The Shot Heard Round The World

In May of 1773, to rescue the nearly bankrupt East India Company, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting the company a monopoly in the American colonies to sell tea without paying taxes apart from the import duties imposed by the Townsend Acts, five measures passed by Parliament in 1767 and 1768 to raise revenue for colonial administration and to demonstrate that Parliament held the sovereign authority to tax its colonies.

Fierce opposition from the Sons of Liberty and other patriots to the Tea Act and its taxation without representation led to the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 when Bostonians destroyed a large shipment of taxed tea.

Parliament responded early in 1774 with four measures to punish the Massachusetts colony and tighten British control: the Port Act that closed Boston Harbor until the colonists paid for the tea they had destroyed; the Government Act that drastically curtailed Massachusetts self-government and significantly increased the power of the Royal Governor; the Administration of Justice Act that made British officials accused of crimes in Massachusetts answerable only to British courts or the courts of another colony; and the Quartering Act that expanded existing requirements for colonists in Massachusetts to provide housing and supplies for British soldiers.

These four punitive measures, referred to by Americans as the Intolerable Acts, sparked outrage and increased resentment of British Rule across the colonies. In September of 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies assembled in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to discuss their grievances and possible responses. The delegates issued a declaration formally objecting to a range of British policies, including taxation without representation and mandatory quartering of British troops. They called for a boycott of British goods and the training of a colonial militia. They sent a petition to King George outlining their grievances and requesting redress. And they agreed to convene again the following year.

General Thomas Gage had been Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in North America for eleven years when, in 1774, King George appointed him also to be military governor of the Massachusetts colony to implement the Intolerable Acts and crack down on colonial resistance to British rule. Late in 1774, in defiance of the Intolerable Acts, patriots in the colony formed a provisional government known as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and they called for local militias to be trained for possible hostilities. In response, the British government in February of 1775 declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion.

In April of 1775, General Gage dispatched 700 British Army regulars stationed in Boston to capture and destroy military supplies reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Patriot spies got wind of the plan and, on the night of April 18, Paul Revere and other riders spread the alarm that British regulars were marching on Concord.

With this warning, militiamen hurriedly assembled and confronted the British troops at Lexington early on the morning of April 19. The first shots were fired just as the sun was rising. The militia was outnumbered and fell back while the British regulars marched on to Concord, where they separated into companies to search for military supplies.

Late in the morning, at the North Bridge in Concord, approximately 400 militiamen engaged 100 British regulars. Outnumbered, the regulars fell back from the bridge and rejoined the rest of the British forces in Concord. After completing their largely unsuccessful search for military supplies, the reassembled British forces withdrew toward Boston. All along the route of their tactical retreat, the British forces were beset by sustained harassing fire from militiamen. When the British forces reached safety in Charlestown, the militias blockaded the narrow land accesses to Charlestown and Boston, beginning the siege of Boston.

Viewing the Lexington and Concord battlefields on April 20, John Adams was convinced that “the Die was cast, the Rubicon crossed.” Subjects of the King had fired on soldiers of the King. Our War for Independence had begun. And begun with an American victory that would galvanize support for the cause and help sustain morale in the long, difficult days ahead.

In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized the events at the North Bridge in his Concord Hymn, which he wrote for the ceremony to commemorate the placement of a monument at the site. The first verse, known to generations of American school children, calls to us still across the ages.

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.

In February of 1818, in a lengthy letter to Hezekiah Niles, John Adams discussed the beginning of the American Revolution. While acknowledging the obvious importance of the war that began on April 19, 1775, Adams stressed that the American Revolution really began before the war commenced, in the hearts and minds of patriots when they firmly embraced the principles of unalienable rights and popular sovereignty ultimately expressed with such force in our Declaration of Independence.

Revolutions for liberty depend for their success first and foremost on a spirit in the people firmly committed to the principles of liberty. And if it is secured by revolution, liberty can then only be sustained if the spirit of the people remains firmly committed to the unending hard work of citizenship and self-government. This is why we erect monuments—to help us remember, to help us appreciate what we have been given by those who came before, to help us rededicate ourselves to the continuing rebirth of liberty in our good land.

Let us, then, always remember the brave farmers by the bridge and what they fought for to ensure, in Emerson’s words,

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Watch the trailer for Let It Begin Here: The Battles of Lexington and Concord, a new film from the Federalist Society, and keep an eye out for the upcoming release of the full film!