Morton column: ‘Shot heard ’round the world’ opens war

On this day (April 19) in 1775, the first major military engagement of the Revolutionary War took place in Massachusetts when British Gen. Thomas Gage ordered Lt. Col. Francis Smith and Maj. John Pitcairn to lead a force of 700 troops to Lexington to capture patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and then proceed on to Concord to seize militia supplies thought to be stored there.

Thus the stage was set for the “shot heard around the world.” Having been warned by Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott that “the British were coming,” colonial militiamen assembled on local village greens to contest the British assault on Lexington and Concord.

It is not known just who fired the first shot that early April morning. However, it is now known that the skirmish, on this day, on Lexington Green was the opening military action of the eight-year War for American Independence (1775-1783).

This initial clash of arms, between crack British Light Infantrymen and Grenadiers and colonial “Minute Men” (militiamen who were designated to be ready to fight at a minute’s notice), was a glorious American victory. Instead of finding Adams and Hancock in Lexington, the British found a welcoming committee of some 70 colonial militiamen under the command of Capt. John Parker.

After a 15-minute skirmish on Lexington Green, which resulted in 18 colonial casualties (eight dead and 10 wounded) and one British soldier being wounded, the British marched the 5 miles on to Concord where they were confronted by several hundred armed farmers.

At Concord’s North Bridge, the British suffered more than a dozen casualties and, in the early afternoon, made the decision to return to Boston without delay. During the entire 16-mile return trip to Boston, the British soldiers were subjected to relentless bombardment. Firing from behind stone fences and trees, the swarming militiamen inflicted heavy casualties on the panic-stricken British troops. What had started out as an orderly retreat soon turned into a disorderly rout.

Fortunately for the British, Gen. Gage had sent a relief force of some 1,400 men to rescue Lt. Col. Smith’s command. It met the retreating force at Lexington and accompanied it back to Boston, thus saving Smith’s command from what could have been total annihilation.

In the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the British force of some 2,200 suffered heavy casualties: 73 killed, 191 wounded, and 22 missing while the approximately 3,500 American colonial militiamen who saw action that fateful day suffered relatively few losses: Only 99 were known to have been killed, wounded, captured or missing.

Importantly, this battle demonstrated that perhaps ill-equipped, ill-trained, ill-led New England farmers would stand up to British regulars.

Also, the armed conflict on this day persuaded many Americans to consider that it might become beneficial, or even necessary, to sever their political connection with a mother country that would wage war against its own citizens. However, this idea was not articulated publicly until the publication, in January 1776, of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

The Battle of Lexington and Concord is now rightly celebrated as the first military engagement on the long and bloody road to American independence and the establishment of the American Republic.

• Crystal Lake resident Joseph C. Morton is professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University and author of numerous articles and books on American political history.