Origin, Progress and Termination of the American War (London, England: J. Murray, J. Debrett, Piccadilly, and J. Kerby, 1794) I: 118

[xlvii] Allen French (ed.) A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, January 5—April 30^th, 1775, with a letter describing his voyage to America. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926) p. 55

[xlviii] Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:48

[xlix] Ibid p. 48

[l] Ibid

[li] Coburn relates the death of one gallant old American:

One of the most unequal duels of any war was fought near here, between the venerable Samuel Whittemore, aged eighty years, and a number of British soldiers, acting as a flanking party, on the easterly side of the road.

Whittemore lived with a son and grandchildren near Menotomy River, and had been aroused early in the morning by the passing of Smith’s forces on their way to Concord. Mrs. Whittemore then commenced her preparations for flight, to another son’s house, near Mystic River, towards Medford. She supposed that her husband intended to accompany her, but was surprised to find him engaged in the warlike occupation of oiling his musket and pistols, and sharpening his sword. In his younger days he had been an officer in the militia. She urged him to accompany her and the children. He refused, with the excuse that he was going “up town” as he expressed it. He did so, arriving there before the British had returned. When they reached the neighborhood of the present railroad crossing they halted, some of them opposite Mystic Street. Whittemore had posted himself behind a stone wall, down Mystic Street about four hundred and fifty feet, near the corner of the present Chestnut Street. [142] The distance seemed an easy range for him, and he opened fire killing the soldier he aimed at. They must have discovered his hiding-place from the smoke-puff, and hastened to close in on him. With one pistol he killed the second Briton, and with his other fatally wounded a third one. In the meantime the ever vigilant flank-guard were attracted to the contest, and a ball from one of their muskets struck his head and rendered him unconscious. They rushed to the spot, and clubbed him with their muskets and pierced him with their bayonets until they felt sure that he was dead. Soon after they left him, he was found by the Americans, and as he seemed to still live they bore him to the Cooper Tavern. Dr. Tufts of Medford was summoned, but declared it useless to dress so many wounds as the aged man could not possibly survive. However, he was persuaded to try, and Whittemore lived eighteen more years, dying in 1793, at the age of ninety-eight. When he was recovering, his wife could not forbear asking him if he did not regret he had not remained with the rest of the family from the first. But the old hero, still suffering from his many wounds, replied: “No! I would run the same chance again.” (Frank Warren Coburn The Battle of April 19^th, 1775 In Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts ([Lexington, Massachusetts: Frank Warren Coburn, 1912] p. 141

 

 

[lii] Frank Warren Coburn The Battle of April 19^th, 1775 In Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts (Lexington, Massachusetts: Frank Warren Coburn, 1912) p. 145 One of the houses set on fire was that of Deacon Joseph Adams, who had fled at the insistence of his wife, who wrote: Attempts were made to start more fires. One of the homes chosen was that of Deacon Joseph Adams. He had just fled, at his wife’s agonized insistence. She relates:

 

Divers of the King’s troops entered our house by bursting open the door, and three of the soldiers broke into the room in which I was confined to my bed, being scarcely able to walk from the bed to the fire, not having been to my chamber door from being delivered in child-bed to that time. One of the soldiers immediately opened my curtain with his bayonet fixed, pointing the same at my breast.I immediately cried out, “For the Lord’s sake, do not kill me!”He replied, “Damn you!” One that stood near said, “We will not hurt the woman, if she will go out of the house, but we will surely burn it.” I immediately arose, threw a blanket over me, and crawled into a corn-house near the door, with my infant in my arms. … They immediately set the house on fire, in which I had left five children [in hiding places] ; but the fire was happily extinguished. …

 

[liii] Ibid p. 147

[liv] Allen French (ed.) A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, January 5—April 30^th, 1775, with a letter describing his voyage to America. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926) p. 57

[lv] Quoted in Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution: (New York, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952) I:50

[lvi] Allen French (ed.) A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, January 5—April 30^th, 1775, with a letter describing his voyage to America. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926) p. 58

[lvii] Frank Warren Coburn The Battle of April 19^th, 1775 In Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts (Lexington, Massachusetts: Frank Warren Coburn, 1912) p. 154

[lviii] Four hundred feet farther along, at the corner of the Medford road, now Medford Street, stood the Cooper Tavern, Benjamin Cooper, landlord. He and his wife, Rachel, were mixing flip at the bar. Two of their guests, and possibly those two were all at the time, were Jason Winship, about forty-five years old, and his brother-in-law, Jabez Wyman,  in his fortieth year. Evidently they were non-combatants, and as such expected to remain unmolested. But the soldiers were lashed to a fury by the reception they had met along the road, particularly that of the last half mile. So many houses along back had concealed minute-men, that about all were freely riddled with bullets, then ransacked, and then set on fire. Cooper Tavern was not considered by them as a privileged exception. More than a hundred bullets were fired into it through the doors and windows. Then the soldiers entered for their finishing strokes. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper escaped to the cellar, but Wyman and Winship, both unarmed, were stabbed in many places, their heads mauled until their skulls were broken, and brains scattered about on the floor and walls. (Frank Warren Coburn The Battle of April 19^th, 1775 In Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts ([Lexington, Massachusetts: Frank Warren Coburn, 1912] pp. 142-143)