Paul Revere's Ride (35 page)

Militiaman Amos Muzzey mustered on Lexington Green with Captain Parker’s company. This is one of the few surviving paintings of an American private who fought on April 19. One sees in this strong face the seriousness of purpose that contributed to the outcome of that event. Fifty-three years later, Muzzey was buried between his two wives in Lexington. His stone reads, “… reserved for Mr. Amos Muzzey and wives, and no other corpse to be laid there.” In death as in life, Private Muzzey fiercely defends his own turf. (Lexington Historical Society)

Colonel Smith would have many detractors before this day was done, but one must respect his remarkable performance in recovering control of his men under fire on Lexington common. Many a life was saved by his intervention. He wrote later that “I was desirous of putting a stop to all further slaughter of those deluded people.” To have succeeded in doing so was no small achievement.
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While the Regulars shuffled resentfully into line, Colonel Smith ordered his officers to gather round him. At long last he told them of their mission. For the first time they learned that Concord was their destination. The officers were appalled. The thought of marching farther into this hostile countryside with green and undisciplined troops, after the terrible accident that had just happened, filled them with horror. Several junior officers spoke out bravely at risk to their careers, urging Smith to “give up the idea of prosecuting his march.” They reminded him about the “certainty of the country being alarmed and assembling.” They asserted that the original purpose of the mission had become “impracticable,” and recommended a speedy return to Boston. Colonel Smith listened politely and refused. He explained his reasons in terms that any soldier could understand, telling his officers simply that he “had his orders” and was “determined to obey them.”
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While the officers met with their commander, the men stood in their ranks. One remembered that “we waited a considerable time there.” At last the officers’ call ended, and the order to march was given. Smith was concerned about the state of his troops. To revive their spirits and empty their weapons, he allowed them to fire a victory salute and give three cheers. A heavy volley of 800 muskets, and the soldiers’ triumphant shouts echoed across the empty Common. Then the sergeants barked their harsh commands, and the column began to move toward Concord.

In the houses and woods along the road, the people of Lexington listened bitterly to the British cheers and began to count their dead. Seven Lexington men had been killed and also one of the Yankee prisoners taken on the road, the unlucky Woburn man who was shot while “trying to escape.” Nine other Lexington men were wounded, some severely. The toll was heavy in that small town. Eight pairs of fathers and sons had mustered on the Common. Five of those eight were shattered by death. Most families in that small community suffered the loss of a kinsman—if not a father or son, then an uncle or cousin.

As the British troops disappeared into the west, the people of
the town gathered on the Common. There was at first a sense of shock, a terrible numb and empty feeling of cruel and bitter loss. Then there was another raw emotion: deep, consuming, abiding anger. The people of Lexington asked themselves, who were these arrogant men in their proud red coats? By what right did they act as they did?

Other militiamen were now arriving from the far corners of the town. Those who had slept through the alarm began to appear, weapons in hand. Captain Parker mustered his company once again on the bloody ground. There were not sixty militia as before, but twice that number. The men were silent, grim and pensive. Most had lost friends and relatives only a few minutes before. Some wore bloody bandages. A few had faces and shirts blackened by powder stains. Their weapons were no better than before, but they replenished their ammunition from the dwindling store in the meetinghouse.

This time, there were no consultations or debates. With a few terse words of command, Captain Parker ordered his company to fall in. The men were no longer in doubt about what to do. They were ready to give battle again, but on different terms.

A Provincial Protest Becomes a World War

We saw a large body of men drawn up with the greatest regularity.… with as much order as the best disciplined troops.”

—British Ensign Jeremy Lister in Concord

They began to march by divisions down upon us from their left in a very military manner.

—British Lt. Wm. Sutherland, at the North Bridge

Whoever dares to look upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about.

—Brigadier Lord Hugh Percy after returning from Lexington

A
MERICANS HAVE A VIVID IMAGE
of the fighting that began on the morning of April 19, 1775. In our mind’s eye, we see a scattering of individual minutemen crouched behind low granite walls, banging away at a disciplined mass of British Regulars along the Battle Road. We celebrate the spontaneity of the event, and the autonomy of the Americans who took part in it. As a writer put it in the 19th century, “Every one appeared to be his own commander.”
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That familiar folk-memory contains an important element of truth. One American militiaman testified that many times in the course of a long day “each one sought his own place and opportunity to attack and annoy the enemy from behind trees, rocks, fences and buildings.” But in more general terms, the idea that every minuteman fought his own private war against the British
army is very much mistaken. It is wrong in the same way that the myth of the solitary midnight rider is inaccurate, and the legend of the spontaneous Middlesex rising is far off the mark. After close study of this event, the distinguished soldier and military historian John Galvin concludes that the clash at Lexington and Concord is “the least known of all American battles.” Certainly it is one of the most misunderstood.
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The fighting on this day was not merely an open running skirmish along the Battle Road. It was also a series of controlled engagements, in which the Middlesex farmers fought as members of formal military units. Here again, America remembers the individual and forgets the common effort. It celebrates the spontaneous act, but shows little interest in its unique heritage of collective action in the cause of freedom. Let us look again at the events of this fateful day.

At Concord, the town fathers had been awakened by Dr. Samuel Prescott early in the morning of April 19. According to the custom in New England, they went to talk with their minister, William Emerson. In the cautious manner of these communities they decided to muster the militia immediately, and also to confirm the accuracy of the alarm by sending several gallopers to Lexington.

One of these “posts” was Reuben Brown, a Concord saddler who went riding down the Boston Road toward the first streaks of dawn in the eastern sky. Brown reached Lexington just before the Regulars arrived. He spoke briefly with Captain Parker on the Green, and was present when the firing began. Without waiting to see how it ended, Reuben Brown turned his horse, galloped home, and told Major John Buttrick what he had witnessed. Buttrick asked if the Regulars were firing ball. Brown answered, “I do not know, but think it probable.”
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Concord’s men of military age gathered together at the Wright Tavern. Like the Lexington militia, they held an impromptu town meeting among themselves. All agreed that the town should defend itself. The young men of the minute companies wished to march eastward and confront the Regulars outside the town. The men of middle age in the militia preferred to stand and fight in Concord. The town elders on the alarm list thought it wise to wait while their numbers continued to grow. After some discussion, it was decided in the consensual manner of a Massachusetts town that all of these things should be done.
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The minutemen marched off, spoiling for a fight. They went to the brow of a hill about a mile east of the town center, and looked out across the open countryside. Suddenly they caught their first sight of the advancing British force. It was a breathtaking spectacle: a long flowing ribbon of scarlet and white and sparkling steel that stretched a quarter mile along the road, and was moving relentlessly in their direction. Militiaman Thaddeus Blood, aged nineteen, wrote, “The sun was rising and shined on their arms, and they made a noble appearance in their red coats and glistening arms.”
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The British commander saw the New England soldiers on the hill, and ordered his light infantry to deploy against them. The minutemen watched in fascination as the head of the long red formation suddenly opened outward to form a skirmish line. The young minutemen of Concord counted their own small numbers, and concluded that their elders had been right after all. They decided to withdraw into the town.
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The retreat was done in high style. Minuteman Amos Barrett recalled that the Concord men stayed on their hill until the British “got within 100 rods [1650 feet], then we was ordered to about face and marched before them.” He remembered hearing “our drums and fifes a going, and also the B[ritish]. We had grand musick.” The same ritual was repeated several times, as the minutemen retreated slowly before the advancing British troops.
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In Concord, the older men of the militia companies and the alarm lists were making ready to receive the Regulars in the village. They took a position on a high hill above the meetinghouse, near the town’s tall liberty pole with its flag flying defiantly in the westerly breeze.
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The hill was a strong position, with long views to the east. Here the Concord men consulted yet again. Their militant minister William Emerson told his fellow townsmen, “Let us stand our ground. If we die, let us die here!” One man remembered that many others “were for making a stand, notwithstanding the superiority in numbers.”
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Some were of a different opinion. The debate continued on Meetinghouse Hill until suddenly the young men streamed back into town. Behind them the British column appeared in the distance, coming on at a quick march. The sun was rising higher in a bright blue sky, and the morning light reflected brilliantly on the burnished weapons of the advancing infantry. Emerson remembered the vivid spectacle of the Regulars “glittering in arms, advancing toward us with the greatest celerity.”
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As the Regulars drew near, the throb of their drums began to be heard. William Emerson passed among the militia, speaking words of encouragement to the young soldiers. He came to Harry Gould, eighteen years old, who was “panic-struck at the first sound of the British drums.” Emerson clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Stand your ground, Harry! Your cause is just and God will bless you!” Young Harry Gould took heart from William Emerson’s words, and fought bravely through the rest of that long day. Others did the same, and long remembered the example of the man who had inspired them. After the battle a Concord soldier named his two sons “William” and “Emerson.”
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On military questions, the men of Concord tended to defer to a small elite of elected officers who stood with them on the hill. The colonel of the Middlesex regiment was a Concord man, James Barrett, sixty-four years old, a prosperous miller who had held many offices of trust in the town. Concord’s five company captains in 1776 included Barrett’s son-in-law Captain George Minot; his brother-in-law Captain Thomas Hubbard; and his nephew Captain Thomas Barrett. These leaders were respected in the town for their caution and prudence.
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But some of the younger men thought them a little too prudent. Their leader was Lieutenant Joseph Hosmer, thirty-nine years old, a prosperous farmer and furniture-maker. Hosmer was not trusted by the town’s elders. His only jobs had been constable and hog-reeve, which went routinely to the newly married man. But in town meeting he was an eloquent and outspoken Whig, one of the few who could get the better of the polished Tory lawyer Daniel Bliss in political debate. In one of their exchanges, a Loyalist
watched as lawyer Bliss “frowned, bit his lip, pounded with his boot-heel, and in a word showed marked discomposure.”