Battles of Lexington and Concord

The American Revolutionary War began on 19 April 1775 in the countryside west of Boston. A British force sent to seize militia supplies at Concord, Massachusetts, exchanged fire with colonial militia at Lexington and at Concord's North Bridge, then fought its way back towards Boston through a running battle that lasted the rest of the day. By nightfall thousands of New England militiamen had gathered around Boston, and the conflict that became the American Revolution was under way.

After the Boston Tea Party of 1773, Parliament punished Massachusetts with the Coercive Acts, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts. General Thomas Gage, the military governor, dissolved the provincial government, but colonists formed their own Provincial Congress, which controlled most of the colony outside Boston and urged militias to train. New England militias had fought alongside British troops in the French and Indian War only a decade or two earlier. In February 1775 Parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion, and in April Gage received orders to disarm the rebels.

On the night of 18 April about 700 British regulars under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith crossed by boat from Boston towards Cambridge, ordered to march some 17 miles to Concord and destroy military stores there. Patriot leaders had expected such a move and had already moved most of the supplies. Lanterns hung in the steeple of the Old North Church signalled the route, and riders including Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott spread the warning. Revere was captured on the road, but bells, drums and further riders roused militia across eastern Massachusetts.

At sunrise on 19 April the British advance guard under Major John Pitcairn reached Lexington, where around 80 militiamen under Captain John Parker stood on the common, not blocking the road. Parker ordered them to disperse. In the confusion a shot was fired; who fired it has never been settled, and witnesses on both sides gave conflicting accounts. The regulars fired volleys and charged with bayonets. Eight militiamen died and ten were wounded, against one British soldier wounded.

At Concord the British searched the town, disabled three heavy cannon and burned gun carriages, but found little else. Meanwhile militia from surrounding towns gathered on a hill above the Old North Bridge, which was held by fewer than 100 light infantry. When smoke rose from the town, about 400 militiamen advanced on the bridge. The British fired, killing two men from Acton, and the militia returned a volley that killed or wounded several regulars and sent them fleeing back to the town.

Smith's column left Concord around noon and soon came under fire from militia posted behind walls, trees and buildings along the road. At places such as Meriam's Corner and a sharp bend later called the Bloody Angle, the British were caught in crossfire. Near Lexington, Smith was wounded and his exhausted men were running out of ammunition when a relief brigade of about 1,000 under Earl Percy arrived with artillery. The combined force of some 1,700 pushed on through Menotomy, where the heaviest fighting of the day took place house by house, and reached Charlestown at dusk. By then around 4,000 militiamen had taken part. British losses were 73 killed, 174 wounded and 53 missing; colonial losses were 49 killed, 39 wounded and 5 missing.

The next morning a militia army of more than 15,000 from across New England surrounded Boston, beginning a siege. The Provincial Congress quickly gathered sworn statements blaming the British for firing first and got them printed in London before Gage's own report arrived. In Virginia, George Washington wrote that America's peaceful plains must now be "drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves". Ralph Waldo Emerson later immortalised the North Bridge fight in his "Concord Hymn".

Our 1715 map shows the British colonies in North America, and our 1783 map shows the United States at the end of the war that began here.