Lexington and Concord, Battles of

Lexington and Concord, Battles of (1775).The political dispute between Britain and its American colonies flared into open conflict on 19 April 1775 at two towns outside Boston, Massachusetts. Maj. Gen. Thomas Gage, commander in chief and governor of Massachusetts, dispatched some 800 soldiers to confiscate provincial military supplies stockpiled at Concord, about twenty miles inland. Six months earlier, colonial leaders, anticipating British action, had formed a quarter of the militia into a force ready to repel any attack on short notice. Warned of the British expedition by several dispatch riders, including Paul Revere, these “minutemen” gathered in the path of the advancing British force.

As dawn broke on the 19th, the British advance guard, roughly 250 men under Maj. John Pitcairn, approached Lexington, where the militia company, perhaps 70 men under Capt. John Parker, was assembling on the green. Pitcairn, seeing armed men on his right flank, deployed part of his command. Suddenly, nearby, a gun fired—perhaps accidentally. The British soldiers, thinking they were under attack, fired on Parker's company. By the time Pitcairn restrained them, eight colonists lay dead or dying on Lexington green.

When the raiders reached Concord, they found that the colonists had removed the stores, and that groups of armed men were converging on their line of march. In a firefight at the North Bridge over the Concord River, the militiamen demonstrated that they were capable of resisting by force of arms the passage of British regulars through the countryside.

Although it lacked central direction, resistance to the raiders mounted as they marched back to Boston. Pecked at by several thousand colonists, mostly firing from behind the stone walls that lined the route, the column was saved from destruction only by a force sent by Gage to ensure its safe return. The British retreat to Boston was the high‐water mark for American militiamen during the war. Operating in small groups on home ground against an outnumbered enemy, they used their skills to best advantage. The colonists would have to create more permanent forms of military organization, however, to bring their rebellion to a successful conclusion.
[See also Citizen‐Soldier; Revolutionary War: Causes; Revolutionary War: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Allen French , The First Year of the American Revolution, 1934.
David Hackett Fischer , Paul Revere's Ride, 1994.

Harold E. Selesky