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John Hancock was president of the newly made Provincial Congress. General Gage knew that Adams and Hancock were staying for a while with a friend in Lexington. He had learned also through spies that minutemen had collected some cannon and military stores in Concord, twenty miles from Boston, and only eight miles beyond Lexington.
Meantime, the British troops numbering eight hundred men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, were on their way to Lexington. But before they had gone far they were made aware, by the ringing of church-bells, the firing of signal-guns, the beating of drums, and the gleaming of beacon-fires from the surrounding hilltops, that their secret was out, and that the minutemen knew what was going on.
Then, in his swift flight along the road he pauses at every house to shout: "Up and arm! Up and arm! The regulars are out! The regulars are out!" Families are roused. Lights gleam from the windows. Doors open and close. Minutemen are mustering. When Lexington is reached, it is just midnight. Eight minutemen are guarding the house where Adams and Hancock are sleeping. "Make less noise!
So, although his men had marched twenty miles, and had had little or no food for fourteen hours, he gave the order for the return march. But when they started back, the minutemen kept after them and began a deadly attack. It was an unequal fight.
My old wrestling-master, Jonas Parker, was killed on the common at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 1775. He had said in his grim way, "Some may run from the British, but I won't budge a foot." He was in the front rank of the minutemen. He laid his hat on the ground before him, and in it placed his powder-horn and bullets. When the British fired, he was wounded, and fell to his knees.
The minutemen at Concord and Lexington, in 1775, did not realize that they were pointing their guns at the monarchical idea. As little did the third estate of France, when it entered the Convention in 1789, realize that its road lay over the ruins of the throne.
After resting for an hour, the British again took up their march to Boston. The minutemen, increasing in numbers every moment, kept up the same kind of running attack that they had made between Concord and Lexington until, late in the day, the redcoats came under the protection of the guns of the war vessels in Boston Harbor. The British had failed. There was no denying that.
This was easily done; but the return from Concord to Lexington, and from Lexington to Cambridge, proved a disastrous retreat. The British found indeed no minutemen drawn up in military array to block their path; but they found themselves subject to the deadly fire of men concealed behind the trees and rocks and clumps of shrubs that everywhere conveniently lined the open road.
He liked the new country, the society of the young cities along the Atlantic coast, and he spent less time on the high seas and more time fishing and hunting on his own land and in Chesapeake Bay. He might have settled quietly into such prosperous retirement had not the minutemen of Concord startled the new world into stirring action. John Paul Jones loved America and he loved ships.
But they cut down the liberty-pole, set fire to the court-house, spiked a few cannon, and emptied some barrels of flour. About two hundred of them stood guard at the North Bridge, while a body of minutemen gathered on a hill on the opposite side. When the minutemen had increased to four hundred, they advanced to the bridge and brought on a fight which resulted in loss of life on both sides.
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