Patriots' Day 1775

Our missionaries asked me to write up a description of Patriots' Day for their Church of Jesus Christ Cambridge Facebook page.

At about 10:15 p.m. on the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere left his home in the North End of Boston and walked to his rowboat, hidden under a wharf. With muffled oars, two co-patriots rowed him across the harbor to Charlestown, within sight of the British Navy’s warship, The Somerset. He had earlier instructed another patriot to hang two lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church: ‘two if by sea,’ after he learned from an informant that the army was planning a surprise assault that night. In Charlestown, Revere borrowed a horse and set off on his main objective: to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington that the ‘Regulars’ were marching to Lexington to capture them (and have them hung for treason.) Revere would never have cried out, “The British are coming,” he and the American colonists considered themselves British and were fighting for what they believed were their rights as English freemen.

 Revere was nearly captured by two ‘regulars’ in Charlestown. He successfully eluded them and changed his course to ride through modern-day Medford (Mystic) and Arlington (Menotomy). He reached Lexington without further incident, woke Hancock and Adams, and headed to Concord to warn the townspeople that the army’s second order was to capture the hidden munitions in their town.

Outside Lexington, Revere was surrounded by ten armed officers.

 “If you go an inch further you are a dead man!” one man cried.

The redcoats took Revere’s horse and left him to walk the three miles back to Lexington.

 

In Lexington, the redcoats arrived at dawn and were met on the Green (now known as the Battlegreen) by Lexington militia, armed and ready to bar their way. A shot went off, to this day it is debated by whom, and the tired redcoats started firing without orders. The militiamen returned fire and when the smoke cleared, eight colonists lay dead.

 The regulars continued to Concord, where the sought-for munitions had been carefully hidden among the houses of the town. About 100 regulars met an armed band of about 400 militiamen at the North Bridge. A firefight ensued and the redcoats fell back from the bridge to rejoin their main body.

 All day long, militiamen streamed towards the retreating army, coming from towns as far as forty miles away.

 Arriving back in Lexington, having endured attacks by militiamen all along the road, the beleaguered army met Lord Percy and reinforcements from Boston. From there, fierce fighting continued on the long march back to Boston. The troops were exhausted from their thirty-mile midnight march through a hostile countryside filled with ringing church bells, alarming the inhabitants of their ‘secret’ mission. Boston lay another ten-mile march away. In Menotomy (now Arlington), 5000 minutemen met the retreating troops. Lord Percy ordered a house-to-house search for snipers and the regulars ransacked houses and set some on fire.

  After the redcoats arrived back in Boston, militiamen successfully blockaded the narrow neck of land that connected Boston to the mainland, effectively laying siege to Boston and the occupying army. Less than a year later, the British army and navy left Boston peaceably on March 17, 1776. To this day, Boston schoolchildren enjoy a holiday, not for St. Patrick’s Day, but for Evacuation Day.

 

Boston saw no further action in the ensuing war, though many of its militiamen joined the Continental Army and fought valiantly for their independence.