Tag: American Revolution

Who fired “the shot heard round the world”?

2:55 pm

Paul Revere's Ride

In just a few months we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That signing occurred because a little over a year previously a troop of British soldiers went into the heart of Massachusetts to seize weapons and ammunition that the British government did not want Americans to possess, and ended up getting involved in a firefight with the local militia in the town of Lexington, what became known as “the shot heard round the world. That shot started the American Revolution, and eventually forced the members of the Continental Congress to declare their independence from that British government.

As with all history, though that firefight sparked vast changes in politics, history, and culture across the globe and across centuries, the event itself was the act of just one or a few individuals, in a specific moment and place, under very specific circumstances created by those greater movements of politics, history, and culture.

One man fired the gun. A few others fired back. And then a war started.

But who was that man?

In one of the best histories I have ever read, historian David Hackett Fischer attempts to answer this question. His 1994 book, Paul Revere’s Ride, centers the story on Paul Revere and that man’s actions to warn the citizens throughout Concord and Lexington of the British invasion, so that they could be prepared to fight, if necessary.
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Archeologists find the musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War

9:33 pm

Archeologists digging at Concord discover what they think are five musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Archeologists believe five musket balls unearthed in Concord’s Minute Man National Historical Park were fired by colonial militia in the famed battle moments that sparked the Revolutionary War. The 250-year-old musket balls were discovered in an area inside the park where historians believe British troops faced colonial forces at the North Bridge.

Analysis of the artifacts indicates they were fired by colonial militia members from across the river, and not dropped from British weapons when troops were reloading.

Since the Minute Men fired over a period of time, routing the British troops, there is no way to know if these musket balls were the first fired, or among the later rounds. Nonetheless, these artifacts are an actual piece of a moment of history that literally changed all of human history.

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The American Revolution began today at Concord and Lexington.

1:40 pm

The shot heard around the world: The American Revolution began today at Concord and Lexington in 1775.

At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

The history is very well known to anyone who has done the slightest reading about American history. Nonetheless, considering the events in Nevada this past week this paragraph struck me as especially profound:

When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker’s militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

At some point, when our federal government becomes as oppressive and as arrogant as the British government was in the 1770s, emotions will spill over and we will see the same thing happen again. And events will be similar, because Americans are armed and are becoming increasingly armed. They will defend their freedoms, their property, and their families, should the government in Washington continue attacking them. This is what happened in Nevada this past week. I expect it to happen more in the coming years.

I do not write this with joy. It would be much better if cooler heads prevailed and our government returned to serving the people instead of putting its boot on their head. I just don’t expect that to happen.

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