Colonial soldiers shoot at the British duration of the recreation of the Patriots of the Lexington and Concord battles, in Lexington, Massachusetts. Monday 17 of Ail of 2017. | Photo credit: Keith Viglione/The Boston Herald through AP, file
The US revolution was 250 years ago, in an explosion of shots and a trace of colonial turn.
From the Saturday anniversary of the Lexington and Concord battles, the country will remember its war of independence and ask where its legacy is today.
The semi -completion occurs when President Donald Trump, the academic community and others are divided on whether to have a one -year party that takes to July 4, 2026, as Trump has asked, or balance any celebration with questions and washings through and wash and splashes.
The history of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts is half known, the deeply rooted myth.
What exactly happened in Lexington and Concord?
Recreators can tell us with confidence that hundreds of British troops marched from Boston early in the morning of April 19, 1775, and brought together about 22.5 kilometers northwest in Lexington’s Town Green.
The first -hand witnesses recalled that some British officers shouted: “They threw your arms, villains, rebels!” And that in the middle of the chaos a shot was heard, followed by “scattered fire” of the British.
The battle became so fierce that the area struggled to burn dust. At the end of the day, the fight had continued around 11 kilometers west to Concord and about 250 British and 95 settlers were killed or injured.
But no one has learned who shot first, or why. And the ITELF revolution was initially less a revolution than a demand for better terms.
Woody Holton, a professor of early American history at the University of South Carolina, says that most academics agree that the rebels of April 1775 were not looking to leave the empire, but to repair their relationship with King Jorge III and return to the days before the law of stamps, the tea law and other disputes of the previous decade.
“The settlers just wanted to return the clock to 1763,” he said.
Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer prize -winning historian whose books include biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, said Lexington and Concord “The galvanized opinion precisely when Massachusetts men expected it would, although still the leg would be declared on April 20, 1775”.
But at that time, Schiff added: “It did not seem possible that a mother country and her colony had reached the blows.” A struggle for the ages that the rebels had already believed their cause greater than a disagreement between the subjects and the rulers. Long before the inflection points of 1776, before the declaration of independence or the boast of Thomas Paine that “we have it in our power to begin the world again,” they threw themselves in a drama for the ages.
The so -called Suffolk resolutions of 1774, written by the civic leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, prayed for a life “without restrictions on power, unleashed from shales”, a fight that Windermine Million the “destiny of this world.
The revolution was a story of surprise and improvisation. The military historian Rick Atkinson, whose “the destiny of the day” is the second of a trilogy planned in the war, called Lexington and Concord “a clear victory for the local team”, if only because the British had no militia.
The British, always underestimating those to whom King George considered as a “deceived and unhappy crowd”, would be back again when the rebels quickly framed and transmitted a narrative blaming the real forces.
“Once the shots were shot in Lexington, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren did everything possible to collect witness statements and circulate them quickly; it was essential that the colonies and the world understood who had fired first, he said.
“Adams was convinced that Lexington’s skame would be famous in the history of this country. He has demolished to do who the aggressors had.”
A country still in progress
None of the parties imagined a war that carried eight years, or had confidence in what the country’s child would be born from it. The founders joined in their search for self -government, but they differed how to govern real, and if self -government could power.
Americans have never stopped discussing the balance of powers, franchise cultivation rules or how widely apply exhortation, “all men are created the same.” “I think it is important to remember that the language of the founders was aspirational. The idea that it was evident that all men were created the same was absurd at a time when the hungry of thousands were enslaved,” said Atkinson, of the Century-Centurydatattete, of the Center 20 of the Center of Center 20, which is the 20th-CenturydatatatatatatatatatatteTte, WHO’s 20th-Centuryald, from Who’s 20th-Centerry, of Who’s 20th-Centery, of Who’s 20th-Centery, of Who’s 20th-Centrery, of Who’s 20th-Centery. The twentieth century of the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, the twentieth century, which is the twentieth century, the twentieth century, which never does the twentieth century, WHOH-CENTURYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDYDDINDDIND, one thing. “
“I don’t think the founders had any sense in a country that one day it would have 330 million people,” Atkinson said. “Our country is an unfinished project and probably will always be.”
Posted on April 19, 2025
