American Revolution

Events surrounding the observance of Patriots’ Day are once again being presented live and you won’t want to miss them! After two years of honoring this special time virtually, we once again welcome people from around the world as we remember and celebrate the events that lead to the birth of our nation. 

In the aftermath of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, thousands of colonial militiamen trapped occupying British forces and ordinary civilians on the tiny Boston peninsula. 

In Concord’s center, there stands an iconic red building. Known as the Wright Tavern, the building is 275 years old and has been closed to the public for more than 30 years (except for a brief time when operated by Concord Museum). That is about to change. 

Brands thinks we get important facts backwards in regard to the loyalists. As he points out, historical retrospect leads us to treat the decision for independence as the default for Americans in the 1770s, but in fact the opposite was true.

In war, there are many ways to define victory. So, who won the Battles of Lexington and Concord? On the surface this may seem simple. The colonists were able to keep most of their military supplies safely out of British hands. The British soldiers then suffered heavy casualties during their retreat to Boston where they were trapped and besieged. However, though things certainly did not go the way they wanted, did the British Army actually lose on April 19, 1775? The answer depends upon how you define victory.

Colonial rebels in Concord did not wait until April 1775 to reject British rule. They did so in October of 1774, a full six months earlier—and a small tax on tea was the least of their complaints.

Earlier that year, as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had passed the so-called Coercive Acts. Today, closing the Port of Boston gets all the press, but two different measures actually tipped the scales and led to revolution. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the 1691 Provincial Charter, effectively disenfranchising the citizenry: no more town meetings, no more say in choosing local and provincial officials. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Crown to transport accused citizens to Great Britain for trial. Before this, the colonial population was divided between so-called “Whigs” or “patriots,” who protested various acts of Parliament, and so-called “Tories” or “government men,” those more sympathetic to British law. But after these measures, only a handful of diehards dared argue that disenfranchisement was the way forward. Their constitution nullified and their right to a fair trial abrogated, people throughout Massachusetts, more united than ever before and possibly ever since, rose up as a body to say: “No way!”

In the fall of 1774, only months from the confrontation at the North Bridge, the Town of Concord was a thriving farming community and a regional trading hub accessible to Boston via two roads and with a population of nearly 1,500 inhabitants. The Town had grown gradually since its incorporation in 1635. Townspeople actively engaged in Town government and established businesses, schools, and churches to support the needs of its growing population. The inhabitants regularly squabbled over factional conflicts, but the community was harmonious in many respects. 

The people of Massachusetts were slow to anger, but when they got mad, there was hell to pay. They protested the Stamp Act in 1765, but they remained British subjects. They denounced the killing of five civilians in the Boston Massacre in 1770, but they didn’t strike back against the soldiers who patrolled their streets. 

What finally provoked them to take up arms was a play by the English government to disenfranchise them—in effect, to suppress their voting rights. The Massachusetts Government Act, passed by the British Parliament in May 1774, was the most intolerable of the so-called Intolerable Acts.

The Journal of the American Revolution is pleased to announce The Boston Massacre: A Family History by Serena Zabin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) as winner of the 2020 Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award.

Honorable Mention is awarded to A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution by David Head (Pegasus Books).

On the morning of April 19, 1775, 71-year-old Martha Moulton witnessed a terrifying scene: hundreds of red-coated British Regulars marching into the town of Concord. These men were on orders from British General Thomas Gage to seize and destroy contraband military supplies stockpiled by the Provincial Congress. The ensuing conflict between the Regulars and Provincials sparked the American Revolution.