THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Prelude to Revolution: Lexington and Concord: April, 1775
Events in the colonies had little effect on attitudes in Britain. George III and Lord North both still insisted that the colonies comply with edicts from England. What they failed to realize was that royal authority in the colonies was routinely being ignored. General Thomas Gage was the acting governor of Massachusetts, and in early 1775 he ordered the Massachusetts Assembly not to meet. They met anyway.
Gage also wanted to stop the growth of local militias. On April 19 he sent a group of regular British troops to Concord to seize colonial arms stored there and to arrest any ‘'rebel” leaders that could be found. As you learned in second grade, Paul Revere and other messengers rode out from Boston to warn the countryside of the advance of the British soldiers. At dawn on April 19 several hundred British soldiers ran into 75 colonial militiamen on the town green in Lexington. The British ordered the colonists to disperse; in the confusion, shots rang out, with 8 colonists killed and 10 wounded.
The British marched on to Concord, where a larger contingent of militiamen awaited them. The British destroyed military stores and food supplies and were ready to return to Boston when the colonists opened fire, with three British soldiers killed and nine wounded. The British were attacked at they retreated to Lexington; they lost 275 men, compared to 93 colonial militiamen killed. At Lexington the British were saved by the arrival of reinforcements.
Several weeks later Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British. Cannons from the fort were dragged to Boston, where they would be a decisive factor in forcing the British to leave Boston harbor in March 1776.