“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” —Samuel Adams (1776)

I recently devoted a column to “The National ‘Happiness Deficit’,” and the fact that we have to be very deliberate about not letting our job — slogging through the daily detritus of contemporary political and cultural events — discourage our spirit. That can be a challenge, particularly for our team members with young families, who are concerned about the future for those youngsters, as parents have been for generations.

I noted there is a lot of good humor shared in our staff meetings and editorial offices (some of which is followed immediately by repentance). It’s an occupational necessity. To help you keep it light, we put a lot of energy into our good-humored Meme and Cartoon pages, and we post humor videos and links to our favorite Babylon Bee articles.

Notably, the most popular of our editions is Monday afternoon’s Cartoons and Memes email — if you are not receiving it, you can add it to your subscription here. And we also produce a weekly podcast, “The Pop Culture Contrarian,” featuring our staff wise guys.

The point is that humor is an important salve for the spirit in “the times that try men’s souls,” as well as a reliable support for happiness. Additionally, my favorite editorial assignment of the week is writing our Profiles of Valor about great Americans, a reminder of those who have gone before and those among us now whose lives inspire us all.

And a great source of inspiration for all of us is a solid sense of history, especially about the generations of American Patriots who have gone before. The service and sacrifice of Patriots in my own family, “Then and Now,” whose legacy is just a small part of our shared national heritage, informs my perspective today and on our future.

This week, we celebrate the historical birth of American Liberty, the first Patriots’ Day in 1775. The Patriot Post is named in honor of those who fired the opening volleys of the American Revolution and those who have defended Liberty since. Notably, those first shots were fired in defiance of forces sent to disarm the first generation of Patriots.

I invite you to take a brief stroll down the path that gave rise to our Republic when a band of radical right-wing Patriots stood in defiance of those representing the most powerful military force on earth.

First, please help with our efforts to battle those who seek to disarm The Patriot Post’s fight to defend Liberty. We face a David-and-Goliath matchup every day on the battlefield for the heart and soul of our nation, relentlessly pursued by the political and media enemies of Liberty aligned against us. Please take one minute and support our 2024 Patriots’ Day Campaign.

Please help your Patriot Team hold the line!

The first battles of Lexington and Concord, on which our quest for Liberty was launched, were among the 10 most critical engagements of the Revolutionary War.

The conflict on Lexington Green was triggered by the events of December 16th, 1773, when “radicals” from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships under cover of darkness and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

This iconic event, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party.

Resistance to the Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act, and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and gave rise to the slogan, “No taxation without representation.”

The 1773 Tea Act and the resulting Tea Party protest galvanized the colonial movement against British parliamentary acts that violated the colonists’ natural, charter, and constitutional rights.

In response to the rebellion, the British enacted additional punitive measures, labeled the “Intolerable Acts,” in hopes of suppressing the burgeoning insurrection. Far from accomplishing their desired outcome, however, the Crown’s countermeasures led colonists to convene the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774, in Philadelphia.

By the spring of 1775, civil discontent with royal rulers was growing, and American Patriots in Massachusetts and other colonies were preparing to cast off their masters. The spirit of the coming revolution was captured in Patrick Henry’s impassioned “Give me Liberty or give me death” speech.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage, acting as the Crown’s military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars with secret orders. These troops, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were to arrest 53-year-old Boston Tea Party leader Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Provincial Congress president John Hancock, and merchant fleet owner Jeremiah Lee.

But what directly tied Gage’s orders to the later enumeration in our Constitution’s Second Amendment assurance of the innate “right to keep and bear arms” was the primary mission of his Redcoat brigades. They were charged with undertaking a preemptive raid to confiscate arms and ammunition stored by Massachusetts Patriots in the town of Concord.

Patriot militia and minutemen, under the leadership of the Sons of Liberty, anticipated this raid, and the confrontations with British forces at Lexington and Concord proved to be the fuse that ignited the American Revolution.

Near midnight on April 18th, 41-year-old Paul Revere, who had arranged for advance warning of British movements, departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn Hancock, Adams, and other Sons of Liberty that the British Army was marching to arrest them and seize their weapons caches.

Revere’s ride was immortalized by noted poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere… Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch… One if by land, two if by sea… Through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight.”

After meeting with Hancock and Adams in Lexington, Revere was captured, but his Patriot ally, Samuel Prescott, continued to Concord and warned militiamen along the way.

The Patriots in Lexington and Concord, with other citizen militias in New England, were bound by “minute man” oaths to “stand at a minute’s warning with arms and ammunition.” The oath of the Lexington militia read thus: “We trust in God that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause.” That oath was the predecessor to our current oath “to support and defend.”

In the early dawn of April 19th, their oaths would be tested with blood. Under the command of 46-year-old farmer and militia Captain John Parker, 77 militiamen assembled on the Town Green at Lexington, where they soon faced Smith’s overwhelming force of seasoned British regulars. Parker did not expect shots to be exchanged, but his orders were: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

Within close musket range from the Patriots’ column, British Major John Pitcairn swung his sword and ordered, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!”

Not willing to sacrifice his small band of Patriots on the Green, as Parker later wrote in a sworn deposition, “I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse, and not to fire.” But his Patriots did not lay down their arms. Then, under Pitcairn’s orders, as Parker testified, “Immediately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us.” Ten other Patriots were wounded.

As the American militia retreated toward Concord with the British in pursuit, their ranks grew to more than 400.

In Concord, the British divided in order to search for armament stores. Before noon, the second confrontation between Redcoat regulars and militiamen occurred as 100 British light infantry from three companies faced the ranks of militia and minutemen at Concord’s Old North Bridge. From depositions on both sides, the British fired first, killing two and wounding four.

This time, however, the militia commander, Major John Buttrick, ordered, “Fire, for God’s sake, fellow soldiers, fire!”

And fire they did. The volley commenced with what poet Ralph Waldo Emerson later immortalized as “The Shot Heard Round the World.” With that shot, farmers, laborers, landowners, and statesmen alike brought upon themselves the sentence of death for treason. In the ensuing firefight, the British suffered heavy casualties. In discord, the Redcoats retreated to Concord proper and, after reinforcing their ranks, marched back toward Lexington.

During their retreat from Concord, the British took additional casualties in sporadic firefights. The most notable of those was an ambush by the reassembled ranks of John Parker’s militia, which became known as “Parker’s Revenge.” Despite reinforcements when they returned to Lexington, the King’s men were no match for the Patriot ranks. The militia and minutemen made the Redcoats pay dearly all along their 18-mile tactical retreat to Boston.

By day’s end, the Patriots suffered 49 killed, 39 wounded, and five missing. The British casualties totaled 73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing.

Upon hearing of those first shots in what would become an eight-year struggle for American Liberty, Samuel Adams declared to fellow Patriot John Hancock, “What a glorious morning this is!” He added, “The People alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

Indeed it was, and the sunrise each April 19th has remained so ever since.

Thus began the great campaign to reject tyranny and embrace the enduring challenge of securing Republican Liberty and sustaining it for future generations.

So…

Why would the first generation of American Patriots forgo, in the inimitable words of Sam Adams, “the tranquility of servitude” for “the animating contest of freedom”?

The answer to that question defined the timeless spirit of American Patriotism then, as it defines the spirit of American Patriots today. We are the beneficiaries of generations who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor “to support and defend” Liberty as enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution.

We are devoted to something much larger than self, which is why our motives are such a mystery to leftist protagonists and their egocentric disciples.

In 1776, George Washington wrote in his General Orders: “The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”

Of that resolve, two centuries later, President Ronald Reagan said: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”

Indeed, the time is always at hand when American Patriots must reaffirm whether we are to be freemen or slaves, and our commitment to defend Liberty must be reborn with each sunrise.

Patriots, through the trials we face now, stand firm and fast, and remember who YOU are, brothers and sisters — who WE are together.

As Washington declared, “Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!”

Finally, in the words of Thomas Jefferson in his “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms” in July 1775, “Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.”

On this and every day of the year, hold the line! And especially on the upcoming 249th Patriots’ Day, if you have not already done so, one of the most cost-effective ways you can extend the blessing of Liberty to the next generation is to support our *2024 Patriots’ Day Campaign!

The Patriot Post is entirely funded by American Patriots like you. Please make your commitment today and ensure that our defense of Liberty remains strong and the ranks of American Patriots continue to grow!

God bless you!

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Note: For a resource on our nation’s founding, read the Patriots Primer on American Liberty. You can also purchase our highly acclaimed pocket-size Patriot Primers in bulk for distribution to students, grassroots organizations, civic clubs, political gatherings, military and public service personnel, professional associations, and others.

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