Battle of Lexington And Concord

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were part of the American Revolution, rather a part of the American War of Independence and were fought on April 19th in the year 1775. Like any other war of Independence this one was also a desperate from the subjugated people to uproot the rulers. The location of the battles was Middlesex Country in Massachusetts. This was the first time that the Americans openly broke out in an armed rebellion against the colonizers. It happened so that the British came to know that the American nationalists are accumulating weapons and are preparing for a large rebellion, therefore they decided to capture and damage all the supplies of the nationalists. So according to the information the British under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith and his second, Major John Pitcairn started their journey towards Concord where reportedly the Massachusetts armed force had stored all the ammunitions.

Incidents that led to the Battle of Lexington and Concord

As the British troops started for Concord, Dr. Joseph Warren who was a doctor in the Army alerted the John Hancock and Samuel Adams by sending Paul Revere. The Americans already knew about an impending British siege and had moved most of their supplies to safer places though not all. But Paul Revere was not sure that he would be able to alert all the colonists before the British troop reached them so he decided to alert them by sending them signals by putting lanterns on the Old North Church steeple. The deal was this that he would put one lantern if the British were coming by land and two of they were coming by sea. So it is understood that the revolutionaries had the information well before hand.

As the British troops were ferried across the Boston Harbor to start their march towards Lexington, Paul Revere hung two lanterns to alert the nationalists. As the British troops reached the Lexington, Samuel Adams and John Hancock had already escaped but then that did not save people from a bloody battle. The militia were very few, thus were taken over by the British troops. John Parker was the captain of the revolutionaries in Lexington and he got the information that there are around thousand British soldiers. Parker decided that he would not put the life of his men to risk, therefore asked them to let the British troops pass away without firing. No one still knows who fired the first shots in the Battle of Lexington. So this anonymous shot acted as a stimulus and both the parties started firing after this. The battle ended but by then the British had already killed eight minutemen and injured nine. This was only Lexington. More was coming but then by that time the revolutionaries were ready with all their supplies to face the British troops.

In Concord, under the leadership of Colonel James Barrett there were already approximately 20,000 pounds of musket balls and cartridges; 31 barrels of flour; 17,000 pounds of fish and around 35,000 pounds of fish. So the local militia was ready for a war and avenge themselves for the loss in Lexington. The British troops enter Concord but then they could not find any men in the city neither was powder found. Smith had a feeling that somehow the militia surrounded them, though he was not sure. But Smith was right and the whole town was actually surrounded by approximately six thousand revolutionaries. After a fierce battle between the Militia and the British troops, where none of them were ready to give up, the British troop had to recede though they were the ones who had more sophisticated weapons. They fired a volley of balls that were intended to kill the Americans and it did kill some of the revolutionaries but the knowledge of the neighborhood gave the revolutionaries an upper hand. They killed approximately 273 British soldiers and compelled the British to go back.

The Americans found a new hope and confidence when they won the battle of Lexington and Concord, which later helped them to achieve what they wanted. Independence was one of the effects of the battle of Lexington and Concord.