DaytoPonder:The American Revolutionary War Began Today With the Battles of Lexington,Concord

Original title:The American Revolution began - Today in history On April 19,1775 the American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.

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.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.

FTA:The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington, Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes, but warfare had begun, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts countryside.

The war had its origins in the resistance of many Americans to taxes imposed by the British parliament, which they held to be unlawful. Formal acts of rebellion against British authority began in 1774 when the Patriot Suffolk Resolves effectively abolished the legal government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The tensions caused by this would lead to the outbreak of fighting between Patriot militia and British regulars at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. By the end of 1775 rebels had seized full control in all thirteen colonies and on July 4, 1776, their Continental Congress declared independence.

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed an independent nation, the United States of America. The American Revolution was the result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in American society, government and ways of thinking. Starting in 1765 the Americans rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation; protests escalated as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the British imposed punitive laws—the Intolerable Acts—on Massachusetts in 1774. In 1774 the Patriots suppressed the Loyalists and expelled all royal officials. Each colony now had a new government that took control. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-establish royal control. Through the Second Continental Congress, the Patriots fought the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783).

Today is certainly a solemn day of similar sentiments as we are in midst of our own need of an American Revolution as a result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in American society, government and ways of thinking having turned our glorious Republic into a government steeped in illegitimacy that knows nothing but illegitimacy, run by illegitimate means, based on illegitimate ideas, by those appointed to the highest office in the land in ways being nothing but illegitimate. In this very day and age when the laws of the land and the institutions that have elevated the original thirteen colonies into the glorious Republic it had aspired to, being trampled on, violated, made a mockery of, has the sheeeple react in no discernible way, yet a simple tax on tea having facilitated a change of overwhelming proportions in world order not ever seen.

The "shot heard 'round the world" wasn't fired at Lexington. It was fired at the North Bridge over the Concord River in Concord. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the "Concord Hymn" (not the original name), which begins:

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.

Shots were fired earlier at Lexington. The Battle of Concord represents the first shots fired by Americans acting under orders, the first organized volley by Americans, the first British fatalities, and the first British retreat, and the "shot heard 'round the world."

I remain speechless at the bravery shown on Lexington green that morning.

The Patriots were farmers, shopkeepers, blacksmiths and the like, somewhat trained but hardly the disciplined force fielded by the British.

Paul Revere and William Dawes had warned the countryside of the British approach, and that warning must surely have included the number of troops coming.

Imagine meeting up with 50 or so armed and like-minded civilians, knowing full well that several hundred of the King’s soldiers were headed your way. A few rounds of liquid courage at Buckman’s Tavern would hardly stop your knees from shaking.

Now take your little band across the street and stand in a line across the green, in the cold grey dawn. Hear the British drummer beating out time, the crunch of boots on gravel. Then see them ... hundreds of them ... row upon row ... men on foot and officers on horseback. All of them armed.

How on Earth did they find the raw nerve to stand their ground? Amazing!

Patrick Henry's most famous speech was delivered on March 23, 1775, less than a month before. According to the version written down many years later (there is no contemporary transcript), his speech included these words:

"Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace, but there is no peace! The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field!"

The first part of that may have been inspired by Jeremiah 6.14 and 8.11 ("peace, peace, when there is no peace").

Actually, the patriots at Lexington were not Minutemen. Lexington was too cheap to pay for the extra training required to earn the “Minuteman” designation. So, it was the Lexington Militia who stood on that triangle of grass facing the Redcoats.

Further, even that Militia was likely well-trained by officers who fought along side the Brits in Indian skirmishes during the French and Indian War. They may have been drilled equally as well as their Redcoat counterparts and as free men, were better-motivated.(Most of the Redcoat infantry was “impressed” into service.) Patriot leaders knew well that information about a British attack on “embattled farmers” would play better in New York and Philadelphia than if it was known that well-drilled Minutemen and Militia troops fought well against the Brit regulars that day.

Finally, “the shot heard ‘round the world” may likely have been fired by Paul Revere himself, who was sent back to Lexington by the fleeing Sam Adams, ostensibly to retrieve Adams’ papers from where Adams had stayed the night before. Many early accounts of the fight in Lexington, had the instigating shot coming from the corner of a house to the rear of the gathered Militia. When later asked if he knew anything about that famous shot, Revere remained vague and unwilling to state much about what he observed. Good ol’ Sam Adams was a very shrewd political agitator and organizer; he knew what it would take to stir up a revolution and its seems he had a bigger role (directing Revere to make sure something happened?) than most give him credit for that morning.

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