April 19, 1775: The Battles of Lexington and Concord

Paul Revere

This coming Monday, April 21, the 6 New England States -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine -- will celebrate Patriot's Day, the 3rd Monday in April, a holiday in commemoration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the War of the American Revolution, on April 19, 1775.

The day is celebrated in Boston with the annual Boston Marathon. In order to reduce the effect on traffic -- and traffic in Boston is frequently ridiculous -- the Boston Red Sox always schedule an 11:00 AM (well, 11:10) hone game, Major League Baseball's only pre-noon (local time) game all season, so that Fenway Park will let out before the runners get to nearby Boylston Street, a block from Fenway. The Marathon's finish line is one mile east of the ballpark, across from the Central Library. 

The American Revolution is now 250 years old. A pity that we won't have a President who believes in democracy during the proceedings.

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In 1860, with the Civil War inevitable, Boston-area poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking for an American hero that could only be claimed by the North, not the South. That let out such luminaries as Virginians, and slaveholders, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry.

Massachusetts' John Adams, by his own admission, was "obnoxious." And Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin, well, let's just say he wasn't well-lined-up with Victorian morals, which America then shared with Britain. Same with Massachusetts' Samuel Adams (the Boston Tea Party was basically a bunch of drunks pulling a prank) and New York's Alexander Hamilton (who was more affiliated with the post-Revolution, Constitution-establishing era, anyway).

Longfellow found another Massachusetts hero: Paul Revere. Born in 1735 in Boston, he was a metalsmith, and an artist: His woodcut of the Boston Massacre, of March 5, 1770, helped spark the Revolution. Longfellow began his poem:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

It had been 85 years -- the distance between . Such a man would have been at least 90 years old to have any clear memory of it. Longfellow went on:

He said to his friend, -- "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light, --
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Old North Church, with Revere's statue in front

As Joe Biden, not old enough to remember 1775 (though some have suggested otherwise), might say, "Longfellow, God love 'im, his heart was in the right place, but that poem is full of malarkey."

Robert Newman, the Sexton of the Old North Church, and John Pulling, a vestryman, hung the two lanterns in the steeple, just for a minute, just long enough for Revere to see, across the Charles River in Cambridge. But there was another man with Revere, Massachusetts militia officer William Dawes. Ever since, the joke has been that Longfellow used Revere's name, rather than Dawes', because it was easier to rhyme.

William Dawes

The image we have been given is of Revere riding through the night, yelling, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" And the poem does use the word "British." The Declaration of Independence was more than a year away, and no such declaration was even being considered. Revere, and every other "Patriot," still considered himself British. Part of the problem is that the Patriots thought that, back in London, Parliament had betrayed British values in oppressing their colonies in the Americas. And, certainly, Revere wouldn't have been yelling anything: It would have attracted too much attention.

Most of all, they wanted to reach John Hancock and Samuel Adams, Massachusetts' 2 biggest leaders of the Patriot cause, to get them to safety. So what did they actually say? "The regulars are out!" Regulars, as in "the regular army," not conscripts. These were professional soldiers, well-trained men who meant business, and were thus a threat to Hancock, Adams, and anybody else they could get their hands on.

Revere and Dawes got to Lexington, where Hancock and Adams were. They picked up a 3rd rider, Samuel Prescott, and the 3 of them rode to Concord. Between them, the 3 men knocked on the doors of 40 Patriots.

The poem doesn't mention that the riders got caught. A British patrol intercepted them in Lincoln. Prescott and Dawes got away, but Revere didn't. But he was lucky: They questioned him, and let him go. I guess they didn't know who, or what, they had. 

But the "Midnight Ride" got the "Minutemen" (said to be ready to fight at a minute's notice) ready for when the British attacked the next morning.

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April 19, 1775, 250 years ago today: 

Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith led 700 regulars, under orders to capture and destroy Colonial military supplies, believed to be stored by the Massachusetts Militia at Concord. 

About 80 militiamen stood on the Lexington Green, 11 miles northwest of downtown Boston. Their commander was Captain John Parker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, already stricken with tuberculosis.

Lexington Green

Parker told them, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." The line, "Don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes," in order to conserve ammunition, is said to have originated 2 months later, at Bunker Hill, and that is also in dispute.

It was just after sunrise, around 6:00 AM. Both commanders told their men to hold their fire. Someone disobeyed, and fired what Ralph Waldo Emerson, in another poem based on the events, called "The Shot Heard 'Round the World." (That title would later be used to describe the Bobby Thomson home run of 1951.) Both sides generally agreed that the initial shot did not come from the men on the ground immediately facing each other. It may have been a Colonial from behind a hedge, or a Colonial from inside a tavern, or a mounted British officer; but no one has ever determined on which side the initial shooter was.

No British men were killed, and 8 Colonials were, before they dispersed. The idea of the Colonial men at Lexington was to stall the regulars, to buy time for the main force at Concord, 19 miles northwest of downtown Boston.

At North Bridge in Concord, it was the Colonials who had the advantage, 400 to 100. At about 11:00 AM, fire opened, and the British had to fall back, and head back toward Boston. They lost 73 men, while the Colonials lost 41.

North Bridge

A small force of barely-trained, barely-equipped men had knocked back the best army in the world -- at the least, the 2nd-best army, behind that of France. The War of the American Revolution was on.

John Parker fell victim to tuberculosis, and died on September 19, 1775. In 1900, a statue was erected at Lexington Green, sculpted by Henry Hudson Kitson, and known as The Lexington Minuteman. It has appeared on postage stamps, and on the back of Massachusetts' entry in the federal government's "State Quarters" series. It was not based on Parker's appearance, as no known likenesses of him survive today, and the figure is of a younger, healthy man, which Parker at that point was not. Nevertheless, it is said to depict Parker.

Francis Smith fought in several other battles in the war, rose to the rank of Major General, and lived util 1791.

History lost track of Samuel Prescott after the Midnight Ride. The best-known story says that he became a doctor in the Continental Army, was captured by the British, and died a prisoner of war in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1777.

John Hancock became the President of the Continental Congress, including when the Declaration of Independence was approved. He was the only man who actually signed it on July 4, 1776 -- the rest of the Signers signed it later, most on August 2 -- and signed it so large that "John Hancock" has become slang for "signature" ever since. But the story that he signed it so large that, "George III can read that without his spectacles, and double the price on my head" is apocryphal.

When the Constitution of Massachusetts (written by John Adams) was approved in 1780, Hancock served as the 1st Governor. He served until 1785, returned to the post in 1787, and still held it when he died in 1793.

He was succeeded by Samuel Adams, John's cousin, who, like John, had also signed the Declaration. He served until 1797, and lived until 1803.

William Dawes never held public office, and lived until 1799. Paul Revere never served in public office, either, and lived on until 1818, making him one of the last surviving heroes of the American Revolution.