Medford, heading west. He had been rowed across Charles River just at
the beginning of flood tide, and had landed on the Charlestown shore a
few minutes before the order to let none pass had reached the sentry.
Turning, with one foot in the stirrup, he had seen two lights from the
North Church tower, and a moment afterward had been on his way. Half a
mile beyond Charlestown Neck he had almost galloped into the arms of
two British officers, but had avoided them by turning suddenly to the
right. Now the old Boston road was smooth before him, and he threw off
his three-cornered hat, bent forward in his saddle and spoke in his
horse's ear. His was a good horse, and carried an important message. A
house near the roadside showed up dark and silent against the starlit
sky; the horseman rode to the door and struck the panels with his whip.
A window was thrown open above: "Who's there?"--"Paul Revere: the
British march to-night to Lexington and Concord: Warren, of the
Committee of Safety, bids you hold your men in
readiness."--"Right!"--The horseman turns, and is off along the road
again before the captain of the Medford minute-men has shut the window.
It is but a short fourteen miles to Lexington; but there are a dozen or
twenty farmhouses along the way, and at each of them the horseman must
pause and deliver his message; so that it is just midnight as he comes
in sight of the outskirts of the humble village. There is a dim light
burning in the window of yonder hip-roofed cottage beside the green;
Adams and Hancock must be anticipating news; Adams, indeed, has the
name of being a man who sleeps little and thinks much. The
night-rider's summons is responded to at once; and then, at the open
door, there is a brief conference, terse and to the point; the pale
face of a woman looks from the window; a message has brought Dawes and
Sam Prescott, ready mounted, to accompany Revere on his further
journey. Young Jonas Parker, the best wrestler in Lexington, has drawn
a bucket of water at the well-sweep and is holding it under the nose of
Revere's horse. "Well, my lad," says Paul, "are you ready to fight
to-morrow?"--"I won't run--I promise you that," replies the youth, with
a smile. He was dead five hours later, with a bullet through his
vigorous young body, and a British bayonet wound in his breast, having
kept his word.
Meanwhile the three horsemen are off, bearing now toward the left, for
Lincoln; but there, as luck would have it, they encountered half a
dozen English officers, who arrested Dawes and Revere and took them
back to Lexington. Prescott, however, was too quick for them; in the
flurry and darkness he had leaped his horse over the low stone wall,
and was off across the meadows which he had known from a boy, to
Concord. It was then between one and two o'clock; and the latter hour
had hardly struck when the ride was over, and the bells of the
meeting-house were pealing from the steeple. Two-o'clock-in-the-morning
courage is the test of a man, as Napoleon said some years later; be
that as it may, here are the Concord minute-men, Hosmer, Buttrick,
Parson Emerson, Brown, Blanchard, and the rest; they are running toward
the green, musket in hand, bullet-pouch on thigh, ten, twenty, fifty, a
hundred and more; and there comes Barrett, their captain, with his
sword; the men range out in a double rank, in the cool night air, and
answer to their names; if the time has indeed come for action, they are
ready to make good the bold words spoken at many a town meeting and
private chat for weeks past. They have been comrades all their lives,
and know each other; and yet now, perhaps, they gaze at one another
curiously, conscious of an indefinable change that has come over them,
now that death may be marching a few miles to the eastward.
And in truth, while they were discussing what might happen, death was
already at work at Lexington. Eight hundred grenadiers and light
infantry, the best soldiers in America, had marched into the village
shortly before dawn. For an hour or more, as they marched, they had
heard the sound of bells and of muskets, now near, now far, telling
that their movement had been discovered; and they hastened their steps;
not as apprehending resistance from the Yankee cowards, but lest the
stores they were after should be hidden before they could get at them.
And now, here they were, advancing with the regular tramp of
disciplined troops, muskets on their shoulders, bayonets fixed, and a
slight dust rising from their serried footsteps. They looked as if they
might march through a stone wall. But could it really be true that
these men meant to kill American farmers in sight of their own homes?
Were English soldiers really enemies of their own flesh and blood? As
they approached the common--an irregular triangle of ground, with a
meeting-house at the further end--the alarm-drum was beating, and
muskets firing; and yonder are the minute-men sure enough, running
together in the morning dusk, and marshaling themselves in scanty ranks
under the orders of Captain Parker. Young men and old are there, in
their well-worn shirts and breeches, cut and stitched by the faithful
hands of their wives and daughters, and each with his loaded flint-lock
in his hands. There are but fifty or sixty in all, against sixteen
times as many of the flower of the British army. The vanguard of the
latter has halted, and has received the order from Pitcairn to load;
and you may hear the ring of the ramrods in unison, and then the click
of the locks. And yonder comes the rest of the host, at double-quick,
the hoarse commands of their officers sounding out of the gloom. What
can less than threescore minute-men do against them? At all events,
they can die; and history will never forget them, standing there in
front of the little church where they had so often prayed; and their
country will always honor their names and love them. They stood there,
silent and motionless, protesting with their lives against the march of
tyranny. How few they were--and what countless millions they
represented!
Out rides Pitcairn in front of the grenadiers. You can see the red of
his tunic now in the gathering light, the sparkle of his accouterments,
and the gleam of his sword as he swings it with a commanding gesture.
"Disperse, ye villains!" he calls out in a harsh, peremptory voice: "Ye
rebels--why don't you lay down your arms and disperse?"
Would they obey?--No: for they were neither villains nor rebels; they
had come there as a sacrifice, and they would not go thence until the
crime had been committed, and their country had definitely learned,
from them, whether oppression would proceed to the last extremity, or
not. It was only a few harmless, heroic lives to lose; but so much must
needs be done. It was not an easy thing to do; there was no one to
teach them how to do it scenically and splendidly. They must simply
stand there, in their own awkward way, shoulder to shoulder,
motionless, gazing at the gallant major and the heavy masses of
uniformed men beyond, waiting for what might come. The Lord of Hosts
was on their side; but, as with our Saviour in the Garden of
Gethsemane, He seemed remotest when most near. Their wives and children
are there, looking on, straining their eyes through the obscurity, with
what throbbings of agony in their hearts, with what prayers choking in
their throats!
The major snatches a pistol from his holster, levels and discharges it;
and "Fire!" he shouts at the same moment, at the top of his lungs. He
had omitted the "Ready--present!" and the soldiers did not all fire at
once; first there were a few dropping shots; but then came the volley.
The regulars shot to kill. Down came Jonas Parker to his knee, to be
stabbed to death before he could reload; there fell old Munroe, the
veteran of Louisburg; and Harrington, killed at his doorstep, and
Muzzey, Hadley, and Brown. In all, before the stars had faded in the
light of dawn, sixteen New Englanders lay dead or wounded on the
village green. And the British troops had reformed, and huzzaed thrice,
and marched on with drum and fife, before the sun of the 19th of April
had looked upon their work. The Revolution had begun.
It was seven o'clock when, with the sun on their backs, the British
invaders came along the base of the low hill, crowned with pine and
birch, that lies like a sleeping serpent to the east on the way to
Concord. They were a trifle jaded now from their all-night march, and
their gaiters and uniforms were a little dusty; but the barrels of
their guns shone as bright as ever, and their spirits were good, after
their glorious exploit six miles back. Glorious, of course: yet a
trifle dull, all the same; there would be more fun shooting these
bumpkins, if only they could summon heart to put up a bit of a fight in
return. "Maybe we'll get a better chance at 'em out here, colonel--eh?"
the major of marines might have said, with his Scotch brogue, turning
his horse to ride beside his superior officer for a mile or so. "I
don't think it, sir," that great soldier would reply, puffing out his
cheeks, and wiping his brow with his embroidered handkerchief. "The
sight of his majesty's uniform, Major Pitcairn, is alone enough to put
to flight every scurvy rebel in Massachusetts. If you want to get
within range of 'em, sir, you must wear mufti."
During the early morning hours, the minute-men standing under the
liberty pole in front of Concord meeting-house had been gradually
re-enforced by parties hastening in from Lincoln, Acton, and other
outlying hamlets, until they numbered about two hundred men. But as the
British drew near, eight hundred strong, the Americans withdrew down a
meadow road northward, until they reached a hospitable edifice with a
broad roof, pierced by gables, standing at the upper end of an avenue,
and with its back toward the sluggish Muskataquid, or Concord River. A
few rods to the left of the site of this manse was a wooden bridge,
spanning the stream, known as the North Bridge. The manse was occupied
by the Reverend William Emerson, the minister of the town, and from its
western windows was an excellent view of the bridge. One of these
windows was open, and the pastor himself, with his arms resting on the
sill, was looking from this coign of vantage when the minute-men came
up, crossed the bridge, and stationed themselves on the rising ground
just beyond. He remained there, a deeply interested spectator, during
the events which followed.
The British, finding Concord deserted, divided into three parts, one
going to a bridge to the south of the town, one remaining in the town
itself, and the third marching north, where it again divided, one party
of a hundred guarding the approach to the north bridge, on the further
side of which the Americans were embattled, the other proceeding along
the road to the house of Captain Barrett in search of arms. A couple of
hours passed by, and nothing seemed likely to happen; but it was
noticed that there was the smoke of a fire in Concord, a mile to the
south and east. Smith and Pitcairn were there, with the main body of
the troops, and they had been making bonfires of the liberty pole and
some gun carriages: the court house was also in a blaze. But to the
Concord men, waiting at the bridge, it looked as if the British were
setting their homes afire. The women and children had been sent into
the woods out of harm's way, before the regiments arrived; but some of
them might have ventured back again. Vague rumors of the bloodshed at
Lexington had been passed from mouth to mouth, losing nothing,
probably, on the way. The men began to ask one another whether it was
not incumbent on them to march to the rescue of their town?
By accessions from Carlisle, Bedford, Woburn, Westford, Littleton and
Chelmsford they had now grown to a strength of four hundred; the force
immediately opposing them was less than half as numerous. They
evidently did not expect an attack; they had not even removed the
planks from the bridge. They despised the Yankees too much to take that
easy precaution.
But though the British at this point were few, they were regulars; they
stood for the English army in America: and for more than that--they
stood for all England, for Parliament, for the king, for loyalty; for
that enormous moral force, so much more potent even than the physical,
which tends to prevail because it always has prevailed. These farmers
did not fear to risk their lives; their fathers, and some of
themselves, had fought Indians and Frenchmen, and thought little of it.
But to fight men whose limbs were made in England--in the old home
which the colonists still regarded as theirs, and had not ceased to
love and honor, for all this quarrel about duties and laws of
trade--that was another matter: it was almost like turning their
weapons against themselves. And yet, if there were any value in human
liberty, if the words which they had listened to from the lips of Adams
and Warren and Hancock meant anything--now was the time to testify to
their belief in them. They were men: this was their land: yonder were
burning their dwellings: they had a right to defend them, and their
families. What said Captain Barrett--and Isaac Davis of Acton, and
Buttrick? And here was Colonel Robinson of Westford too, a volunteer
to-day: but what was his opinion?
The officers drew together, conferred a moment, and then Barrett, who
was in command, and the only man on horseback, gave the word: "Advance
across the bridge: don't fire unless they fire at you." The companies
marched past him, led by Buttrick, Davis and Robinson, with their
swords drawn. The men were in double file.
Seeing them actually advancing on the bridge, the British condescended
to bestir themselves, and some of them began to raise the planks. Upon
this, the Americans, who meant to cross, broke into a trot. Mr.
Emerson, leaning out of his window, with the light of battle in his
eyes, saw three or four puffs of smoke come from the British, and two
Americans fell. Immediately after there was a volley from the regulars,
and now Isaac Davis was down, and moved no more; and Abner Hosmer fell
dead near him. The Americans were advancing, but they had not fired.
"Father in Heaven!" ejaculated the good parson, between his set teeth,
"aren't they going to shoot?"
Even as he spoke, he saw Buttrick leap upward, and heard his shout:
"Fire, fellow soldiers!--for God's sake, fire!"
The men repeated the word to one another; up came their guns to their
shoulders, and the sharp detonations followed.
They reached the ears of the minister, and he gave a sigh of relief.
They echoed across the river, and rolled away toward the village, and
into the distance. Nor did they stop there--those echoes: the Atlantic
is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and
Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated
to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a
hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across
Concord Bridge have not died away. Whenever tyranny and oppression
raise their evil hands, that sound comes reverberating out of the past,
and they hesitate and turn pale. Whenever a monarch meditates injustice
against his subjects, the noise of the muskets of the Concord yeomen,
fired that men might be free, falls upon his ear, and he pauses and
counts the cost. Yes, and there have been those among ourselves,
citizens of the land for which those yeomen fought and died, who also
might take warning from those ominous echoes: for the battle waged by
selfishness and corruption against human rights has not ceased to be
waged on these shores, though the British left them a century ago. It
seems, at times, as if victory inclined toward the evil rather than the
good. But let us not be misled. The blood of the farmers who drove
England out of America flows in our veins still; we are patient and
tolerant to a fault, but not forever. The onlooker, gazing from afar,
fears that we will never shoot; but presently he shall be reassured;
and once our advance is begun, there will be no relenting till the last
invader be driven into the sea.
There is a deeper lesson yet to be learned from Concord fight. It is
that the noblest deeds may be done by the humblest instruments; and
that as Christ chose His apostles from among the fishermen of Galilee,
so was the immortal honor of beginning the battle for the liberation of
mankind intrusted to a handful of lowly husbandmen and artisans, who
knew little more than that right was right, and wrong, wrong. There
were no philosophers or statesmen among them; they comprehended nothing
of diplomacy; they only felt that a duty had been laid upon them, and
inspired by that conviction, they went forward and did it. The judgment
of the world has ratified their act, and has admitted that perhaps more
subtle reasoners than they, balancing one consideration against
another, taking counsel of far-reaching prudence, flinching from
responsibility, might have put off action until the golden moment had
forever passed. But what the hands of these men found to do, they did
with their might; and therefore established the truth that the spirit
of God finds its fitting home in the bosoms of the poor and simple; and
that the destinies of mankind are safe in their protection.
Two English soldiers were killed or mortally wounded by the fire of the
Americans and several others were hit. A panic seized upon the rest,
and before the farmers had crossed the bridge, they were retreating in
disorder upon the main body in Concord. Barrett's men were surprised by
this sudden collapse of the enemy, and did not pursue them at that
time, nor intercept the small force further up the road, all of whom
might easily have been killed or captured. Perhaps they even felt sorry
for what they had done; at all events, they betrayed no
bloodthirstiness as yet. But when Smith and Pitcairn, after much
agitation and irresolution, ordered a retreat of the whole force down
the Boston road, firing as they went upon all who showed themselves,
and robbing and destroying dwellings along the route: when the winners
of Concord bridge, and their fellow minute-men, who now began to be
numbered by thousands rather than by hundreds, saw and comprehended
this, the true spirit of war was kindled within them, and they began
that running fight of twenty miles which ended in the hurling of the
British into the defenses of Boston, broken, exhausted, utterly
demoralized and beaten, with a loss of two hundred and seventy-three
men and officers, Smith himself receiving a severe wound. Ten miles
more would have witnessed their complete annihilation. No troops ever
ran with better diligence than did these English regulars before the
despised Yankee minute-men; they lost the day, and honor likewise. It
was in vain that they threw out flanking parties, in an effort to clear
the woods of the American sharpshooters; the latter knew the war of the
forest better than they, and the flanking parties withered away, and
staggered helpless from exhaustion. It was in vain that Lord Percy,
with twelve hundred men, met the flying horde at Lexington, where their
officers were trying to reform them under threats of death; his cannon
could delay, but not reverse the fortunes of the day. Lord Percy soon
became as frightened as the rest, and realized that speed of foot was
his sole hope of safety. Gasping for breath, reeling from fatigue, with
terror and despair in their hearts, foul with dust and dripping with
blood, a third part of the British army in New England were hunted back
to their fortifications as the sun of the 19th of April, whose first
beams had fallen upon the dead at Lexington, went down in the west.
Less than fifty Americans had been killed, less than forty were
wounded. Some of these, however, were helpless persons, who were
wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains
dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth
were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army;
and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly
staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the
neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the
American force during the day; but there was never more than a few
hundred together at one time, fresh relays taking the place of those
whose ammunition had been used up. Some of these squads performed
prodigies of endurance; one of them arrived at the scene of action
after a march of fifty-five miles. No man under seventy or over sixteen
would stay at home; and Josiah Haynes of Sudbury was marching and
fighting from earliest dawn till past noon, when he was killed by a
grenadier's musket-ball. He was born five years before the Eighteenth
Century began.
At West Cambridge the Americans were met by Joseph Warren and General
Heath, who organized the heretofore irregular pursuit, and made it more
disastrous to the enemy than ever. Warren, in the front of danger, was
grazed by a bullet; but his time had not yet come. Fortunately for the
British, Charlestown Neck was near, and once across that they were for
the present safe. In fourteen hours they had learned more about America
than they could ever forget. The Americans, for their part, had not
failed to gather profit and confidence from the experiences of the day.
The paralysis of respect and loyalty to England was at an end. The
antagonists had met and measured their strength, and the undisciplined
countrymen had proved the stronger. At any given point of the retreat,
the English had always been the more numerous; but they showed neither
heart nor ability for the contest. The British Coffee House in King
Street that night presented a scene in marked contrast with that of the
night before.
The rumors of the battle, and messages of information and appeal from
the leaders, were disseminated without delay, and in a space of time
wonderfully short had penetrated to the remotest of the colonies.
Everywhere they met with the same reception; all were eager to join in
the work so hopefully begun. Within a day or two, the force
beleaguering Boston numbered several thousand; but as many of these
came and went between the camp and their homes, no precise estimate can
be made. They were without artillery for bombardment, without a
commissariat, and almost without organization; and no leader had yet
appeared capable of bringing order out of the confusion. But not a few
men afterward to be distinguished were present there: the veteran John
Stark, Benedict Arnold from Connecticut, Israel Putnam, who rode a
hundred miles on one horse to join the provincial army; and Joseph
Warren, were on the ground, and others were to come. Boston was
effectually surrounded; Gage and his officers were afraid to order a
sortie; and after a few days allowed the non-loyalist inhabitants to
leave the city, on their promise not to take part in the siege. The
chief deficiency of the Americans, or that at least which most
obviously pressed upon them, was the want of money: Massachusetts had
hitherto avoided paper; but it was no longer possible to stand on
scruples, and a bill to issue a hundred thousand pounds was passed, and
a quarter as much in bills of small denominations, to pay the soldiers.
The other colonies adopted similar measures. In New York, eighty
thousand pounds' worth of stores and supplies for Gage was seized by
the people, and no ships were allowed to leave the harbor for the
succor of the enemy. In Virginia, Patrick Henry and the young Madison,
just out of Princeton, were prominent in opposing Governor Dunmore's
efforts to establish "order." In Pennsylvania, men were raised and
drilled, and patriotic resolves adopted; and Franklin arrived from
England in time to be elected deputy to the second American Congress.
The men of South Carolina announced themselves ready to give "the half,
or the whole" of their estates for the security of their liberties, and
voted to raise three regiments. Georgia, with only three thousand
militia, and under threat of an Indian war on her frontier, fearlessly
gave in her adhesion to the general movement. In North Carolina, the
news from Lexington stampeded the governor, and left the people free to
work their will. But the next notable achievement, after the Concord
fight and the running battle, was the capture of Ticonderoga by Ethan
Allen.