114 Chapter 4 The American Revolution
Two weeks after the battle of Lexington and Concord, Ralph Earl, a colonial militiaman from
Connecticut, was ordered to make sketches and paintings of what had transpired. Earl revisited the
battlefield and interviewed those who had fought. He was an accurate painter, but not a very good
one. Each of the British formations, facing the officers, contains exactly twenty-five men.The Shot Heard Round the World
The actions of the First Continental Congress led the
British authorities to force a showdown with their
bumptious colonial offspring. “The New England
governments are in a state of rebellion,” George III
announced. “Blows must decide whether they are to
be subject to this country or independent.” General
Thomas Gage, veteran of Braddock’s ill-fated expedi-
tion against Fort Duquesne and now commander-in-
chief of all British forces in North America, had
already been appointed governor of Massachusetts.
Some 4,000 Redcoats were concentrated in Boston,
camped on the town common—a place once peace-
fully reserved for the citizens’ cows.
Parliament echoed with demands for a show of
strength in America. After the Tea Party the general
impression was that resistance to British rule was
concentrated in Massachusetts. Based on the behav-
ior of colonial militia in the French and Indian War,
most British subjects did not think people in the
other colonies would be inclined to fight outside
their own region. General James Grant announced
that with 1,000 men he “would undertake to go
from one end of America to the other, and geld all
the males, partly by force and partly by a little coax-
ing.” Some opposed the idea of crushing the
colonists, and others believed that it could not be
easily managed, but they were a small minority. The
House of Commons listened to Edmund Burke’s
magnificent speech on conciliating the colonies and
then voted 270 to 78 against him.
The London government decided to use troops
against Massachusetts in January 1775, but the order
did not reach General Gage until April. In the interim
both sides were active. Parliament voted new troop
levies and declared Massachusetts to be in a state of
rebellion. The Massachusetts Patriots, as they were
now calling themselves, formed an extralegal provin-
cial assembly, reorganized the militia, and began
training “Minute Men” and other fighters. Soon
companies armed with anything that would shoot
were drilling on town commons throughout
Massachusetts and in other colonies too.
When Gage received his orders on April 14, he
acted swiftly. The Patriots had been accumulating
arms at Concord, some twenty miles west of Boston.
On the night of April 18, Gage dispatched 700 crack
troops to seize these supplies. The Patriots were pre-
pared. Paul Revere and other horsemen rode off to
alert the countryside and warn John Hancock and
Sam Adams, leaders of the provincial assembly, whose
arrests had been ordered.
When the Redcoats reached Lexington early the
next morning, they found the common occupied by
about seventy Minute Men. After an argument, the
Americans began to withdraw. Then someone fired a
shot. There was a flurry of gunfire and the Minute