Lexington, Massachusetts: The Ground Where Revolution Became Real

On the morning of April 19, 1775, a loosely assembled group of roughly seventy-seven men stood on a triangular patch of common land in the small farming town of Lexington, Massachusetts. They were not professional soldiers. They were farmers, artisans, and laborers, many of them related to one another by blood or marriage, most of them bone-tired from a night of waiting and false alarms. The militiamen were part of Lexington's "training band", a local militia organization method dating back to the Puritans, and not a minuteman company. Their captain, John Parker, was himself a farmer and mechanic who had been elected to lead them. Parker got his first military experience with the British in the French and Indian War at two of the most important battles of the war, the Siege of Louisburg in 1758 and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759.

At this point, John Parker was forty-six years old, suffering from tuberculosis and on his death bed. Within minutes, they would become the first Americans to face British musket fire in what would grow into a war for independence. What happened on Lexington Green that morning — confused, brief, and bloody — transformed a political crisis into an armed revolution and gave the town a permanent place in the founding story of the United States.

To understand why British regulars and colonial militiamen met on that green, one must look back to the escalating confrontation between Parliament and the Massachusetts colonial assembly throughout 1774 and into 1775. After the Boston Tea Party and the passage of the Coercive Acts — which colonists called the Intolerable Acts — General Thomas Gage, the royal governor and commander of British forces in Boston, found himself presiding over a province in open political rebellion. Town meetings defied his orders. County conventions organized resistance. A shadow government, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, met in Concord and began stockpiling military supplies. On April 14, 1775, Gage received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, to disarm the rebels and to imprison their leaders. By early spring of 1775, Gage had intelligence that significant stores of arms, powder, and provisions were cached in Concord, about eighteen miles northwest of Boston. He also knew that two of the most prominent leaders of colonial resistance, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were staying in Lexington, roughly halfway along the route. On the evening of April 18, 1775, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, having attended the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Concord and wary of returning to Boston, were guests of Rev. Clarke at the Hancock-Clarke House — a parsonage the Reverend John Hancock, grandfather of the American revolutionary leader of the same name, purchased this site in 1699. In 1738 he built this two-story timber-frame house. On the night of April 18, Gage dispatched approximately seven hundred regulars under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with advance companies led by Major John Pitcairn, to march on Concord, destroy the supplies, and — though Gage's precise orders on this point remain debated — possibly arrest Adams and Hancock.

The colonists were not caught unaware. For weeks, the network of patriot intelligence organized in part by Dr. Joseph Warren in Boston had been watching troop movements. When the regulars began crossing the Charles River on the night of April 18, Warren dispatched two riders to carry warnings westward: Paul Revere, the Boston silversmith and experienced intelligence gatherer, and William Dawes, a tanner who took a longer southern route through Roxbury and over the Great Bridge. Revere, who had arranged a signal system using lanterns hung in the steeple of Christ Church — "one if by land, and two if by sea," as Longfellow later immortalized it — crossed the river by boat and rode hard through Medford and Menotomy toward Lexington. Dawes took his own path. Both men were part of a much larger alarm system: as they rode, local riders fanned out across Middlesex County. Two lanterns were hung in the Old North Church, the tallest structure in Boston, to signal that the British were heading west by water. At 12:30 a.m. on April 19, 1775, Revere and Dawes arrived in Lexington and met briefly with John Hancock and Samuel Adams before continuing west.

Hancock and Adams made their way to Burlington to avoid capture.

Once alerted, Captain Parker mustered his militia on the common. In those years the tavern was a favorite gathering place for militiamen on days when they trained on the Lexington Green. After waiting for hours with no sign of the British column, Parker dismissed his men with orders to remain within earshot of the drum. Many decided the best place to wait out the evening was at Buckman Tavern. Though it was early morning, John Buckman opened up the tap room and many of the militia passed the time with drinks and conversation. The Buckman Tavern, a historic American Revolutionary War site associated with the revolution's first battle that stood directly across Bedford Street from the green, became the militia's headquarters that anxious night. After waiting most of the night with no sign of British troops (and wondering if Revere's warning was accurate), at about 4:15 a.m., Parker got confirmation. Thaddeus Bowman, the last scout sent out earlier by Parker, rode up and told Parker that Regulars were coming in force and were nearby.

The drummer — tradition identifies him as sixteen-year-old William Diamond — beat the call to arms, and the militiamen spilled out of the tavern and nearby homes to form two rough lines on the green. About 80 Lexington militiamen emerged from Buckman Tavern and stood in ranks on Lexington Common watching them. Between 40 and 100 spectators watched from the side of the road. Among the men who stood with Parker that morning was Prince Estabrook, a member of the Lexington militia, who mustered with that militia under the command of Colonel John Parker during the early morning hours of April 19th. When the advance column of British troops decided to confront the militia gathered on Lexington Green, Prince was among the militiamen who had reassembled there. During the ensuing shooting, before the British officers regained control of their troops, Prince Estabrook was struck by a musket ball in his left shoulder.

Despite the Massachusetts law barring "Indians and Negroes" from training with the militia, as an abled bodied man Prince was required to respond in case of an emergency.

He became the first African American to be wounded in the Revolutionary War.

As Pitcairn's advance companies swept onto the green at roughly five o'clock in the morning, Lieutenant Jesse Adair of the Fifth Regiment of Foot moved to the right, while Pitcairn took the light companies from the Fourth and 10th Regiments to the left. Parker, recognizing the hopelessness of confrontation against such overwhelming force, gave orders. In his own deposition, taken April 25, 1775, Parker stated: "We gathered on the green in said Lexington to consult what to do, and concluded not to be discovered nor meddle nor make with the soldiers unless they should insult us. Upon their sudden approach I immediately ordered my company to disperse and not to fire." Who fired the first shot remains one of the enduring mysteries of American history. Suddenly, a shot 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.

The eight men killed that morning were