Lexington and Concord: The Revolutionary War Begins

American minutemen confronted British regulars at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge in the opening engagements of the Revolutionary War. The "shot heard round the world" killed eight colonists at Lexington, but the militia's fierce counterattack along the road back to Boston inflicted 273 British casualties, proving the rebellion was real. The engagements of April 19, 1775, were the culmination of months of escalating tension between the colonial population and the British garrison in Boston. General Thomas Gage had dispatched troops to seize military stores at Concord, a poorly kept secret that the colonial intelligence network had anticipated. At Lexington, Captain John Parker's seventy-seven militiamen faced over 200 British advance troops under Major John Pitcairn. Parker's orders to his men were ambiguous: stand your ground but don't fire unless fired upon. The volley that killed eight Americans and wounded ten dispersed the militia in minutes. The British continued to Concord, where they discovered most of the military stores had already been moved. At Concord's North Bridge, a larger force of militia fired on British soldiers searching houses, killing three and wounding nine. The British column began its retreat to Boston around noon, and for the next eighteen miles, militia companies from surrounding towns converged on the road, firing from behind cover in a style of warfare the regulars were unprepared to counter. British losses mounted through the afternoon until a relief column from Boston met the battered force near Lexington. The combined British force fought its way back to Charlestown under continuous fire, arriving exhausted after dark. The day's fighting proved that the colonial militia, while incapable of standing against regulars in open battle, could inflict unacceptable casualties through guerrilla-style tactics on favorable terrain.