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The Battles of Lexington and Concord
were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary
War.
They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of
Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The
battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the
Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland
of British North America.
About 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis
Smith, were ordered to capture and destroy military supplies that
were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Dr.
Joseph Warren alerted the colonists of this. The Patriot colonists
had received intelligence weeks before the expedition which warned
of an impending British search, and had moved much, but not all, of
the supplies to safety. They had also received details about British
plans on the night before the battle, and information was rapidly
supplied to the militia.
The first shots were fired
just as the sun was rising at Lexington. The militia were
outnumbered and fell back. Other British colonists, hours later at
the North Bridge in Concord, fought and defeated three companies of
the king's troops. The outnumbered soldiers of the British Army fell
back from the Minutemen after a pitched battle in open territory.
More
Minutemen arrived soon thereafter and inflicted heavy damage on
the British regulars as they marched back towards Boston. Upon
returning to Lexington, Smith's expedition was rescued by
reinforcements under Hugh, Earl Percy. A combined force of fewer
than 1,700 men marched back to Boston under heavy fire in a tactical
withdrawal and eventually reached the safety of Charlestown.
The British failed to maintain the secrecy and speed required to
conduct a successful strike into hostile territory, yet they did
destroy some weapons and supplies. Most British regulars returned to
Boston. The occupation of surrounding areas by the Massachusetts
Militia that evening marked the beginning of the Siege of Boston.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his Concord Hymn described the first shot
fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge as the "shot heard 'round
the world".
The British Army's infantry, nicknamed "redcoats" (but dubbed "lobsterbacks"
and sometimes devils by the colonists), had occupied Boston since
1768 and had been augmented by naval forces and marines to enforce
the Intolerable Acts. General Thomas Gage, the military governor and
commander-in-chief, still had no control over Massachusetts outside
of Boston, where the Massachusetts Government Act had increased
tensions between the Patriot (Whig) majority, and the Loyalist
(Tory) minority. Gage's plan was to avoid conflict by removing
military supplies from the Whig militias using small, secret and
rapid strikes. This struggle for supplies led to one British success
and then to several Patriot successes in a series of nearly
bloodless conflicts known as the Powder Alarms. Gage considered
himself to be a friend of liberty and attempted to separate his
duties as Governor of the colony and as General of an occupying
force. Edmund Burke described Gage's conflicted relationship with
Massachusetts by saying in Parliament, "An Englishman is the
unfittest person on Earth to argue another Englishman into slavery."
Further information: Minutemen (militia) and British Forces in
Boston (Winter 1774-1775)
This battle is generally described as the opening battle (s) of the
revolutionary war.
On April 14, 1775, Gage received instructions from Secretary of
State William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth to disarm the rebels, who
had supposedly hidden weapons in Concord, and to imprison the
rebellion's leaders. Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in
his commands.
On the morning of April 16, Gage ordered a mounted patrol of about
50 men under the command of Major Mitchell of the 5th Regiment into
the surrounding country to intercept messengers who might be out on
horseback. This patrol behaved differently from patrols sent out
from Boston in the past, staying out after dark and asking travelers
about the location of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. This had the
unintended effect of alarming many residents and increasing their
preparedness. The Lexington Militia in particular began to muster
early that evening, hours before receiving any word from Boston. A
well known story alleges that after nightfall one farmer, Josiah
Nelson, mistook the British patrol for the colonists and asked them,
"Have you heard anything about when the regulars are coming out?",
upon which he was slashed on his scalp with a sword. However, the
story of this outrageous incident was not published until over a
century later, which suggests that it may be little more than a
family myth.[2]
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith received orders from Gage on the
afternoon of April 18 with instructions that he was not to read them
until his troops were underway. They were to proceed from Boston
"with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize
and destroy… all Military stores… But you will take care that the
soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property."
Gage apparently used his discretion and did not issue written orders
for the arrest of rebel leaders.
Successful Colonial intelligence
The rebellion's ringleaders – with the exception of
Paul Revere and Joseph Warren – had all left Boston by April 8.
They had received word of Dartmouth's secret instructions to General
Gage from sources in London long before they had reached Gage
himself. Samuel Adams and John Hancock had fled Boston to the
Hancock-Clarke House, home of one of Hancock's relatives in
Lexington where they thought they would be safe.
The Massachusetts Militia had indeed been gathering a stock of
weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord, as well as an even greater
amount much further west in Worcester, but word reached the
Colonists that British officers had been observed examining the
roads to Concord. On April 8, they instructed people of the town to
remove the stores and distribute them among other towns nearby.
The Colonists were also aware of the upcoming mission on April 19,
despite it having been hidden from all the British rank and file and
even from all the officers on the mission. There is reasonable
speculation, although not proven, that the confidential source of
this intelligence was Margaret Gage, General Gage's New Jersey-born
wife, who had sympathies with the Colonial cause and a friendly
relationship with Warren.
Between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m on the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph
Warren told William Dawes and Paul Revere that the King's troops
were about to embark in boats from Boston bound for Cambridge and
the road to Lexington and Concord. Warren's intelligence suggested
that the most likely objectives of the British Army's movements
later that night would be the capture of Samuel Adams and John
Hancock. They worried less about the possibility of regulars
marching to Concord. The supplies at Concord were safe, after all,
but they thought their leaders in Lexington were unaware of the
potential danger that night. Revere and Dawes were sent out to warn
them and alert Colonists in nearby towns.
Further information: Old North Church
Dawes covered the southern land route by horseback across Boston
Neck and over the Great Bridge to Lexington. Revere first gave
instructions to send a signal to Charlestown and then he traveled
the northern water route. He crossed the Charles River by rowboat,
slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset at anchor. Crossings
were banned at that hour, but Revere safely landed in Charlestown
and rode to Lexington, avoiding the British patrol and later warning
almost every house along the route. The warned men and the
Charlestown colonists dispatched additional riders to the north.
After they arrived in Lexington, Revere, Dawes, Hancock, and Adams
discussed the situation with the militia assembling there. They
believed that the forces leaving the city were too large for the
sole task of arresting two men and that Concord was the main target.
The Lexington men dispatched riders in all directions (except south
to Waltham for unknown reasons), and Revere and Dawes continued
along the road to Concord. They met Samuel Prescott at about 1:00
a.m. In Lincoln, these three ran into a British patrol led by Major
Mitchell of the 5th Regiment and only Prescott managed to warn
Concord. Additional riders were sent out from Concord.
Revere and Dawes, as well as many other alarm riders, triggered a
flexible system of "alarm and muster" that had been carefully
developed months before, in reaction to the British colonists'
impotent response to the Powder Alarm. "Alarm and muster" was an
improved version of an old network of widespread notification and
fast deployment of local militia forces in times of emergency. The
colonists had periodically used this system all the way back to the
early years of Indian wars in the colony, before it fell into disuse
in the French & Indian War. In addition to other express riders
delivering their message, bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires and a
trumpet were used for rapid communication from town to town,
notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages
that they should muster their militias because the regulars in
numbers greater than 500 were leaving Boston, with possible hostile
intentions. These early warnings played a crucial role in assembling
a sufficient number of British colonial militia to inflict heavy
damage on the British regular army later in the day. Samuel Adams
and John Hancock were eventually moved to safety, first to what is
now Burlington and later to Billerica.
British Army and Marines move out
Around dusk, General Gage called a meeting of all of the senior
officers of his army at the Province House. He informed them that
orders from Lord Dartmouth had arrived, ordering him to take action
against the colonials. He also told them that the senior colonel of
his regiments, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, would command, with Major
John Pitcairn as his executive officer. The meeting adjourned around
8:30 p.m. After the meeting, Percy mingled with town folk on Boston
Common. According to one account, the discussion among persons there
turned to the unusual movement of the British soldiers in the town.
When Percy questioned one man further, the man replied, "Well, the
regulars will miss their aim", "What aim?" asked Percy, "Why, the
cannon at Concord" was the reply. Upon hearing this, Percy quickly
returned to Province House and relayed this information to General
Gage. Stunned, Gage issued orders to have the entire 1st Brigade
under arms, and ready to march at 4 a.m.
The British regulars, around 700 strong, were led by Lieutenant
Colonel Francis Smith. They were drawn from 11 of Gage's 13
occupying infantry regiments. For this expedition, Major John
Pitcairn commanded 10 elite light infantry companies, and Lieutenant
Colonel Benjamin Bernard commanded 11 grenadier companies.
Of the companies, Smith had about 350 men from the grenadier
companies (specialist assault troops) drawn from the 4th (King's
Own), 5th, 10th, 18th (Royal Irish), 23rd, 38th, 43rd, 47th, 52nd,
59th Regiments of Foot (infantry regiments); and the 1st Battalion,
Marines (They would not be called "Royal Marines " until 1802).
Protecting them were the light companies (fast moving flankers,
skirmishers and reconnaissance troops), around 320 men, from the 4th
(King's Own), 5th, 10th, 23rd, 38th, 43rd, 47th, 52nd, 59th
Regiments of Foot, and the 1st Battalion, Marines. The companies did
each have their own lieutenant, but the majority of the captains
commanding them were volunteers attached to them at the last minute,
from all the regiments stationed in Boston.
The British began to awaken their troops at 9 p.m. on the night of
April 18 and assembled them on the water's edge on the western end
of Boston common by 10 p.m. The British march to and from Concord
was a terribly disorganized experience from start to finish. The
boats used were naval barges that were packed so tightly that there
was no room to sit down. When they disembarked at Phipps Farm in
present day Cambridge, it was into waist-deep water at midnight.
After a lengthy halt to unload their gear, the approximately 700
regulars began their 17 mile (27 km) march to Concord at about 2
a.m. During the wait they were provided with extra ammunition, cold
salt pork, and hard sea biscuits. They did not carry knapsacks,
since they would not be encamped. They carried their haversacks
(food bags), canteens, muskets, and accoutrements, and found
themselves in wet, muddy shoes and soggy uniforms. As they marched
through Menotomy (modern Arlington), sounds of the colonial alarms
throughout the countryside caused the few officers who were aware of
their mission to realize that they had lost the element of surprise.
“We got all over the bay and landed on the opposite shore betwixt
twelve and one OClock and was on our March by one, which was at
first through some swamps and slips of the Sea till we got into the
Road leading to Lexington soon after which the Country people begun
to fire their alarm guns light their Beacons, to raise the Country.
. . . To the best of my recollection about 4 oClock in the morning
being the 19th of April the 5 front Compys. was ordered to Load
which we did.”
Source: Jeremy Lister (Ens. Jeremy Lister, 10th Regiment of Foot),
Concord Fight. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931.
About 3 a.m, Colonel Smith sent Major Pitcairn ahead with the
latter's ten companies of light infantry and ordered him to quick
march to Concord. At about 4 a.m., he made the wise but belated
decision to send word back to Boston asking for reinforcements.
Battles
Lexington
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As the British Army's advance guard under Pitcairn entered Lexington
at sunrise on April 19, 1775, 77 Lexington militiamen, led by
Captain John Parker, emerged from Buckman Tavern and stood in ranks
on the village common watching them, and spectators (somewhere
between 40 and 100) watched from along the side of the road. Of
these militiamen, nine had the surname Harrington, seven Munroe,
four Parker, three Tidd, three Locke, and three Reed. (Lexington,
incidentally, had no minutemen; the town never voted to establish a
minute company.)
Parker was later supposed to have made a statement that is now
engraved in stone at the site of the battle: "Stand your ground;
don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it
begin here." He instead told his men to stand fast, don't molest the
King's troops and to let them pass, according to his sworn
deposition in 1775 after the fight.
“I, John Parker, of lawful Age, and Commander of the Militia in
Lexington, do testify and declare, that on the 19th Instant in the
Morning, about one of the Clock, being informed that there were a
Number of Regular Officers, riding up and down the Road, stopping
and insulting People as they passed the Road; and also was informed
that a Number of Regular Troops were on their March from Boston in
order to take the Province Stores at Concord, ordered our Militia to
meet on the Common in said Lexington to consult what to do, and
concluded not to be discovered, nor meddle or make with said Regular
Troops (if they should approach) unless they should insult or molest
us; and, upon their sudden Approach, I immediately ordered our
Militia to disperse, and not to fire:—Immediately said Troops made
their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight
of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us.”
Source: A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s
Troops. Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1775.
A veteran of Indian wars, now slowly dying of tuberculosis, he knew
not to let his men be wasted in such a one-sided affair.
Rather than turn left towards Concord, Marine Lieutenant Jesse
Adair, at the head of the advance guard of light infantry companies
from the 4th, 5th and 10th Regiments of Foot, decided on his own to
protect the flank of his troops by first turning right and then
leading the companies down the common itself in a confused effort to
surround and disarm the militia. These men ran towards the Lexington
militia loudly crying "Huzzah!" to rouse themselves and to confuse
the militia. Major Pitcairn arrived from the rear of the advance
force and led his three companies to the left and halted them. The
remaining companies lay behind the village meeting house on the road
back towards Boston.
First shot
Pitcairn then apparently rode forward, waving his sword, and yelled
"Disperse, you rebels; damn you, throw down your arms and disperse!"
Captain Parker told his men instead to disperse and go home, but,
because of the confusion, the yelling all around, and due to the
raspiness of Parker's tubercular voice, some did not hear him, some
left very slowly, and none laid down arms. Both Parker and Pitcairn
ordered their men to hold fire, but suddenly a shot was fired from a
still unknown source.
”At 2 o’clock we began our march by wading through a very long ford
up to the middles; after going a few miles we took three or four
people who were going off to give intelligence; about five miles on
this side of a town called Lexington, which lay in our road, we
heard there were some hundreds of people collected together
intending to oppose us and stop our going on; at 5 o’clock we
arrived there, and saw a number of people, I believe between 200 and
300, formed in a common in the middle of town; we still continued
advancing, keeping prepared against an attack through without
intending to attack them; but on our coming near them they fired on
us two shots, upon which our men without any orders, rushed upon
them, fired and put them to flight; several of them were killed, we
could not tell how many, because they were behind walls and into the
woods. We had a man of the 10th light Infantry wounded, nobody else
was hurt. We then formed on the Common, but with some difficulty,
the men were so wild they could hear no orders; we waited a
considerable time there, and at length proceeded our way to
Concord.”
from: The British in Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant John
Barker of the King’s Own Regiment from November 15, 1774 to May 31,
1776. Notes by Elizabeth Ellery Dana. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1924.
Some witnesses among the regulars reported the first shot was fired
by a colonial onlooker from behind a hedge or around the corner of a
tavern. Some observers reported a mounted British officer firing
first. Both sides generally agreed that the initial shot did not
come from the men on the ground immediately facing each other.
Speculation arose later in Lexington that a man named Solomon Brown
fired the first shot from inside the tavern or from behind a wall.
Unsubstantiated allegations also arose that the British were ordered
to fire a "warning volley" that startled the Lexington troops into
firing. Recent speculation has focused on the possibility of a
negligent discharge or of multiple, possibly unrelated "first shots"
from both sides.
In truth, nobody knew then, nor knows today, who fired the first
shot of the American Revolution.
The first of four engravings by Amos Doolittle from 1775. Doolittle
visited the battle sites and interviewed soldiers and witnesses.
Contains controversial elements, possibly inaccuracies. Fire from
the militia may have occurred but is not depicted.
The first of four engravings by Amos Doolittle from 1775. Doolittle
visited the battle sites and interviewed soldiers and witnesses.
Contains controversial elements, possibly inaccuracies. Fire from
the militia may have occurred but is not depicted.
Witnesses at the scene described several intermittent shots fired
from both sides before the lines of regulars began to fire volleys
without receiving orders to do so. A few of the militiamen believed
at first that the regulars were only firing powder with no ball, but
then they realized the truth, and few, if any, in the militia
managed to load and return fire. The rest wisely ran for their
lives.
“We Nathaniel Mulliken, Philip Russell, [and 32 other men], All of
lawful age, and inhabitants of Lexington, in the County of
Middlesex…do testify and declare, that on the nineteenth in the
morning, being informed that…a body of regulars were marching from
Boston towards Concord…we were alarmed and having met at the place
of our company’s parade, were dismissed by our Captain, John Parker,
for the present, with orders to be ready to attend at the beat of
the drum. We further testify and declare that about five o’clock in
the morning, hearing our drum beat, we proceeded towards the parade,
and soon found that a large body of troops were marching towards us,
some of our company were coming to the parade, and others had
reached it, at which time, the company began to disperse, whilst our
backs were turned on the troops, we were fired on by them, and a
number of our men were instantly killed and wounded, not a gun was
fired by any person in our company on the regulars to our knowledge
before they fired on us, and continued firing until we had all made
our escape.”
Source: A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s
Troops. Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1775.
Pitcairn's horse was hit in two places. The regulars charged forward
with bayonets. Captain Parker witnessed his cousin Jonas run
through. Eight Massachusetts men were killed and ten were wounded
against only one British soldier of the 10th Foot wounded (his name
was Johnson, according to Ensign Jeremy Lister of that regt.,
present at this incident.) The eight British colonists killed, the
first to die in the Revolutionary War, were John Brown, Samuel
Hadley, Caleb Harrington, Jonathon Harrington, Robert Munroe, Isaac
Muzzey, Asahel Porter, and Jonas Parker. Jonathon Harrington,
fatally wounded by a British musket ball, managed to crawl back to
his home, and he died upon his doorstep. One wounded man, Prince
Estabrook, was a black slave who served in the town's militia.
The light infantry companies under Pitcairn at the common got beyond
their officers' control. They were firing in different directions
and preparing to enter private homes. Upon hearing the sounds of
muskets, Colonel Smith rode forward from the grenadier column. He
quickly found a drummer and ordered him to beat assembly. The
grenadiers arrived shortly thereafter, and, once they were rounded
up, the light infantry were then permitted to fire a victory volley,
after which the column was reformed and marched towards Concord.
Concord
The militiamen of Concord, uncertain of what had actually transpired
at Lexington, were not sure whether to wait until they could be
reinforced by troops from towns nearby, or to stay and defend the
town, or to move east and greet the British Army from superior
terrain. As the regulars began to approach, they did all of these.
The Minutemen watched from a hill as Smith deployed light infantry
against them. They began a series of marching retreats into the
town. Some had occupied a hill in the town and now argued about what
to do next, while others approached with the regulars behind them.
The Lincoln militia arrived and joined in the debate. Caution
prevailed, and Colonel James Barrett surrendered the town of Concord
and led the men across the North Bridge to a hill about a mile north
of town, where they could continue to watch the troop movements of
the British.
Regulars follow Gage's orders
Smith's troops divided into multiple forces to fulfill Gage's
orders. The 10th Regiment's company of grenadiers secured South
Bridge under Captain Mundy Pole, while seven companies of light
infantry under Captain Parsons secured the North Bridge near
Barrett's force. Captain Parsons took four of these companies (from
the 5th, 23rd, 38th and 52nd Regiments of Foot) up the road two
miles (3 km) past the bridge to search Barrett's property, two
companies (from the 4th and 10th Regiments of Foot) were sent across
the bridge to guard their return route, and one company (from the
43rd Regiment of Foot) remained guarding the bridge itself.
Using the detailed information provided by Loyalist spies, the
grenadier companies searched the small town for military supplies.
When the grenadiers arrived at Ephraim Jones's tavern, by the jail
on the South Bridge road, they found the door barred shut, and Jones
refused them entry. According to reports provided by local Tories,
Pitcairn knew cannon had been buried on the property, so, holding
the tavern keeper at gunpoint, he ordered him to show him where the
guns were buried. These turned out to be three massive pieces,
firing 24-pound shot, much too heavy to use defensively, but very
effective against fortifications, and capable of bombarding the
island city of Boston from the mainland (the source of these
formidable weapons remains a tantalising mystery). The grenadiers
smashed the trunnions of these three guns so they could not be
mounted. They also burned some gun carriages found in the village
meetinghouse, and when the fire spread to the meetinghouse itself,
local resident Martha Moulton persuaded the soldiers to help in a
bucket brigade to save the building.[4] Nearly a hundred barrels of
flour and salted food, and 550 pounds of musket balls, were thrown
into the millpond. Only improvised repairs were possible for the
cannon, but all the shot was recovered.
Barrett's house had been an arsenal weeks before but few weapons
remained now, and these were, according to family legend, quickly
buried in furrows to look like a crop had been planted.
The North Bridge
Colonel Barrett's troops, upon seeing smoke rising from the village
square and seeing only a few companies directly below them, agreed
(after consultation) to march back towards town from their vantage
point on Punkatasset Hill to a lower, closer flat hilltop about 300
yards (300 m) from the North Bridge over the Concord River. This
land belonged to Major John Buttrick, who led the Minuteman units
under Barrett. It was also their muster (training) field. Two
British companies from the 4th and 10th held this position, but they
marched in retreat down towards the bridge and yielded the hill to
Barrett's men.
Five full companies of Minutemen and five of militia from Acton,
Concord, Bedford and Lincoln occupied this hill along with groups of
other men streaming in, totaling at least 400 against the light
infantry companies from the 4th, 10th, and 43rd Regiments of Foot
under Captain Laurie, a force totaling about 90–95 men. Barrett
ordered the Massachusetts men to form one long line two deep on the
highway leading down to the bridge, and then he called for another
consultation. While overlooking North Bridge from the top of the
hill (which would after 1793 have a road built on it called Liberty
Street), Barrett and the other Captains discussed possible courses
of action. Captain Isaac Davis of Acton, whose troops had arrived
late, declared his willingness to defend a town not their own by
saying, "I'm not afraid to go, and I haven't a man that's afraid to
go."
At this moment, they first saw the smoke from the burning gun
carriages and barrels rising over Concord, and many thought the
regulars had set the town alight. Barrett ordered the men to load
their weapons but not to fire unless fired upon. Then he ordered
them to advance. Both British companies used as guards were ordered
to retreat back across the North Bridge, and one officer then tried
to pull up the loose planks of the bridge to impede the colonial
advance. Major Buttrick began to yell at the regulars to stop
harming the bridge. The Minutemen and militia advanced in column
formation on the light infantry, keeping to the highway only, since
the highway was surrounded by the spring floodwaters of the Concord
River.
There was no music, no flags on both sides, even though many years
later one old man who had been on the colonial side suddenly
remembered out of the blue that their fifer played "The White
Cockade", a popular Jacobite tune, in opposition to the Hanoverian
King George III. This is apocryphal at best, and few of the British
troops would have understood the meaning of "The White Cockade"
anyway, since the Scottish rebellion had been thirty years before.
In truth, neither side ever mentioned any flags or music at the
bridge that day in any sworn depositions at the time. British flank
companies carried no colors, and the militiamen and minutemen did
not mention using them at all.
The inexperienced Captain Walter Laurie of the 43rd Regiment of
Foot, in nominal command of this little detachment, then made a poor
tactical maneuver. When he found his summons for help to the
grenadiers downtown produced no results, he ordered his men to form
positions for "street firing" behind the bridge in a column running
perpendicular to the river. This formation was appropriate for
sending a large volume of fire into a narrow alley between the
buildings of a city, but not for an open path behind a bridge.
Confusion reigned as regulars retreating over the bridge tried to
form up in the street-firing position of the other troops.
Lieutenant William Sutherland, who was in the rear of the formation,
saw Laurie's mistake and ordered flankers to be sent out. But he was
from a company different from the men under his command, and only
four soldiers obeyed him. The remainder tried as best they could in
the confusion to follow the orders of the superior officer.
The opponents did NOT face each other in stereotypical Hollywood
movie fashion, i.e., like the two lines of an upper-case letter T
with the top horizontal line representing the Patriots and the
bottom vertical line representing both the bridge and Laurie's
British troops behind it, but rather like a group of clustered,
confused men on the British side trying to form a street-firing
position behind the bridge, facing the approaching line of colonists
who were still stuck marching toward the bridge in a column of men,
two abreast, on the causeway that was surrounded by spring
floodwaters.
A shot rang out, and this time there is certainty from depositions
taken from men on both sides afterwards that it came from the
British Army's ranks. It was likely a warning shot, fired by a
panicked, exhausted British soldier from the 43rd, according to
Laurie's letter to his commander after the fight. Two other regulars
then fired immediately after that, shots splashing in the river, and
then the narrow group up front, possibly thinking the order to fire
had been given, fired a ragged volley before Laurie could stop them.
Two of the Acton Minutemen, private Abner Hosmer and Captain Isaac
Davis, at the head of the line marching to the bridge, were hit and
killed instantly. Four more men were wounded, but the militia only
halted when Major Buttrick yelled the order, "Fire, for God's sake,
fellow soldiers, fire!", when the lines were separated by the
Concord River, the bridge, and only 50 yards (45 m). The few front
rows of colonists, bound by the road, and blocked from forming a
line of fire, managed to fire over each others' heads and shoulders
at the regulars. The musket balls plunged down out of the sky down
into the mass of regular troops. Four of the eight British officers
and sergeants at the bridge, leading from the front of their troops
as officers did in this era, were wounded by the volley of musketry
coming from the British colonists. At least three privates (Thomas
Smith, Patrick Gray and James Hall, all from the 4th (King's Own)
Regt of Foot's Light Company) were killed or mortally wounded, and
ten, including Lieutenant Sutherland, were wounded.
The regulars found themselves trapped in a situation where they were
both outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Leaderless, terrified at the
superior numbers of the enemy, their spirit broken, never having
experienced combat before, they abandoned their wounded, and fled to
the safety of the approaching grenadier companies coming from the
town center.
After the fight
The colonists were stunned by their success. No one had actually
believed each side would shoot and kill each other. Some advanced;
many more retreated; and some went home to see to the safety of
their homes and families. Colonel Barrett eventually began to
recover control and chose to divide his forces. He moved the militia
back to the hilltop 300 yards (270 m) away and sent Major Buttrick
with the Minutemen across the bridge to a defensive position on a
hill behind a stone wall.
Smith, leader of the British expedition, heard the exchange of fire
from his position in the town moments after he had received a
request for reinforcements from Laurie. Smith assembled two
companies of grenadiers to lead towards the North Bridge himself. As
these troops marched, they met the shattered remnants of the three
light infantry companies running towards them. Smith was concerned
about the four companies which had been at Barrett's. Their route to
return safely was now gone. Then he saw the Minutemen in the
distance behind their wall, and he halted his two companies and
moved forward with only his officers to take a closer look.
In the written words of a Minuteman behind that wall: "If we had
fired, I believe we could have killed all most every officer there
was in the front, but we had no orders to fire and there wasn't a
gun fired." During this tense standoff of about 10 minutes, a
mentally ill local man wandered through both sides selling hard
cider. Smith returned his grenadiers to the town and hoped for the
best for the remaining four companies.
These men, unaware of what had happened, marched back from their
fruitless search of Barrett's farm. They passed unharmed by
Barrett's militia on the muster field and through the tiny
battlefield, saw dead and wounded comrades lying on the bridge,
including one who looked to them as if he had been scalped, which
angered and shocked the British soldiers. They then passed sullenly
over the bridge, unharmed by Buttrick's Minutemen. The regulars all
returned to the town by 10:30 a.m. Even after a small skirmish, and
with superior numbers, the British colonists still did not fire yet
unless fired upon, and this time the regulars did nothing to provoke
them. The British Army continued to destroy colonial military
supplies in the town, ate lunch, reassembled for marching, then left
Concord after noon.
Concord to Lexington
An interactive mural describing this stage of the battle may be
found here.
Smith sent flankers to follow a ridge and protect his forces from
roughly 1,000 colonials in the field. This ridge ended near Meriam's
Corner, a crossroads and a small bridge about a mile (2 km) outside
of Concord. To cross the narrow bridge, the army column had to stop,
dress its line, and close its rank to a mere three soldiers apiece.
As the last of the army column marched over the bridge, colonial
militiamen from Billerica and Chelmsford fired, the regulars turned
and fired a volley, and the colonists returned fire. Two regulars
were killed and perhaps six wounded with no colonial casualties.
Smith sent out his flanking troops again after crossing the small
bridge.
Nearly 500 militiamen assembled in the woods on Brooks Hill about a
mile (2 km) past Meriam's Corner. Smith's leading forces charged up
the hill to drive them off, but the colonials did not withdraw.
Meanwhile the bulk of Smith's force proceeded along the road to
Brooks Tavern where they engaged a single militia company from
Framingham, killing and wounding several of them. Smith withdrew his
men from Brooks Hill and moved across another small bridge into
Lincoln.
Soon they were greeted at a bend in the road ("The Bloody Curve",
now known since the 19th century as the "Bloody Angle") by 200 men,
mostly from the towns of Bedford and Lincoln, who had positioned
themselves on an incline in one of the few areas in Massachusetts
that had not been cleared since the mid-1600s of trees and made into
an open field. They stood behind trees and walls in a rocky,
tree-filled pasture for an ambush. Additional militia joined in from
the other side of the road, catching the British in a crossfire in a
wooded swamp, and a fresh regiment arrived and attacked from the
rear. Eight soldiers and four colonial militia were killed. The
regular army soldiers escaped by breaking into a trot, a pace that
the colonials could not maintain through the woods and swamps next
to this spot in the road. Colonial forces on the road itself behind
the British were too densely packed and disorganized to mount an
attack.
Militia forces at this time numbered about 2,000, and Smith sent out
flankers again. When three companies of militia ambushed the head of
his main force near either Ephraim Hartwell's or (more likely)
Joseph Mason's Farm, the flankers closed in and trapped the militia
from behind. Flankers also trapped the Bedford militia after a
successful ambush near the Lincoln-Lexington border, but British
casualties were mounting from these engagements and from persistent
long-range fire, and the exhausted British were running out of
ammunition.
On the Lexington side of the border, Captain Parker, according to
only one uncorroborated source (Ebenezer Munroe's memoir of 1824),
waited on a hill with the reassembled Lexington Training Band
(militia), some of them bandaged up from the first fighting of the
day. These men, according to this account written only many years
later, did not begin the ambush until Colonel Smith himself came
into view. Smith was wounded in the thigh sometime on the way back
to Lexington, and the entire British column was halted in this
ambush supposedly known as "Parker's Revenge". Major Pitcairn sent
light infantry companies up the hill to clear out any militia
sniping at them.
The light infantry cleared two additional hills—"The Bluff" and "Fiske
Hill"— and took casualties from ambushes. Pitcairn fell from his
horse, which was injured from firing from Fiske Hill. Now the two
principal leaders of the Concord expedition were both injured or
unhorsed. Their men were tired, thirsty, and running low on
ammunition. A few surrendered; most now broke and ran forward in a
mob. Their organized, planned withdrawal had turned into a rout.
"Concord Hill" remained before Lexington Center, and a few uninjured
officers turned around and supposedly threatened their own men with
their swords if they would not reform in good order.
The British colonists had fought where possible in large ordered
formations (using short-range, smoothbore muskets only) at least
eight times from Concord to Lexington, contrary to the myth of
scattered individuals firing with longer-ranged rifles from behind
walls and fences—although scattered fire had also occurred, and
would be a useful American tactic later in the war. Nobody at
Lexington or Concord—indeed, anywhere along the Battle Road or later
at Bunker Hill—had a rifle, according to the historical records.
Only one British officer remained uninjured in the leading three
companies. He was considering surrendering his men when he heard
them up ahead cheering. A full brigade with artillery of about 1,000
men under the command of Hugh, Earl Percy had arrived to rescue
them. It was about 2:30 p.m.
Percy's rescue
General Gage had left orders for reinforcements to assemble in
Boston at 4 a.m., but in his obsession for secrecy, he had sent only
one copy of the orders to the adjutant of the 1st Brigade whose
servant left the envelope on a table. At about 5 a.m., Smith's
request for reinforcements arrived, and orders were sent for 1st
Brigade consisting of the line companies of infantry (the 4th, 23rd,
and 47th) and a battalion of British Marines to assemble.
Unfortunately, once again only one copy of the orders were sent to
each commander, and the order for the Marines was delivered to the
desk of Major Pitcairn, who was on Lexington Common at the time.
After these delays, Percy's brigade left Boston at about 8:45 a.m.
His troops marched out to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" to mock the
inhabitants of the city[citation needed]. By the Battle of Bunker
Hill less than two months later, the song had become a popular
anthem for the colonial forces.
Percy took the land route across Boston Neck and over the Great
Bridge. He came upon an absent-minded tutor at Harvard College and
asked him which road would take him to Lexington. The Harvard man,
oblivious to the reality of what was happening around him, showed
him the proper road without thinking, and was later compelled by
local residents to leave the country for inadvertently supporting
the enemy. Percy's troops arrived at Lexington at about 2:00 p.m.
They could hear gunfire in the distance as they set up their cannon
and lines of regulars on high ground with commanding views. Colonel
Smith's men approached like a fleeing mob with the full regiment of
Middlesex County Militia in close formation pursuing them. Percy
ordered his artillery to open fire at extreme range, and the
colonial militiamen dispersed in terror. Smith's men collapsed with
exhaustion once they reached safety behind friendly lines.
Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Percy had left Boston
without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces
they brought with them. He thought the extra wagons would slow him
down. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition
wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This
convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, former militiamen,
still on the "alarm list" who could not join their militia companies
because they were well over 60. These men rose up in ambush and
demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them
and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead
horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The survivors
ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they
surrendered. Each man in Percy's brigade now had only 36 rounds, and
each artillery piece only contained a few rounds in side-boxes.
Lexington to Menotomy
Percy regained control of the combined forces of about 1,900 men and
let them rest, eat, drink, and have their wounds tended at field
headquarters (Munroe Tavern) before their final march of the day.
They set out from Lexington at about 3:30 p.m.
Brigadier General William Heath took command of the Massachusetts
forces at Lexington. Earlier in the day, he had traveled first to
Watertown to discuss tactics with Joseph Warren (who had left Boston
that morning) and other members of the Massachusetts Committee of
Safety. Heath and Warren reacted to Percy's artillery and flankers
by ordering the militias to avoid close formations which would
attract cannon fire. Instead, they surrounded Percy's marching
square with a moving ring of skirmishers at a distance in order to
inflict maximum casualties at minimum risk to individual militiamen.
A few mounted militiamen on the road would dismount, fire muskets at
the approaching regulars, then remount and gallop ahead to repeat
the tactic. Unmounted militia would often fire from long range, in
the hope of hitting somebody in the main column of soldiers on the
road and surviving, since both British and colonials used muskets
with an effective combat range of fifty yards. The hunting rifle of
a typical American farmer was a better long range weapon than the
British musket for this purpose,[5] but no direct evidence exists
that rifles were present on either side in this particular battle.
(All surviving weapons from the battle on both sides were smoothbore
muskets.) Hitting the dispersed British flankers was difficult,
however.
Once a militia unit had fired its ammunition at the swiftly
retreating Regular Army troops, they left, went home, and turned the
job over to the militiamen of the next town along the road.
Wounded regulars rode on the cannon and were forced to hop off when
they were periodically fired at gathered militia. Percy's men were
often surrounded, but they had the tactical advantage of interior
lines. Percy could shift his units more easily to where they were
needed, while the colonial militia were required to move around the
outside of his formation. Percy gave orders that Smith's men would
form the middle of the column, while the 23rd Regiment's line
companies were given the task of being the column's rear guard.
Because of information provided by Smith and Pitcairn about how the
Americans were attacking, Percy gave orders for the rear guard to be
rotated every mile or so, to allow some of his troops to rest
briefly. Flanking companies were sent to both sides of the road, and
a powerful force of Marines acted as the vanguard to clear the road
ahead.
Percy wrote of the colonial tactics: "...the rebels attacked us in a
very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance and
resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body.
Indeed, they knew too well what was proper, to do so. Whoever looks
upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself very much
mistaken." Nonetheless, the main advantage the colonists enjoyed was
in numbers. Heath attempted to maintain a moving circle of
intentionally scattered forces by directing company-level officers
in the field and sending orders to distant units marching towards
them, but, since the Massachusetts Army of Observation (its proper
name) had not yet formed a unified command structure, most
disregarded him, and went on with the same tactics anyway, with or
without him. Pickering's Essex county militia refused to fire on the
retreating British troops, even when ordered to do so. Heath and
Warren did lead skirmishers in small actions into battle themselves,
though. This stage of the battle has often been correctly described
as having a chaotic colonial command structure.
The fighting grew more intense as Percy's forces crossed from
Lexington into Menotomy (modern Arlington). Fresh militia poured
gunfire into the British ranks from a distance, and individual
homeowners began to fight from their own property. Some homes were
also used as sniper positions. It now turned into a soldier's
nightmare: house-to-house fighting. Jason Russell pleaded for his
friends to fight alongside him to defend his house by saying, "An
Englishman's home is his castle." He stayed and was killed in his
doorway. His friends, depending on which account is to be believed
either hid in the cellar, or died in the house from bullets and
bayonets after shooting at the soldiers who followed them in. The
Jason Russell House still stands and contains bullet holes from this
fight. A militia unit that attempted an ambush from Russell's
orchard was caught by flankers, and eleven men were killed, some
allegedly after they had surrendered.
Percy lost control of his men, and British soldiers began to commit
atrocities to repay for the purported scalping at the North Bridge
and for their own casualties at the hands of a distant, often unseen
enemy. Based on the word of Pitcairn and other wounded officers from
Smith's command, Percy learned that the Minutemen were using stone
walls, trees and buildings in these more thickly settled towns
closer to Boston to hide behind and shoot at the column. Percy
proceeded to give orders to the flank companies to clear these
colonial militiamen out of such places.
Many of the junior officers in the flank parties had difficulty
stopping their exhausted, enraged men from killing everyone they
found inside these buildings. For example, two innocent drunks who
refused to hide in the basement of a tavern in Menotomy were killed,
because they were suspected of being involved with the day's events.
Although many of the accounts of ransacking and burnings were
exaggerated later by the colonists for propaganda value (and to get
financial compensation from the colonial government), it is
certainly true that taverns along the Bay Road were ransacked and
the liquor stolen by the troops, who in some cases became drunk
themselves. The church's communion silver was stolen but was later
recovered after it was sold in Boston. Aged Menotomy resident Samuel
Whittemore killed three regulars before he was attacked by a British
contingent and left for dead. All told, far more blood was shed in
Menotomy (now known as Arlington) than in any other town. The
colonial rebels lost 25 men killed and nine wounded there, and the
British lost 40 killed and 80 wounded. (The 47th Regiment of Foot
and the Marines suffered the highest casualties that day, in
Menotomy.) Each was about half of the day's fatalities.
Menotomy to Charlestown
The British troops crossed the border into Cambridge, and the fight
grew more intense. Fresh militia arrived in close array instead of
in a scattered formation, and Percy used his two artillery pieces
and flankers at a crossroads called Watson's Corner to inflict heavy
damage on them.
Earlier in the day, Heath had ordered the Great Bridge to be
dismantled. Percy's brigade was about to approach this broken-down
bridge and a riverbank filled with militia when Percy directed his
troops down a narrow track (near modern-day Porter Square) and onto
the road to Charlestown. The militia (numbering about 4,000) were
unprepared for this movement, and the circle of fire was broken. An
American force moved to occupy Prospect Hill (in modern-day
Somerville) which dominated the road, but Percy moved his cannon to
the front and dispersed them with his last rounds of ammunition.
A large militia force arrived from Salem and Marblehead. They might
have cut off Percy's route to Charlestown, but these men halted on
nearby Winter Hill and allowed the British to escape. Some accused
the commander of this force, Colonel Timothy Pickering, of
permitting the troops to pass because he still hoped to avoid war by
preventing a total defeat for the regulars. Pickering later claimed
that he had stopped on Heath's orders, but Heath denied this. It was
nearly dark when Pitcairn's Marines defended a final attack on
Percy's rear as they entered Charlestown. The regulars took up
strong positions on hills. Some of them had been without sleep for
two days and had marched 40 miles (65 km) in 21 hours, eight hours
of which had been spent under fire. But now they held high ground at
sunset while supported by heavy guns from the HMS Somerset. Gage
quickly sent over line companies of two fresh regiments—the 10th and
64th—to occupy the high ground in Charlestown and build
fortifications. Although they were begun, the fortifications were
never completed and would later be a starting point for the militia
works built two months later in June before the Battle of Bunker
Hill. General Heath studied the position of the British Army and
decided to withdraw the militia to Cambridge.
Aftermath
In the morning, Gage awoke to find Boston besieged by a huge militia
army, numbering 20,000, which had marched from throughout New
England. This time, unlike during the Powder Alarm, the rumors of
spilled blood were true, and the Revolutionary War had begun. The
militia army continued to grow as surrounding colonies sent men and
supplies. The Continental Congress would adopt and sponsor these men
into the beginnings of the Continental Army. Even now, after open
warfare had started, Gage still refused to impose martial law in
Boston. He persuaded the town's selectmen to surrender all private
weapons in return for promising that any inhabitant could leave
town.
In terms of accomplishments and casualties this was not a major
battle. However, in terms of supporting the political strategy
behind the Intolerable Acts and the military strategy behind the
Powder Alarms, the battle was a significant British failure because
the expedition contributed to the fighting it was intended to
prevent and because few weapons were seized.
The actual fighting was followed by a war for British political
opinion. Within four days of the battle, the Massachusetts
Provincial Congress had collected scores of sworn testimonies from
militiamen and from British prisoners. When word leaked out one week
after the battle that Gage was sending his official description of
events to London, the Provincial Congress sent over 100 of these
detailed depositions on a faster ship. They were presented to a
sympathetic official and printed by the London newspapers two weeks
before Gage's report arrived. Gage's official report was too vague
on particulars to influence anyone's opinion. Even George Germaine,
no friend of the colonists, wrote, "…the Bostonians are in the right
to make the King's troops the aggressors and claim a victory."
Politicians in London tended to blame Gage for the conflict instead
of their own policies and instructions. The British troops in Boston
also often blamed Gage for Lexington and Concord.
John Adams left his home in Braintree to ride along the battlefields
on the day after the fighting. He became convinced that "the Die was
cast, the Rubicon crossed." Thomas Paine in Philadelphia had
previously thought of the argument between the colonies and the Home
Country as "a kind of law-suit", but after news of the battle
reached him, he "rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of
England forever."
George Washington received the news at Mount Vernon and wrote to
a friend, "…the once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either
to be drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But
can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" A group of hunters on
the frontier named their campsite Lexington when they heard news of
the battle in June. Their campsite eventually became the city of
Lexington, Kentucky.
Legacy
It was important to the early American government that an image of
British fault and American innocence be maintained for this first
battle of the war. The history of Patriot preparations,
intelligence, warning signals, and uncertainty about the first shot
was rarely discussed in the public sphere for decades. The story of
the wounded British soldier at the North Bridge, hors de combat,
struck down on the head by a Minuteman using a hatchet, the
purported "scalping", was strongly suppressed. Depositions
mentioning these activities were not published and were returned to
the participants. Paintings portrayed the Lexington fight as an
unjustified slaughter.
The issue of which side was to blame grew during the early
nineteenth century. For example, older participants' testimony in
later life about Lexington and Concord differed greatly from their
depositions taken under oath in 1775. All now said the British fired
first at Lexington, whereas fifty or so years before, they weren't
sure. All now said they fired back, but in 1775, they said few were
able to. The "Battle" took on an almost mythical quality in the
American consciousness. Legend became more important than truth. A
complete shift occurred, and the Patriots were portrayed as actively
fighting for their cause, rather than as suffering innocents.
Paintings of the Lexington skirmish began to portray the militia
standing and fighting back in defiance.
In 1837, in his Concord Hymn, Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized the
events at Old North Bridge:
(What he did was not meant to disparage the events at Lexington
Common [which would not be dubbed the more romantic "Lexington
Green" until the 1850s] hours before, but rather to acknowledge that
only at Concord were the colonists first able to fire back at the
regular army, under orders of their own commanders. The shot is not
one you can hear, but rather an idea, which so many all over the
world took as inspiration for their own struggles of liberation.
As for the "flag to April's breeze unfurled"...well, there were no
flags at the North Bridge, April 19, 1775. No accounts even mention
the famed Bedford flag being used anywhere that day. There had been
a liberty cap and unknown flag on a flagpole on a hill near the
town, but it had been quickly chopped down by the British when they
entered the town about an hour before.)
After 1860, several generations of schoolchildren memorized Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride. Historically it is
inaccurate (Despite what the poem says, Paul Revere never made it to
Concord, for example), but it captures the idea that an individual
can change the course of history.
Anglophilia in the United States after the turn of the twentieth
century led to more balanced approaches to the history of the
battle. During World War I, a film about Paul Revere's ride was
seized under the Espionage Act of 1917 for promoting discord between
the United States and Britain.
The tactics of the British Army at Lexington and Concord have often
been compared, albeit wrongly, to those of American troops in the
Vietnam War. During the Cold War, the right-wing in the United
States portrayed the Minutemen as symbols of free enterprise, while
the left-wing portrayed them as anti-imperialists. Today, the battle
is often cited by those on both sides of gun control and Second
Amendment issues in the United States.
In 1961, novelist Howard Fast published April Morning, an account of
the battle from a fictional 15-year-old's perspective, and the book
has been frequently assigned in secondary schools. A film version
was produced for television in 1987, starring Chad Lowe and
Tommy Lee Jones.
Patriots' Day is celebrated in honor of the battle in Massachusetts,
Maine, and Wisconsin on the third Monday of April. Annual
re-enactments of the battle occur each Patriots' Day on Lexington
Green, and ceremonies and firings are held at the North Bridge in
Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord.
Centennial commemoration
On April 19, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant and members of his
cabinet joined 50,000 persons to mark the 100th anniversary of the
battles. The sculpture by Daniel Chester French, The Minute Man, was
unveiled on that day. A formal Ball took place in the evening at the
Agricultural Hall in Concord.
Bicentennial commemoration
The Town of Concord invited 700 prominent U.S. citizens and leaders
from the worlds of government, the military, the diplomatic corps,
the arts, sciences, and humanities to commemorate the 200th
anniversary of the battles. On April 19, 1975, as a crowd estimated
at 110,000 gathered to view a parade and celebrate the Bicentennial
in Concord, President Gerald Ford delivered a major speech near the
North Bridge, televised to the nation. He said, in part,
Freedom was nourished in American soil because the principles of the
Declaration of Independence flourished in our land. These
principles, when enunciated 200 years ago, were a dream, not a
reality. Today, they are real. Equality has matured in America. Our
inalienable rights have become even more sacred. There is no
government in our land without consent of the governed. Many other
lands have freely accepted the principles of liberty and freedom in
the Declaration of Independence and fashioned their own independent
republics. It is these principles, freely taken and freely shared,
that have revolutionized the world. The volley fired here at Concord
two centuries ago, 'the shot heard round the world,' still echoes
today on this anniversary.
President Ford laid a wreath at the base of The Minute Man statue
and then respectfully observed as Sir Peter Ramsbotham, the British
Ambassador to the United States, laid a wreath at the grave of
British soldiers killed in the battle. Mr. Ford then rode in his
presidential limousine to Lexington, where he delivered brief
remarks before 50,000. The President departed nearby Hanscom Air
Force Base aboard Air Force One, with his aircraft passing low over
Concord before heading south to Washington, D.C.
The Bicentennial commemoration of the battles included the issue of
a U.S. postage stamp featuring a painting by artist Henry Sandham
(1842–1912) and a Franklin Mint coin. Several musical pieces were
commissioned to be written and performed for the Bicentennial
events, such as Norman Dello Joio's "Satiric Dances", Joyce MeKeel's
"Toward the Source", as well as David Fielding Smith's award-winning
play, A Flurry of Birds.
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