Within months of the battles, however, the Whigs would employ all manner of printed genres, including pamphlets and broadsides, not only to describe the battles but also to sway public opinion about their meanings. One now-famous broadside from Salem that gave an account of the battles also listed the colonial dead and was emblazoned with coffins and big black borders symbolizing death, serving as both a news dispatch and a commemorative document.
General Gage attempted to combat the Whig press with his own version of the battle, printed as a broadside titled A Circumstantial Account. As was the custom in all colonial print culture, the language of this broadside was reprinted in newspapers , sometimes with additional editorial language rebuking it. Portsmouth, April 20, The two met up in Lexington, a few miles east of Concord, where revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock had temporarily holed up.
Having persuaded those two to flee, a weary Revere and Dawes then set out again. On the road, they met a third rider, Samuel Prescott, who alone made it all the way to Concord. Revere was captured by a British patrol, while Dawes was thrown from his horse and forced to proceed back to Lexington on foot.
A view of the south Part of Lexington during the battles in , by artist Amos Doolittle. At dawn on April 19, some British troops arrived in Lexington and came upon 77 militiamen gathered on the town green.
Ye villains, ye rebels. The heavily outnumbered militiamen had just been ordered by their commander to disperse when a shot rang out. To this day, no one knows which side fired first. Several British volleys were subsequently unleashed before order could be restored.
When the smoke cleared, eight militiamen lay dead and nine were wounded, while only one Redcoat was injured. The British then continued into Concord to search for arms, not realizing that the vast majority had already been relocated. They decided to burn what little they found, and the fire got slightly out of control.
Hundreds of militiamen occupying the high ground outside of Concord incorrectly thought the whole town would be torched. The British fired first but fell back when the colonists returned the volley. After searching Concord for about four hours, the British prepared to return to Boston, located 18 miles away.
At first, the militiamen simply followed the British column. Fighting started again soon after, however, with the militiamen firing at the British from behind trees, stone walls, houses and sheds. Before long, British troops were abandoning weapons, clothing and equipment in order to retreat faster.
When the British column reached Lexington, it ran into an entire brigade of fresh Redcoats that had answered a call for reinforcements. But that did not stop the colonists from resuming their attack all the way through Menotomy now Arlington and Cambridge.
The British, for their part, tried to keep the colonists at bay with flanking parties and canon fire. The Battles of Lexington and Concord took a toll on both sides. For the colonists, 49 were killed, 39 were wounded, and five were missing.
For the British, 73 were killed, were wounded, and 26 were missing. While the colonists lost many minutemen, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were considered a major military victory and displayed to the British and King George III that unjust behavior would not be tolerated in America.
The battles also constituted the first military conflicts of the American Revolution. By the time the act had been brought before the Continental Congress in May, the Battles of Lexington and Concord had already occurred and the proposition was rejected.
The revolution had been stirring for a long time, with tensions rising and finally breaking into armed conflict during the Battles of Lexington and Concord. William Pitt, an American sympathizer in Parliament, rejoiced for the colonists because they had employed military force to defend their beliefs. While Pitt was pleased, Thomas Gage was shocked.
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