I’m diverting a little bit from my usual topic of the Civil War to take a look back at the a page from the history of the Revolutionary War. On the night of April 18th, and into the morning of Paul Revere and William Dawes rode to Concord, Massachusetts, in order to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were coming to arrest them and seize their weapons. Revere was captured but Dawes and Samuel Prescott, who had joined them along the way, escaped and continued toward Concord. Dawes later fell from his horse, but Prescott, who knew the area well enough to navigate at night, made it to Concord in time to warn the Sons of Liberty.
Protests had been taking place since 1765 over increased taxation and other indignities, resulting most notably in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and threw English tea overboard. The grievances against the imperial authorities were many, but they found their voice in one familiar phrase: “No taxation without representation.”
In the early dawn of April 19th, Captain John Parker, commander of the militiamen at Lexington, ordered, “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they want a war let it begin here.” And it did — American Minutemen fired the “shot heard round the world,” as immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting the British on Lexington Green and at Concord’s Old North Bridge.
A year later, American Patriots formalized their grievances in the Declaration of Independence, and some 3 percent of the colonists took up arms to battle the well equipped British regulars for almost eight years, until victory was won.
In 1787, our Patriot founders codified a Constitution of Government for their hard-won republic.
Don’t forget to take time out during your weekend to remember the patriots who formed this country – and to remember that this is the 234th Anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride.
From the Patriot Post