Publius Forum …It's What's Happening NOW!

On April 19, 1775, British Redcoats and American colonists fired on one another on the green in Lexington, Massachusetts, about 20 miles from Boston. This “shot heard around the world” kicked off the American Revolutionary War and forever changed the world.

Our schools are probably not teaching much about this any more, as left-wing ideology and anti-Americanism is far more important to “educators” today than anything important like the Revolutionary War.

But our war to separate from Britain’s control and to stand on our own two feet forever changed the world and gave birth to the United States of America, the greatest country ever created by man.

It all started on evening of April 18 when British forces began filing onto the streets of Boston to being their mission to disarm the colonists. The plan was to fan out from Boston to confiscate the arms and ammunition of suspected colonial revolutionaries.

While it was supposed to be a secret mission, the stealth of the effort quickly failed. The British movements sent Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott to horse to begin to spread the word that “The British Are Coming” so that colonists could steel themselves for the struggle that was sure to come in the morning.

By the morning of the 19th, about 700 regular British troops under the command of General Thomas Gage had arrived in Lexington, about 20 miles south west from Boston. There they confronted only about 77 armed militiamen. Shots quickly rang out, though it is unknown which side fired first. With the militiamen so badly out numbered, they took the brunt of the exchange and suffered eight dead, including their third-in-command, Ensign Robert Munroe. The British only lost one soldier.

The militiamen withdrew to the town of Concord, about eight miles away. There, about 400 militia clashed with 100 redcoat regulars from three companies of the King’s troops at about 11:00 a.m. This time, it was the redcoats turn to withdraw from Concord’s North Bridge as they fell back to their main body of troops in the town.

The battle was a surprise win for the militiamen who lost 49 killed, 39 wounded, and five missing while the British under Lt. Col. Francis Smith found a steeper price, losing 73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing.

After the Battle of Concord, the British began withdrawing back the twenty miles to Boston where their main forces were stationed, and along the way they were harassed, shot at, and hectored by every colonial they encountered. The whole campaign was a black eye for General Gage’s forces and emboldened the colonials to start the war in earnest.

The twin actions at Lexington and Concord were immortalized in verse by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1837 poem “Concord Hymn,” in which he used the phrase “the shot heard around the world.”

Emerson, whose grandfather witnessed the battle in Concord, opened his poem, writing, “By the rude bridge that arched the flood/Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled/Here once the embattled farmers stood/And fired the shot heard round the world.”

The description was apt as the Revolutionary War was one of the first few “world wars” in which forces from several European countries encountered forces in the New World.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, X at WTHuston, or Truth Social at @WarnerToddHuston.