Anniversaries

Battle of Lexington, portrayed by William Wollen (1910)

As I type this, 250 years ago, Paul Revere was starting his famed ride to alert the Minutemen of the Massachusetts Colony to the pending incursion by the perfidious Redcoats of the British Army on their long-anticipated mission to seize arms and ammunition of the Colonial militia. These Regular Army forces were the direct embodiment of the supreme, executive authority of the Sovereign of Great Britain himself- King George the Third- and they were not stationed in Massachusetts for the purpose of protection of the colony, but for the enforcement of royal law and order. The colonial militia was the embodiment of rebel Colonial thought; comprised of the men of the Massachusetts colony, it was responsible for the security of the colony from marauding Natives, pirates, and those who would threaten the social order of the colony.

We know the story, or at least its popular aspects Revere (and others) rode hard, alerting colonists to the advancing British, but was captured (and later released). He’s hardly the important one in this tale, though. He is just one part of the story.

At Lexington, the local militia stood their ground. Eighty-odd men, farmers and storekeepers and hunters and craftsmen, with personally-owned weapons, formed up in battle formation against the their countrymen serving in the most potent land force on the North American continent.

No one knows who fired the first shot. Given the discipline of the British grenadiers, it was likely a nervous American, whether in formation or not. That shot was probably a .75 caliber musket ball, some carefully-husbanded black powder, and a bit of linen wadding. Innocuous ingredients, but baked in the ideals of freedom, liberty and the right to self-determination, they constituted treason. We don’t know what it hit, although one Redcoat was wounded in the exchange. Eight Americans died in the British reply, and then the militia broke and quit the field, leaving the Redcoats to advance to Concord and search for weapons. 100 of them tried to cross the North Bridge, where they were met by approximately 400 Minutemen. The ensuring battle was sharp and savage. Three British soldiers (James Hall, Thomas Smith and Patrick Gray) who died at the bridge were not recovered, they remain buried at Concord (two at the bridge, one at in the town center). Their colleagues fell back under fire, retreating down the country lane flanked by stone walls and woods. Eighteen miles of retreat, punctuated by the crack of musket fire, the cries of the wounded and the sounds of thousands of boots marching. Minutemen fired from behind trees, from positions in defilade, and sometimes by standing in broad daylight, blazing away with pistols and swirling cold steel. By sunset, 73 Britons were dead, 154 were wounded, and 53 were missing, the Redcoats were back in the “safety” of Charlestown and their garrison, and the Minutemen had surrounded the city. 49 Minutemen were dead, 39 wounded, and an army had assembled essentially overnight. The Revolutionary War had begun.

Today, we look back at the American Revolution as an inevitability. British excesses, an intemperate, uncaring and dismissive government, and the perception of economic calamity in spite of boundless opportunities prompted Patriots to pledge their lives, freedom and honor to the cause of building a nation. A nation that they knew and acknowledged would be imperfect, but that they committed to creating and improving, with the words of their comrades in Philadelphia a year later as their guide– “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In these chaotic times, with a federal government that seems to be defined by the terms “arbitrary and capricious”, I think it is worth noting the spirit of the American revolutionaries: “One if by land, two if by D.C.”

It is an open question as to whether