CHAPTER XXXI — FIRST STAGE OF THE WAR, 1775-1778
191. Conflicting Accounts of Lexington and Concord (1775)
These two simultaneous accounts show the difficulty of establishing historical truth even by contemporaneous evidence. This battle was the turning-point between the period of protests and the period of resistance. — Bibliography : Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 174-184, and Memorial History of Boston, III, 67-103; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 136. — For earlier colonial wars, see Contemporaries, I, passim, and chs. xviii, xix above.
A. THE AMERICAN STATEMENT
Salem, April 25, 1775.
LAST Wednesday the 19th of April, the Troops of His Britannick Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this Province, attended with circumstances of cruelty, not less brutal than what our venerable ancestors received from the vilest Savages of the wilderness. The particulars relative to this interesting event, by which we are involved in all the horrours of a civil war, we have endeavoured to collect as well as the present confused state of affairs will admit.
On Tuesday evening a detachment from the Army, consisting, it is said, of eight or nine hundred men, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Smith, embarked at the bottom of the Common in Boston, on board a number of boats, and landed at Phipps's farm, a little way up Charles River, from whence they proceeded with silence and expedition on their
way to Concord, about eighteen miles from Boston. The people were soon alarmed, and began to assemble in several Towns, before daylight, in order to watch the motion of the Troops. At Lexington, six miles below Concord, a company of Militia, of about one hundred men, mus tered near the Meeting-House ; the Troops came in sight of them just before sunrise ; and running within a few rods of them, the Commanding Officer accosted the Militia in words to this effect : "Disperse, you rebels — damn you, throw down your arms and disperse ; " upon which the Troops huzzaed, and immediately one or two officers discharged
546
