Road to Liberty: Battles of Lexington and Concord

After years of intensifying hostilities between the British monarchy and the colonists, the prospect of war became inevitable. With Paul Revere’s fearless warnings that the British were marching to Concord to seize American arms, the local Minutemen–the armed militias formed in small towns to defend colonists' lives and properties–prepared to defend homes and ammunition stocks. On April 19, 1775, the British arrived at Lexington and encountered approximately 77 American Minutemen led by Captain John Parker. The first shot was red. To this day, no one knows by whom. It became known as the “shot heard ‘round the world.” The British fired a volley, mortally wounding eight American heroes, the rest of thousands of soldiers to lay down their lives to achieve independence from Britain.  

Later that morning, after the first shots were fired in Lexington, British soldiers, also known as Redcoats, arrived at Concord to destroy American military supplies. At the sight of smoke, 400 daring colonists descended down Punkatasset Hill towards the North Bridge to confront the British troops, where the British opened fire, killing 49 Americans. American soldiers then relentlessly ambushed the Redcoats, forcing them to retreat 12 miles back to Boston. The battles of Lexington and Concord included some 1,700 British regulars and over 4,000 colonists and raged over 16 miles along the Bay Road from Boston to Concord. One British soldier later was said to have recalled that the Americans “fought like bears, and I would as soon storm hell as fight them again.”