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Chapter III - Midnight Ride and Battles in Lexington and Concord
Midnight Ride and Battles in Lexington and Concord
On January 27, 1775, British Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth addressed a letter to General Thomas Gage in Boston expressing his belief that American resistance was nothing more than the action of a "rude rabble without a plan." Dartmouth ordered Gage to arrest the "principle actors and abettors in the provincial congress" to avoid bloodshed, but by the time Dartmouth's letter reached Gage on April 14, important patriot delegates had fled Boston. Nevertheless, Gage was spurred to action by reports from his spies that colonists at Worchester and Concord were collecting ammunition. Gage was reluctant to move the majority of the four thousand British troops stationed in Boston all the way to Worchester which was fifty miles away. Therefore, he decided to attack nearby Concord instead. British troops could seize the weapons, return to Boston by nightfall and avoid the problem of camping overnight in an increasingly hostile countryside. Moreover, the Provincial Congress had been meeting in Concord, and Gage reasoned that a quick raid might net a few delegates as well.
Though Gage's troops discreetly prepared their attack, they could not completely conceal their movements around Boston. At 2:00 a.m. on April 19, a mud-splattered Paul Revere walked into Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were up to something. He had left Boston at 10:00 the previous night after seeing the single lantern in the tower of Christ's Church which signaled an attack by land, a plan devised by Revere and his allies over ale at the Green Dragon Tavern. Two of these friends met Revere in the north part of Boston and agreed to row him across the Charles River. When they first lowered the rowboat into the water, they feared that sailors on the British ships might hear them. One man quickly dashed to the nearby home of a lady friend and, summoning her to the window with a soft whistle, asked her for a bit of cloth. She tossed down her petticoat, which the men tore into strips and wrapped around the oars to muffle then rowing. When Revere reached the shadowy bank, he mounted a horse loaned to him by another friend, dug his heels into the horse's sides and raced to warn citizens of every town on his path that the British were coming. Before he reached Concord, however, a group of British officers intercepted him, later taking his horse and releasing him. At approximately the same time Revere left Boston, Gage's anxious troops had set out for Concord. Even though the troops moved quietly, the citizens who had already been alerted by Revere's warning began to fire in sequence to warn others as troops approached.
When British troops reached Lexington at dawn on April 19, they were confronted by bleary-eyed minutemen poised for battle on the lush town green. The American commander, John Parker, had previously instructed his men: "Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war. let it begin here." However, when he realized that they could not effectively halt the British advance, he ordered his men to withdraw. Simultaneously, the British commander shouted, "Lay down your arms, you damned rebels, and disperse!" Parker again commanded his men to fall out, and they obeyed, carrying their muskets with them. Dispersal of the rebels was not enough for the agitated British commander who angrily called again, "Damn you, why don't you lay down your arms?" The exact sequence of events which followed is unclear, but someone, either British or American, fired, prompting the British commander to roar, "Fire, by God, Fire!" The battle ended two minutes later. The smoke cleared from the Lexington green to reveal ten lifeless and ten wounded American militiamen.
The British troops regrouped and headed for Concord where they suffered their first major casualties when American militiamen attacked them on the outskirts of town. Even though the alert patriot colonists had already hidden most of the military supplies, the British attacked anyway, threatening to burn the town to the ground. Troops clashed at the North Bridge where two Americans and three British soldiers were killed. By noon the skirmish was over, and the stunned British troops headed back towards Boston. Along the way they were continually harassed by thousands of militiamen hiding behind rocks, fences and trees. In all, two hundred British soldiers were reported missing or wounded, and seventy three perished between Lexington and Concord.
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