It is January 7th. Welcome to Episode 7 of History in a Year. Today, the talking stops and the shooting begins. After a long winter of tension, General Gage sends 700 elite troops into the countryside to seize colonial gunpowder. We ride with Paul Revere, stand on the nervous grass of Lexington Green, and witness the moment a band of farmers fired back at the North Bridge in Concord, changing the world forever.
STEPHEN: Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH: Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH: And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: It is January 7th. Welcome to Episode 7. Yesterday, we saw Boston under the crushing weight of the Intolerable Acts. We saw the city starving, and the rest of the colonies rallying to send aid.
LEAH: In the fall of 1774, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia—we’ll touch more on their politics later—but the key takeaway is that they sent a petition to King George III asking for peace. They basically said, “We are loyal subjects, just take away the taxes and the soldiers.”
STEPHEN: But the King refused to even read it. In fact, he declared the New England governments to be in a state of rebellion. He told General Gage in Boston: “Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.”
LEAH: So, as the snow melts in the spring of 1775, the atmosphere in Massachusetts is electric. General Gage is sitting in Boston with about 3,000 soldiers. But outside the city, in the countryside, the “Minutemen” are drilling.
STEPHEN: These were elite militia units. They were hand-picked, young, athletic men who promised to be ready to fight at “a minute’s warning.” They were stockpiling gunpowder, muskets, and cannons in barns and cellars all over the province.
LEAH: General Gage had a spy network—including, possibly, Dr. Benjamin Church, who was high up in the Patriot leadership. Gage knew exactly where the weapons were hidden. His target was the town of Concord, about 16 miles west of Boston.
STEPHEN: On April 14, 1775, Gage received secret orders from London to arrest the leaders of the rebellion—Samuel Adams and John Hancock—and to disarm the population. He decided to act.
LEAH: On the night of April 18th, Gage ordered 700 elite troops—Light Infantry and Grenadiers—to mobilize quietly. He didn’t tell the soldiers where they were going. He ordered the officers to wake them up one by one and march them to the waterfront.
STEPHEN: The plan was to row them across the Charles River under the cover of darkness, land them in Cambridge, and march them quickly to Concord to destroy the weapons before the colonists woke up.
LEAH: But Boston was a sieve. The Sons of Liberty had their own spies everywhere. They noticed the officers were missing from the taverns. They saw the longboats being lowered from the warships.
STEPHEN: Joseph Warren, the leader of the Boston patriots while Adams and Hancock were hiding in Lexington, realized what was happening. He summoned two riders: William Dawes and Paul Revere.
LEAH: Now, everyone knows the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” But the reality was much more complex. Revere didn’t just hop on a horse. He had to coordinate a signal first.
STEPHEN: Right. He was worried he might get caught before he could leave the city. So he instructed the sexton of the Old North Church, Robert Newman, to hang lanterns in the steeple as a backup signal to the patriots across the river in Charlestown.
LEAH: “One if by land, and two if by sea.” Since the British were taking the boats across the river, Newman hung two lanterns for less than a minute—just long enough to be seen, but not long enough to alert the British patrols.
STEPHEN: Revere then had two friends row him across the harbor right past the British warship Somerset. The moon was rising, and they had to row with muffled oars—they famously used a woman’s petticoat to wrap the oarlocks to keep them silent.
LEAH: Once he landed in Charlestown, the locals had a horse ready for him. It was a fast, strong mare named “Brown Beauty.” Revere took off into the night.
STEPHEN: He didn’t shout “The British are coming!” That would have been stupid. Most people in Massachusetts still considered themselves British. He shouted, “The Regulars are coming out!”
LEAH: He rode through Medford and Menotomy, waking up the captains of the militia. And this is the amazing part: as Revere rode on, the towns behind him woke up. Bells started ringing. Drums started beating. It was like a wave of noise spreading out from Boston.
STEPHEN: Revere made it to Lexington around midnight. He warned Adams and Hancock, who were staying at the Hancock-Clarke House. They fled to safety.
LEAH: Then, Revere was joined by William Dawes and a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott. They headed for Concord. But halfway there, they ran into a British patrol.
STEPHEN: Revere was captured. Dawes was thrown from his horse. But Samuel Prescott—the local doctor who had been out courting his fiancée—jumped a stone wall and escaped. He was the one who actually carried the warning to Concord.
LEAH: Meanwhile, the 700 British soldiers were having a miserable night. They had landed in a swamp. They were wet, muddy, and cold. And as they marched, they could hear the church bells ringing in every village they passed. They knew the secret was out.
STEPHEN: They reached Lexington just as the sun was rising, around 5:00 AM on April 19th.
LEAH: Waiting for them on Lexington Green were about 77 militia men, led by Captain John Parker. Parker was a veteran of the French and Indian War, but he was sick with tuberculosis. He sounded raspy and weak.
STEPHEN: Parker knew he couldn’t stop 700 soldiers with 77 farmers. This was a political statement, not a military blockade. He told his men: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
LEAH: The British vanguard, led by Major John Pitcairn, marched onto the Green. Pitcairn swung his sword and shouted, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels! Disperse!”
STEPHEN: Captain Parker saw the overwhelming numbers and ordered his men to disperse. They started to walk away, but—crucially—they didn’t lay down their muskets. They carried them with them.
LEAH: Then, a shot rang out.
STEPHEN: We still don’t know who fired it. It might have been a nervous British soldier. It might have been a colonist hiding behind a stone wall. It might have been a pistol from an officer. But that single shot changed history.
LEAH: The British soldiers, exhausted and tense, panicked. They unleashed a volley into the retreating militia. Then they charged with bayonets.
STEPHEN: When the smoke cleared, eight Americans were dead on the grass. Nine were wounded. Only one British soldier was slightly grazed. The British officers got their men back in line, gave a cheer, and marched on to Concord.
LEAH: But they had kicked the hornet’s nest. While the British searched Concord for weapons—burning some gun carriages and dumping musket balls into a pond—thousands of militia were swarming towards the town.
STEPHEN: At the North Bridge in Concord, about 400 militia gathered on a hill looking down at the British guard. They saw smoke rising from the town center. They thought the British were burning their homes.
LEAH: Joseph Hosmer, the adjutant, shouted, “Will you let them burn the town down?”
STEPHEN: They marched down the hill, two by two, towards the bridge. The British soldiers tried to pull up the planks of the bridge to stop them. Then, the British fired a warning shot, followed by a volley that killed two Americans—Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer.
LEAH: Major John Buttrick, the militia commander, shouted the order that turned rebellion into revolution: “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire!”
STEPHEN: The Americans fired a disciplined volley. Three British soldiers fell dead. Several officers were wounded. The British broke and ran.
LEAH: This was the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” It was the first time colonial troops had fired on the King’s army under orders.
STEPHEN: The British began their retreat back to Boston around noon. And this is where the real battle happened. It wasn’t a set-piece battle. It was a 16-mile gauntlet of death.
LEAH: By now, nearly 4,000 militia had arrived from as far away as Worcester and Salem. They didn’t stand in lines. They hid behind stone walls, trees, and houses. They fired, ran ahead, reloaded, and fired again.
STEPHEN: The British were trapped on the road. They were running out of ammunition. They were exhausted. It was a slaughter. If a British relief column hadn’t met them at Lexington with cannons, the entire force might have been captured or killed.
LEAH: When the British finally stumbled back into Charlestown at sunset, they had lost 73 killed and 174 wounded. The Americans lost 49 killed.
STEPHEN: That night, the campfires of the militia formed a ring around Boston. The Siege of Boston had begun.
LEAH: The politics were over. The petitions were trash. As John Adams said when he heard the news: “The die was cast, the Rubicon passed.”
STEPHEN: Join us tomorrow for Episode 8. The war has begun, but the colonists need cannons to drive the British out of Boston. We are going to meet a bookseller named Henry Knox and a furious shopkeeper named Benedict Arnold as they target Fort Ticonderoga.
LEAH: I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.