John Blackshoe Sends: Serendipity History - Some context for the historic events of 250 years ago at Lexington & Concord.

Our great country has a lot of historic sites. Visiting those locations adds immeasurably to appreciation of where we are and how we got here.  Sarge’s recent visit to Gettysburg confirms that, but there are many places and their stories are often deeper than most people realize. Every American should visit those sites, preferably after studying the events or at least with an excellent tour guide who can explain the events. Feel free to recommend your favorite sites in the comments.

Concord’s North Bridge. Minute Man monument on far side. Provincial military supplies were stored a few hundred yards further right.  British casualties fell near where the photo was taken.

Author photo

The opening shots of the American Revolution were exchanged on 19 April 1775, first around sunrise on the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts and a few hours later at Concord’s North Bridge over the Concord River.  This is celebrated as “Patriot’s Day” in Massachusetts. But, there is a lot more history there than just the April 19th “shot heard around the world.”

Most Americans know the basics. British forces, which had been making practice marches out of Boston into the countryside, set off to seize military supplies the colonists had been accumulating in case they might be needed by the Militia to resist Royal forces.  A composite force of about 700 infantry and grenadiers was gathered from several different regiments, many freshly arrived and very few with any combat experience in their careers.  They used small boats to cross from the Boston peninsula to march toward Lexington & Concord. 

Their plans became known to the Patriots, and Paul Revere, James Dawes and others saw the signal lanterns in the Old North Church.  After 1860, Henry Longfellow’s poem popularized “Listen, my children, and you shall hear. Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” But Revere was only one of several riders who rode out into the countryside to spread the alarm to Minute Men companies.  These were select portions of the regular militia, mostly younger and energetic and expected to march instantly upon an alarm, while the regular militia would follow hours or days later.  Minute Men were a key part of Massachusetts militia back to nearly the earliest colonial times, not (as I had erroneously believed) something started in the early 1770s.

Minute Men assembled during the night and briefly confronted the Brits as they reached the town green in Lexington.  No one knows who fired the first shot, but there was an exchange of fire, leaving 8 colonists dead and 9 wounded.  Some Brits continued on to Concord where cannons, artillery carriages, flour, tents, gun powder and ammunition had been hidden.  Before the Brits arrived, locals moved most of the supplies, and destroyed some supplies which could not be hidden or moved in time.

Arriving at Concord’s North Bridge, about 100 Regulars guarded the south end of the bridge, with a small party continuing a few hundred yards past the bridge, to James Barrett’s farm, location of many of the supplies.  As the Brits worked destroyed supplies, nearly 400 Minute Men and Militia gathered nearby.  Here, three shots were fired by the panicking Regulars amidst contradictory orders from different officers.  Militia Major John Buttrick ordered “Fire, for God’s sake, Fire!” and the shots were heard around the world.  Two Americans were killed and four wounded, while three Brits were killed and nine wounded.  Barely regaining control the Brits retired expeditiously back through Concord towards Boston.

The “Old Manse” adjacent to the North Bridge, from which Rev. William Emerson and his family observed the events of April 19th, 1775. Initial grave site of the three British dead in foreground.

Author photo

By that time several thousand militia men from outlying areas were arriving along the path of the British retreat, and commenced a general harassment from the stone walls and wood lots along the route, adding to British losses.  Despite reinforcements from Boston, the Brits barely maintained discipline during the retreat under fire.  Arriving back in Boston this began the “Siege of Boston.” 

About 8 weeks after Lexington and Concord, the Brits tried another expedition from Boston, with a formidable force against newly constructed militia entrenchments on Breed’s/Bunker Hill on June 17th.  

Of the 3,000+ British engaged, 226 were killed and 828 wounded.  The roughly 2,400 patriots from all over New England engaged suffered 115 killed and 305 wounded. This was a pyrrhic victory for the Brits as the colonists held their ground against two charges by well trained professional army until they ran out of ammunition during the third attack and were forced to abandon their positions. The Brits soon returned to Boston, and Militia forces kept the Brits in place, bolstered by Henry Knox’s bold trip to Ft. Ticonderoga provided artillery to strengthen Colonial forces. 

Battle of Bunker Hill by Don Troiani, America’s premier military artist.
Source

Eleven months after Lexington and Concord, the Brits recognized the inability to hold Boston while besieged on all sides, and left for New York.  “Evacuation Day” on March 17, 1776, has been a state holiday in Massachusetts ever since. 

Rev. William Emerson’s “Manse” or “parsonage” was adjacent to the North Bridge, and he was more than just a bystander.  In mid March, he had given a fiery speech to Concord militia men:

"Arise! my injured countrymen! and plead even with the sword, the firelock and the bayonet, plead with your arms the birthright of Englishmen, the dearly-purchased legacy left you by your never-to-be-forgotten Ancestors..." (Source)

He had been Chaplain to the insurgent Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and became a chaplain in the Continental Army, dying from dysentery at age 33, on October 20, 1775 while on his way home from Fort Ticonderoga.  His widow remarried shortly afterwards to another minister, who then lived in the Manse.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was grandson of Rev. William Emerson, and both had entered Harvard at age 14 and graduated when 18 years old.  Kids were smarter then, I guess. In 1834 Ralph moved to the Manse to assist his ailing step-grandfather, mere yards from the bridge site, although the bridge had been washed away.  Ralph was a prominent American writer, poet, lecturer, and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement in the mid-19th century. He was a Unitarian minister who left the ministry to pursue writing and public speaking becoming quite wealthy in the process. So, around 1842 he purchased a fancy house in downtown Concord.

In 1836 residents approved a marble obelisk at the bridge site, bearing the inscription below.

Monument erected at the North Bridge site in 1836.

Author photo.

The dedication ceremony included singing of “The Concord Hymn” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, to the music of a popular tune of that era.

The Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - 1836

In 1842, the Manse was rented to author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived there for three years after his marriage. Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau prepared a garden for the Hawthornes.  Emerson supported Thoreau and encouraged him both in his trips on the Merrimac and Concord Rivers, and Emerson also owned the land containing Walden Pond.  After 1845 moved elsewhere and the Manse reverted to the Emerson-Ripley family until 1939 when it became a historic site, and it is open to visitors today.

Emerson was a poet, but the events of April 19th were personal to him. His family’s farm was adjacent to the famous bridge, where the British made their approach to seize military stores a few hundred yards across the bridge.  His poem was used again on the base of Daniel Chester French’s iconic “Minute Man” statue on the centennial of the April 19, 1775 events.

The Minute Man monument at Concord Bridge, bearing Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.”

British tourist¹ in front, pondering how a bunch of hick farmers could possibly have stood up to the world’s finest army 250 years ago.

Author photo.

Concord residents wanted a grand monument for the 1875 centennial of the events, and began planning several years in advance.  Daniel Chester French was a 21 year old sculptor from Concord and this was his first “big job.”  After a few attempts, his proposed “Minute Man” design was approved, and he prepared the full size model.  Originally intended to be made of marble, Congress approved donation of ten condemned bronze cannons which were then used by the Ames Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts to cast the seven foot tall statue. Ames was a leading manufacturer of all types of metal products for most of the 19th century.

The ceremonial unveiling of the statue featured President Grant and other dignitaries. Local author Louisa May Alcott attended, but was dismayed when denied participation in the parade as women required a male escort. Freedom was not quite universal yet.

The events of April 19th have been oversimplified into “government agents trying to seize private guns.” But, in reality that was merely the proximate cause. American unhappiness with the usurpations of their freedoms went back more than a decade. In 1765, struggling to pay debts from the Seven Years War (French and Indian War to the colonists) the Stamp Act was passed, but repealed after colonial protests.  In 1767 Boston was occupied to stifle unrest and enforce British rule.  In 1770 the “Boston massacre” took place where frightened soldiers opened fire killing five Americans.  (John Adams, later President, was a defense attorney for them.) In 1773, the Boston Tea Party interfered with British revenue collection under the Tea Tax. In 1774 Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, closing the port of Boston and revoking the Massachusetts Charter. The locals set up an opposition government as the Provincial Congress and began stockpiling arms and military supplies.  These set the stage for confrontations on April 19, 1775.

Fighting escalated along the British retreat from Concord back to Boston, with lots of shots fired by both sides.  Many accounts were written at the time, and later, but memories and words are often imperfect or just fantasies.  Over the last few years, historian/archaeologists Joel Bohy and Doug Scott have done extensive research along “Battle Road” heading back to Boston resulting in a just released book, “Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution.”

Source

Mowbray Publishing (located in Little Rhody) blurbs this as “Using forensic techniques straight out of CSI, the authors have located the surviving bullet holes and bullet-struck artifacts from the battle that started the American Revolution. Learn what these violent scars of conflict and patriotism can tell us about what really happened on that fateful day when the redcoats marched on Lexington and Concord. The whole route back to Boston, as the British fled their defeat at North Bridge, was riddled with musket fire. Dramatic scenes unfolded in places like Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, and Arlington that can still be visited today. The fighting turns out to have been much more fierce than had previously been thought, and this colorful new book tells the whole exciting story.”

 

Even better than the book is Joel Bohy’s description of their project and findings, a presentation which was captured on video about two weeks ago.  It will be released to the public on Ian McCollum’s outstanding Forgotten Weapons site on 23 May 2025.  It is a really interesting presentation, and carries the legacy of 250 years into today, and the future.  

“Murica, Yeah!”

Besides visiting the actual historic sites of the Lexington green and North Bridge, I highly recommend stopping at the Concord Museum.  They have quite a few April 19 related artifacts as well as some nice displays related to local history, including Ralph Emerson's library. All well worth seeing.  Ignore the occasional bit of wokeness they sneak into some of the displays. Emerson's fancy house is right across the street. 

And, as long as you are in the area, the fantastic American Heritage Museum, in nearby Hudson, MA, run by the Collings Foundation is truly superb. It is a must see for anyone who appreciates military history, especially tanks, aircraft or vintage cars, and worth several hours to fully appreciate. Sarge visited it five years ago when they first opened, and I suspect they have added a bit since then. Some of the occasional automated theatrical dramatic stuff is not to my liking, but YMMV.

 

¹ Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, England.

Author's Note: History is written by the winners.  The losers have their own version of events on the highly recommended British National Army Museum website.