In addition to today being the birthday of my now 22 y/o Blonde Daughter...
April 18, 1775: Revere and Dawes warn of British attack
233 years ago on this day in 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord MA and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.
As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the "Minutemen."
Paul Revere, one of the colonies' most prominent silversmith's by day, revolutionary firebrand by night.
Revere's lesser known and fellow warning rider William Dawes
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had 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.
Samples of Revere's silver creations.
In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.
The New England Patriots (not affiliated with the National Football League franchise of the same name) had been preparing for such a British military action for some time, and, upon learning of the British plan, Revere and Dawes set off across the Massachusetts countryside.
They took separate routes in case one of them was captured: Dawes left the city via the Boston Neck peninsula and Revere crossed the Charles River to Charlestown by boat.
Boston's Old North Church, the tallest building in the city. Its steeple was used to display the signal lanterns
As the two couriers set out their warning mission, Patriots in Charlestown waited for a signal from Boston informing them of the British troop movement. As previously agreed, one lantern would be hung in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church, the highest point in the city, if the British were marching out of the city by Boston Neck, and two lanterns would be hung if they were crossing the Charles River to Cambridge.
One of the two signal lanterns hung in the steeple. This one is on display in the Concord MA museum.
Two lanterns were hung, and the armed Patriots set out for Lexington and Concord accordingly. Along the way, Revere and Dawes roused hundreds of Minutemen who were armed with their personally owned firearms who set out to block and oppose the British.
Revere arrived in Lexington shortly before Dawes, but together they warned brewer-patriot Sam Adams and noted large signature writer John Hancock and then set out for Concord. Along the way, they were joined by Samuel Prescott, a young Patriot who had been riding home after a date with a lady friend.
Let's Get Ready to RRRRRRRRRRumble!
Early on the morning of April 19, a British patrol captured Revere, and Dawes horse went lame, forcing him to walk back to Lexington on foot. However, Prescott escaped and rode on to Concord to warn the Patriots there. After being roughly questioned for an hour or two, Revere was released when the patrol heard Minutemen alarm guns being fired on their approach to Lexington.
Major John Pitcairn, Royal Marine. After earning his place in history on this day, he was killed later at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Much later, his son, who would also become a Royal Marine took part in a British scientific expedition during which he explored a small Pacific island which bears his name. It was on that island that HMS Bounty mutineers eventually made their home and upon which their descendents still live.
About 5 a.m. on April 19, 700 British troops under Major John Pitcairn arrived at the town to find a 77-man-strong colonial militia under Captain John Parker waiting for them on Lexington's common green. Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation, the Americans began to drift off the green.
One of a pair of pistols carried by Major John Pitcairn that day. Picairn was a Scot and his pistol is typical of the type carried by those folks during the era. Made entirely of steel, after firing, it was used as a convenenient club to brain one's opponent if he was still breathing.
Pitcairn's men began to display signs they knew what was coming. At the point, the brave Royal Marine officer was heard to loudly proclaim, "Steady Men, stand your ground! If they mean to have a war, let it begin here!"
First shots of the American Revolution at Lexington MA
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 and 10 others were wounded; only one British soldier was injured. The American Revolution had begun.
After the short skirmish in Lexington, the British officers marched their force on to Concord. There the Americans already had carried off most of their stores, but the British destroyed what they could (gun carriages, entrenching tools, flour and a liberty pole).
Concord bridge, site of another patriot stand. Minuteman statue in the background on the side the patriots defended.
At Concord's North Bridge the growing American forces inflicted fourteen casualties on a British platoon, and about noon Smith began marching his forces back to Boston. The road back had turned into a gauntlet as the embattled farmers from "every Middlesex village and farm" sniped from behind stone walls, trees, barns, houses, all the way back to Charlestown peninsula.
By nightfall the Redcoat survivors were safe under the protection of the fleet and army at Boston, having lost 273 men along the way, while the Americans lost 95.
Minuteman statue at Concord Bridge. The figure has lain aside his plow, taken up his personally owned flintlock musket and is itchin' for a fight.
The Minuteman statue is memorialized by the Air National Guard emblem
and in this one too!
Originally Posted by Okla-homey
