During the years immediately preceding the conflict on Lexington
Green, the temper of the Colonials was sorely tested by persecutions
instigated by Tyrant George III--“the Stamp Act, its repeal, with
the declaration of the right to tax America; the landing of troops
in Boston, beneath the batteries of fourteen vessels of war, lying
broadside to the town, with springs on their cables, their guns loaded,
and matches smoking; the repeated insults, and finally the massacre
of the fifth of March resulting from this military occupation; and
the Boston Port Bill, by which the final catastrophe was hurried
on.” Delegates were appointed to the Continental Congress; at Salem
the Provincial Congress was formed in October, 1774. At Concord and
Cambridge the latter assembly enacted measures providing for troops,
officers and stores. Early in the year 1775 it was clear that the
crisis was at hand. General Gage betrayed his intentions when in March
he caused the stone walls to be leveled that divided the fields about
Boston, and so made these peaceful pastures ready for battle. His spies
obtained information as to the amount of provisions hoarded at Concord
and Worcester. On the fifteenth of April patriots in Boston were
convinced that the plans of the British were mature, and an attack on
Concord was imminent. By advice of Hancock and “Sam” Adams the stores
were distributed among neighboring towns. Colonel Revere delivered his
first warning, and “at length the momentous hour arrived, as big with
consequences to Man as any that ever struck in his history.”
Though British officers were ignorant of the means by which Gage was
to assail American freedom, the provincials already knew, and were
prepared. The lanterns in North Church tower had signaled their message
to watchers in Charlestown, and Revere and Dawes were already on their
separate ways, when eight hundred grenadiers and light infantrymen
landed at East Cambridge and crossed the marshland to the road that
led to Lexington and Concord. At dawn the Minute Men were alive to the
warning given by bells and drums that the enemy was approaching; three
score or more answered the call to arms on Lexington Green--“a little
band of farmers on their own training-field, facing the veteran ranks
of the king.… Their homes, their property, personal and communal, and
their rights as freemen were threatened; they were patriots and heroes,
everyone.”
Commanded with threats and oaths to lay down his arms, Captain Parker
of the militia cried to his men: “Don’t fire unless you are fired on;
but if they want a war, let it begin here.” In the ensuing assault
several militiamen fell, wounded to the death. The blood they spilled
baptized the cause of Freedom in a new land. Resolved to die rather
than submit, their martyrdom fixed the resolution of all their brothers
in the Colonies.
Here, three-quarters of a century later, in “the birthplace of
American liberty,” Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, eulogized
“the embattled farmers” of immortal memory in these eloquent phrases:
“It is their sacrificed blood in which is written the preface of your
nation’s history. Their death was and ever will be the first bloody
revelation of America’s destiny, and Lexington the opening scene of a
revolution destined to change the character of human governments, and
the condition of the human race.”
“The Minute Man of the Revolution!” exclaims George William Curtis.
“And who was he? He was the husband and father, who left the plough in
the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing wife and children,
marched to die or be free!… This was the Minute Man of the Revolution!
The rural citizen, trained in the common school, the town meeting,
who carried a bayonet that _thought_, and whose gun, loaded with a
principle, brought down, not a man, but a system!”
A youth who fought the king’s men that wonderful day described how they
pushed the British back from Concord Bridge, back through Lincoln,
Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville to the Charles. “What could be
more pleasing to ambition,” he wrote, “than to knock off the shackles
of despotism? Freedom was the hobby I mounted, sword in hand, neck or
nothing, life or death. I will be one to support my country’s rights
and gain its independence!”
“What was the matter, and what did you mean in going to the fight?” one
of a later generation asked a veteran of Concord. “Young man,” was the
reply, “what we meant in fighting was this: We always had been free,
and we meant to be free always.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 10, SERIAL No. 158
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN TRUMBULL. ORIGINAL IN THE
CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.