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Updated: June 24, 2025
When war broke finally, with the first blood shed at Lexington, it found the minutemen of New England better prepared than their enemies believed, and when the news of this epoch-making event reached Israel Putnam, this great exemplar of the minutemen proved a model worthy their emulation. The messenger with the doleful tidings found him plowing in the field back of his house at Brooklyn Green.
The British general planned, therefore, to send a body of troops to arrest the two leaders at Lexington, and then to push on and capture or destroy the stores at Concord. Although he acted with the greatest secrecy, he was unable to keep his plans from the watchful minutemen. We shall see how one of these, Paul Revere, outwitted him.
The British rushed forward with huzzas, in the midst of which shots were heard; and when the little band of minutemen was dispersed eight of the fifty lay dead upon the village green. The battle of Lexington was begun, but it was not yet finished. Pushing on to Concord, the thousand disciplined British regulars captured and destroyed the military stores collected there.
Then, pushing on across the bridge, they forced the British to withdraw into the town. The affair had become more serious than the British had expected. Even in the town they could not rest, for an ever-increasing body of minutemen kept swarming into Concord from every direction. By noon Colonel Smith could see that it would be unwise to delay the return to Boston.
The minutemen, trained to woodland warfare, slipped from tree to tree, shot down the worn and helpless British soldiers, and then retreated only to return and repeat the harassing attack. The wooded country through which they were passing favored this kind of fighting.
At or near daybreak of the nineteenth, at Lexington, the shots were fired "heard round the world"; at noon the British were in retreat from Concord, where they had been routed by the minutemen, and by night, exhausted, disgraced, defeated, they had reached Charlestown, under the escort of Lord Percy and his 1,200 reenforcements, where they were protected from the enraged militia by the guns of the fleet.
The Howell levee, protecting two hundred families in Ingleside, between Evansville and Howell, gave way and the Ingleside district was inundated with depths of from six to ten feet. Minutemen had been posted all long the dangerous dike, and when the water began to pour over the top an alarm was sounded and all escaped. Shawneetown, Illinois, was entirely cut off from the outside world.
Encountering a small body of militia at Lexington, Major Pitcairn, in command of the British soldiers, called out to them to throw down their arms and disperse; but as they did not do so he ordered his men to fire, killing eight of the sturdy Americans, who even then did not run away, but joined themselves to other minutemen now assembling, and again came in contact with their foes at Concord Bridge.
Clinton, with a wholesome respect for the minutemen of the Old North State, wished to sail to the Chesapeake; while Lord Campbell, the royal governor of South Carolina, who was now an officer of the fleet, begged that the first hard blow should fall upon Charleston. He declared that, as soon as the city was captured, the loyalists would be strong enough to restore the king's power.
But even in the open country every stone wall and hill, every house and barn seemed to the exhausted British troops to bristle with the guns of minutemen. The retreating army dragged wearily forward, fighting as bravely as possible, but on the verge of confusion and panic. They reached Lexington Common at two o'clock, quite overcome with fatigue.
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