The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the opening battles of the American Revolutionary War, fought on 19 April 1775 between the Massachusetts patriot militia and the British Army near the rural towns of Lexington and Concord. The Patriots, while scattered at Lexington, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British and inflicted heavy casualties, forcing them to retreat to Boston, and sparking an all-out war.
Background[]
New taxes and punitive acts of Parliament had provoked protest in Boston. The Intolerable Acts of 1774, intended by the British to punish Boston for the Tea Party, aroused great hostility in eastern Massachusetts. At the first Continental Congress, held in fall 1774 to formulate a unified response to these acts of Parliament, delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies agreed to petition for the repeal of the acts and to boycott British goods.
History[]
As tensions mounted in eastern Massachusetts in spring 1775, the rebels and the British prepared for conflict. Patriots took control of the colonial militia and stockpiled munitions in secret locations, while the British sent military patrols into the countryside to assert the authority of the Crown.
In April, General Thomas Gage, the British commander in Boston, received orders to disarm likely rebels and apprehend their leaders. The best plan, he decided, was to send a British detachment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith across the Charles River to march on Lexington and arrest the rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Smith would then continue to Concord, some 20 miles west, to destroy rebel stockpiles of weapons and ammunition hidden in the town. Gage scheduled the attack for 18 April.
Patriot spies in Boston caught wind of Gage's intention and took action to frustrate it. Their first task was to get the warning out, but this was no easy task: British sentries guarded Boston Neck, the narrow spit of land that attached Boston to the mainland, and British warships patrolled the Charles River ferryway that separated Boston from Charlestown and Cambridge.
Raising the alarm[]
On the night of 18 April, two of the leading rebels, silversmith Paul Revere and a tanner named William Dawes, set off to spread the alarm among their fellow Patriots: the British were on the move, and would soon reach Concord. To minimize the danger of them both being caught, the pair traveled separately. Dawes took the road out of Boston via the Boston Beck, just before the British could seal it off, while Revere rowed across to the other side of the Charles River and set off from there.
While Revere and Dawes each traveled westward on their legendary "midnight rides," Gage's military expedition set off from Boston. Late that evening, around 700 British infantrymen boarded boats for the short passage to Cambridge, arriving in the town at around 2 AM. From there, an advance guard led by Major John Pitcairn set out on foot for Lexington, their shoes and uniforms sodden from disembarking in water that was waist-deep.
To add to their discomfort, the men could hear the sounds of the Massachusetts countryside coming to life around them. The success of their mission depended on stealth, but thanks to the warnings provided by Revere and Dawes, the inhabitants of Massachusetts were prepared. In Lexington, a band of 80 colonial militia were armed and waiting when the British advance guard marched into the village. Adams and Hancock, whom Pitcairn had orders to arrest, had fled, having been warned of British intentions by Revere and Dawes.
The fatal shot[]
The leader of the militia, Captain John Parker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, had no desire to start a fight. He arranged his men so that they would not hinder the British advance, and in his thin, raspy voice told his terrified men to stand their ground. Parker hoped that the Redcoats would pass them by, but Pitcairn took the presence of the militia as a challenge. Attempting to surround Parker's company, he ordered the Patriots to disperse. A few tense moments passed, and it appeared that Parker's men fully intended to back away peacefully, until suddenly a shot - later called the "shot heard round the world" - rang out.
To this day, it is uncertain who fired the first shot. No order to fire had been given on either side, but Pitcairn's men - believing either that they had been fired upon or that they had been ordered to shoot - let loose a devastating volley of musketry. Parker's men fired back and tried to retreat. Although their officers attempted to hold them back, the British forces lunged forward with fixed bayonets, scattering what was left of Parker's militia. When the smoke cleared, eight Patriot militiamen lay dead or dying on Lexington Green.
Clash at Concord[]
Pitcairn and his troops then moved on to Concord. Initially, on reaching the township, the British met no resistance. They discovered cannon and stores of ammunition, flour, and various other provisions, and destroyed whatever they could find. However, the local militia had begun to gather, alerted and angered by reports of the bloodshed at Lexington. A firefight broke out between the British Redcoat infantry and the Patriots at Concord's North Bridge. But when Smith decided to take his troops back to the safety of Boston, the battle began in earnest.
Within minutes of leaving Concord, Smith's Redcoats were attacked. Militia from all over the county - and from neighboring counties, too - had rushed to Concord that morning, thirsting for vengeance for the events at Lexington. They took cover behind fences, stone walls, and clumps of trees lining the road from Concord to Charlestown, firing volleys into the flanks and rear of the retreating British column. Smith sent out flankers - patrols to sweep the ground adjoining the road - and, although the Patriot militia soon fell back, they quickly resumed their attack elsewhere along the road. The British, meanwhile, left a trail of destruction in their wake: looting and burning the villages en route to Boston in retaliation. Exhausted by the long night's march, however, the Redcoats could gain no advantage.
Fighting retreat[]
Fortunately for the British, a column of 1,000 Redcoats under the capable command of Brigadier-General Hugh Percy was waiting at Lexington when Smith's shattered force arrived, still pursued by Patriot militia. Reinforced, the British now had a fighting chance of escaping catastrophic defeat, but Patriot forces hounded them in ever greater numbers, as word of the insurrection at Lexington spread. At the town of Menotomy (present-day Arlington), the Patriots took cover in houses and barns along the road, forcing the British to engage in bloody house-to-house fighting. The Patriot militia contested every step of the retreat, even into Cambridge itself, and the fighting only ended when the British, many of whom had marched more than 40 miles in 24 hours, found refuge in Charlestown, as the daylight failed.
Aftermath[]
The military confrontations at Lexington and Concord sent a mixture of anger, fear, and hopeful anticipation through the Thirteen Colonies. Neither incident could be called a pitched battle, and the losses were light. But the consequences went beyond the statistics. Over the ensuing weeks, rebel militia from all over New England streamed into the Boston area to guard against further moves by the British.
There was, as yet, little talk of independence. Still, the Patriots had learned that they could indeed fight, and win, against the British Army. And as leaders from the Thirteen Colonies prepared to journey to Philadelphia for the meeting of the Second Continental Congress, news of the triumph at Concord undoubtedly bolstered the argument that the time for action had arrived.