Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year…

Contrary to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s fears, some of us do remember those tumultuous days during the spring of 1775, prior to the gathering of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

After the imposition of the Intolerable Acts, the colonists became more alarmed by Parliament’s legislation and its accompanying use of military force in an attempt to curb colonial interests. Those patriots who favored resistance to a limiting of their perceived rights became increasingly annoyed by their neighbors who ignored the political events impacting their collective futures. The Sons of Liberty, those instigators of the Boston Tea Party, drew together, often in secret, to plot their reaction. Some argued for open confrontation, others longed for a peaceful resolution, but they all knew a showdown was coming.

And so did General Gage.

By early spring, the general could look out his windows and see citizens glancing up toward him, often with obvious hostility. He was facing the threat of rebellion; his military training told him that he had to take immediate action. How could he limit the colonists’ response? He needed to seize the weapons and powder being stored about 20 miles northeast of Boston, in the hamlet of Concord. It would be simple to send troops under his command to raid the Concord armory — or so he thought. The general underestimated the Patriots.

The Sons of Liberty had an intelligence network that would rival today’s CIA! As General Gage ordered his troops to move, Dr. Joseph Warren’s network uncovered the plan and alerted him. Warren dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to prepare to spread the alarm; Revere would be poised to cross the harbor to Charlestown, while Dawes would ride across the Neck. The two lanterns flickering in the Old North Church steeple told them what they needed to know — the British were crossing the harbor. (Remember the lines in the poem “One if by land; two if by sea”?)

As Revere and Dawes rode, sounding the alarm to “every Middlesex village and farm,” other riders joined the dash as church bells in each town pealed a warning. The Minutemen, ever alert and ever ready, grabbed their weapons and headed for town greens. By the time the British soldiers had crossed the harbor, the Minutemen were standing ready in Concord and Lexington. After a heated battle in which the British suffered a 3 to 1 casualty rate, the Minutemen chased the unorganized British retreat all the way back to Boston.

That moment, too, was captured by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his “Concord Hymn,” written for the 1837 dedication of the Memorial:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Did the other colonies know that the spring breezes might bring armed conflict to New England? Yes; the Committees of Correspondence had done their job.

The representative bodies across the colonies certainly feared the possibility of peaceful negotiations was slipping away with each day that passed. Almost a month earlier, Patrick Henry had stood before the Second Virginia Convention, meeting in St. John’s Church in Richmond, and delivered a rousing speech in which he asserted: “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave… There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable — and let it come!”

In that assembly sat Virginians whose names are familiar almost 250 years later: Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Andrew Lewis, William Christian, and Edmund Pendleton. As they listened, Henry continued: “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

While not all delegates shared Patrick Henry’s passion for independence, those seated in the church understood that the colonies were facing a difficult decision: submission to the rule of Parliament, or increase resistance and possibly find themselves at war with the strongest nation in Europe.

Imagine you were sitting in that representative assembly. How might you have responded to Patrick Henry’s words? When shots were fired one month later at Concord and Lexington, would you have joined the Patriots or urged peace?

The Second Continental Congress, meeting one month later in May 1775, would be forced to decide.