Spirit Of Revolution

At the time Patrick Henry was making his famous speech, the Colony of Massachusetts was also in a state of rebellion. On the evening of April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage dispatched approximately 700 British soldiers to Concord, Massachusetts (about 18 miles from British-held Boston) to seize and destroy weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment which colonists had stockpiled in the town. Unfortunately for the British, the colonists had learned of their plans and were ready for them, having moved their military stores to safer locations.

The night of April 18-19 was the night of Paul Revere’s famous ride to warn the colonists and rouse the local militia, a daring feat which later was memorialized in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

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.
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.”

Thanks to the efforts of Paul Revere and his fellow riders, the colonial militia was able to engage the British regulars when they arrived at Lexington. Outnumbered, the militia retreated to Concord where a larger force of colonial militia met the British at the North Bridge in a short engagement which later was immortalized in the famous poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

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.

As even more militiamen arrived and joined the fight, they inflicted heavy damage on the British regulars, who were forced to make a slow retreat all the way back to the relative safety of Boston while hounded by militia all along the route.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The victory of American militia over the greatest professional army in the world was an astounding feat which has been recognized in many ways over the years by a grateful nation:

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord represent the Spirit of the Revolution typified by the midnight ride of Paul Revere and by the selfless volunteerism of the Minutemen whose statues now stand on Lexington Green and at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. We owe our very existence as a nation to the revolutionary spirit which was born here that day.

From Chapter 4 of No More Patriots
Copyright © 2015 by Howard T. Uhal
All Rights Reserved