Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775
“Bloody Butchery by the British Troops,” broadside by Ezekiel Russell, 1775 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
By April 1775, reconciliation between England and the thirteen colonies had failed. Parliament had declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. On the night of April 18, General Thomas Gage sent 700 British soldiers to Concord to seize patriot supplies stored there.
At dawn on April 19 the British reached Lexington, just east of Concord, and found seventy American militiamen waiting. They were determined to prevent the British from getting to Concord. In a tense moment, a shot was fired. Though it’s unclear which side fired that first shot, history remembers it as the start of the Revolutionary War.
