Chapter 10
Lexington Green
The thick grass on Lexington Green still smelled like the day’s rain as John Hancock read the hasty note of warning that Elbridge Gerry had dispatched from the Black Horse Tavern after Gerry learned that Major Mitchell’s patrol was at large. Hancock and Samuel Adams were staying at the home of Jonas Clarke, the minister at Lexington’s Congregational meetinghouse. Hancock knew the home well, because Clarke had succeeded Hancock’s grandfather in the pulpit, and it was from this house that Hancock’s uncle Thomas had fetched him as a boy and taken him to the world of Boston business.
The Clarke home stood on the western side of Bedford Road, about four hundred yards north of Lexington Green’s northernmost point. The white two-story house was oriented so that the front door looked almost directly down the road toward the green. Lexington Green itself was a long, triangular field of about three acres. Coming into Lexington from the east, the road from Menotomy and Cambridge split at the easternmost point of the green, with the northern leg running toward Bedford and the southern leg continuing westward toward Concord. The meetinghouse stood on the green behind this three-way intersection and across Bedford Road from Buckman’s Tavern.
Gerry’s warning reached the Clarke house about 8:00 p.m. on the evening of April 18, after Mitchell’s patrol had passed through town en route to Concord. At this point, the principal fear seems to have been that Hancock and Adams themselves were the targets of capture or worse. Reverend Clarke later recalled that because “Mr. Hancock in particular had been, more than once, personally insulted, by some officers of the troops, in Boston; it was not without some just grounds supposed, that under cover of the darkness, sudden arrest, if not assassination might be attempted.”1
Thinking Major Mitchell’s patrol of eight or nine officers the main threat, a squad of eight armed men of Lexington militia under the command of Sergeant William Munroe stationed themselves around Clarke’s parsonage to guard Hancock and Adams, while another thirty Lexington men, including Elijah Sanderson, the cabinetmaker who had passed Mitchell’s group on the road, assembled at Buckman’s Tavern. Sanderson and two others, Solomon Brown and Jonathan Loring, were soon detailed on horseback to shadow Mitchell’s men westward and return with a warning should the British officers double back and make for the Clarke house.2
Meanwhile, Hancock took the time to reply to Gerry’s warning. Writing that he was “much obliged for your notice,” Hancock told Gerry, “It is said the officers are gone to Concord, and I will send word thither.” Showing that he and Adams were not yet aware of the main British force about to come marching down the road, Hancock assured Gerry that he shared his concern about the seriousness of recent events and hoped that the decisions of the committee of safety would be effective. And then, thinking of another meeting of the committee in Menotomy, Hancock added, “I intend doing myself the pleasure of being with you to-morrow.”3
With that, the Clarke household settled down for the night, confident in the guard posted outside. In addition to Reverend Clarke, his wife, Lucy, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams, Hancock’s “female connections”—as James Warren termed them in a letter to Mercy—were present. Things had deteriorated to the point that neither Hancock nor Adams dared venture into Boston, and on April 7, Hancock’s beloved aunt Lydia and his fiancée, Dorothy Quincy, had left Boston and found refuge in Lexington. Also present were other members of the Clarke family. Lucy Clarke was a granddaughter of the Reverend John Hancock, making her John III’s second cousin.4
Sometime between midnight and one o’clock on the morning of April 19, the quiet outside the Clarke residence was broken by the sound of a horse hurrying up the road from the direction of Lexington Green. Sergeant Munroe and his men were at their posts, and Munroe blocked the rider’s path as he dismounted and strode purposefully toward the front door. The sergeant did not recognize the man and admonished him to be quiet lest he wake the inhabitants with his noise. “Noise!” shouted the lone rider. “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out.” At this, he stepped around Munroe and pounded on the front door.
Reverend Clarke immediately opened an upstairs window and inquired who was there. Without answering that direct question, the rider instead announced that he wished to see Mr. Hancock. Clarke, in the usual deliberative way of ministers, sought to question him more about his business, but Hancock’s head appeared at another window, and he said rather matter-of-factly, “Come in, Revere; we are not afraid of you.”5
EVEN THOUGH PAUL REVERE REMEMBERED the early hours of April 19 as “very pleasant” weatherwise, the British column marching west from Cambridge toward Lexington on what is now Massachusetts Avenue was already showing signs of stress. Most if not all of Smith’s command were wet and chilled from hours of waiting and stumbling around soggy marshes. They nonetheless set a brisk pace along the road, still muddy from the prior day’s rain. For a time, they managed better than four miles an hour despite complaints that the pace was “hasty and fatiguing.”6
Colonel Smith, however, was not one to consider the welfare of his men, and after the delays in crossing the Charles and wandering through marshy bogs, he focused on the part of Gage’s orders that directed him to secure the two bridges at Concord “as soon as possible” with “a party of the best Marchers.” Halting the main column for a brief rest at Menotomy, where the committee of safety of the Provincial Congress had just adjourned, Smith ordered Major John Pitcairn to take the six light infantry companies at the head of the column—about eighteen officers and 220 men, roughly 30 percent of his force—and march them at the quick to seize the Concord bridges and hold them until his main force arrived. Nothing was said about what might happen at the little crossroads of Lexington en route.7
John Pitcairn was by all accounts an able officer of long service. He was born in Scotland about 1722, the son of a Presbyterian minister. Commissioned a lieutenant in Cornwall’s Seventh Marines in 1746, Pitcairn filled a variety of assignments and was finally promoted to major in 1771, a long twenty-five years later. Along the way, the rigors and postings of military life did not keep him from marrying Elizabeth Dalrymple and fathering nine children with her. By the time Pitcairn landed in Boston with a contingent of six hundred marines in December of 1774, he was in his midfifties, and the subsequent long winter no doubt brought thoughts of Elizabeth and retirement. One of their children, Robert, had become a midshipman in the Royal Navy and was on watch during a 1767 voyage when what would be named Pitcairn Island was discovered in the South Pacific. Another of their children, Catherine, was married to Captain Charles Cochrane of the Fourth Regiment, who was now somewhere on the road up ahead as part of Major Mitchell’s advance patrol. Pitcairn’s son William was with him on the march as a lieutenant in the light infantry company of the Royal Marines.8
John Pitcairn was the type of experienced commander a superior would want for a mission in which the lines between military and political considerations were blurred. Colonel Leslie had faced this sort of quandary six weeks before at Salem and had at least come away without bloodshed if not rebel cannons. But Colonel Smith was another matter. Like Pitcairn, Smith was an aging relic of the ponderous hierarchy of the British army. Somewhat overweight, meticulous to a fault, and deliberative in his rank and position, Smith might well have been called General Gage’s ideal of what a military leader should be—which in itself was not necessarily a compliment to either man. Whether Smith’s unhurried pace was due to studied calmness under fire or merely occasional befuddlement only time would tell.
But for now, the immediate concern as Major Pitcairn led his advance force forward at a brisk march along the road to Lexington may have been General Gage’s tactical decision to assemble a force of independent companies without a regimental command structure. Smith acquiesced in this decision by sticking to traditional regimental seniority in the order of march. Pitcairn had behind him six company commanders, generally able and willing but largely unknown to him, and one wonders whether Smith might have been better advised to have moved Pitcairn’s light infantry company of marines into the van of his advance force.
As it was, the company at the head of Pitcairn’s column soon found plenty to keep it occupied. There was more activity in farmhouses and barns than there should have been at that hour—although it was by then approaching 4:00 a.m. Riders were encountered along the road, and all were detained and presumed to be rebel messengers out in the predawn dark to spread the alarm. Some, such as Simon Winship, may have had other business, or at least have been good actors. About halfway between Menotomy and Lexington, Pitcairn’s advance guard met Winship “on horseback, unarmed, and passing along in a peaceable manner.” When ordered to halt and dismount, Winship indignantly questioned the soldiers’ right to detain him. He had not been out warning minutemen, he claimed, but merely returning to his father’s house. Despite his protests, Winship was forced to march on foot in the midst of the British troops back toward Lexington, in the direction he had come.9
To Pitcairn, it soon became obvious from these encounters that surprise was not to be among his advantages. From the sounds of alarm bells and signal guns that were now resonating ahead of and behind his position, Colonel Smith was coming to the same conclusion. Major Mitchell and his patrol had set the alarm system in motion even as General Gage was giving Smith his orders. Smith made his first prudent decision of the long night and sent a messenger riding back toward Boston to advise the general that Smith might require reinforcements.
HAVING DELIVERED DR. WARREN’S MESSAGE and warned Hancock and Adams of the approaching troops, Paul Revere remounted and rode west toward Concord to spread the alarm. William Dawes, who had slipped across Boston Neck before it was sealed and arrived at the Clarke residence shortly after Revere, joined him. A third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott of Concord, soon overtook them. Prescott had been out on an errand of love and was returning to Concord from a late evening courting Lydia Mulliken of Lexington. Revere and Dawes ascertained that Prescott was a rebel at heart, and the three took turns knocking on farmhouse doors as they rode toward Concord.
By now the moon was near its apex, and the road was bathed in moonlight. The brightness made it more difficult to see what dangers lurked in the shadows of tall trees. Near the tiny hamlet of Lincoln, about midway between Lexington and Concord, Revere scouted the road in the lead while Dawes and Prescott stopped to arouse the inhabitants of a farmhouse.
Suddenly two British officers rode out from the shadows. Revere shouted a warning to his companions, and for a fleeting moment the rebel trio considered bulling its way through, although they were unarmed. But then another two heavily armed regulars emerged from the shadows. Flight quickly seemed the better strategy. Prescott urged his horse over a stone wall and escaped into the darkness of the adjacent woods. Dawes, who was mounted on the slowest horse of the three, rode in the opposite direction and managed to find shelter in an abandoned farmhouse. Revere was about to outrun his pursuers when six more soldiers appeared across his path.
Revere found himself a prisoner, but he was not alone. Major Mitchell’s patrol had also captured messenger Solomon Brown, who had been dispatched earlier from Lexington to Concord, and Elijah Sanderson and Jonathan Loring, who had been sent to follow the officers after they passed through Lexington. An officer who appeared to be in command ordered Revere to dismount and asked him where he had come from and when. Revere told him but thought the officer “seemed surprised” at his answers, either at the ground he had covered so quickly or the fact that he had slipped out of Boston at all. Asked his name, Revere told the truth on this point, too, which met with recognition. But rather than cower, Revere used his acknowledged notoriety to launch a verbal offensive against his captors.
They wouldn’t find what they were after, Revere told them. He had warned the countryside all the way from Charlestown and would soon have five hundred men in the field. The British officer retorted that his side had fifteen hundred men coming but again seemed surprised at the extent of Revere’s knowledge. The officer rode back to a group of officers still on the road. After a whispered conversation, they all came back to Revere at a gallop. This time it was Major Mitchell himself who “Clap’d his Pistol to [Revere’s] head” and threatened to “blow [his] brains out” if Revere did not answer his questions.
Mitchell then grilled Revere with the same questions the first officer had asked, but he demanded more particulars. Revere gave him the same answers without further detail but with a like amount of swagger. No doubt annoyed by Revere’s confidence and uncertain of the number of rebels who might be closing in around his small troop, Mitchell ordered Revere to mount his horse. As Revere did so, Mitchell snatched the reins out of his hands and exclaimed, “By G-d Sir you are not to ride with reins I assure you” and handed them to an officer to lead him.10
Mitchell’s men put each of their four prisoners—Revere, Brown, Sanderson, and Loring—between two guards, and they all started east toward Lexington at a brisk pace. Elijah Sanderson’s horse, “not being swift,” had difficulty keeping up, and one of the officers pressed his own horse close and prodded Sanderson’s mount with a blow from his scabbard.
As they neared Lexington, the boom of a signal gun reverberated through the crisp dawn air. What did it mean? Mitchell testily asked Revere. The express rider shrugged and repeated what he had already said twice before: the countryside knew that the regulars were about and was in a state of alarm. According to Sanderson’s recollection, the bell at the meetinghouse on Lexington Green began to ring soon thereafter, and Jonathan Loring snapped to his captors, “The bell’s a ringing, the town’s alarmed, and you’re all dead men.”11
Even Major Mitchell seems to have considered that a strong possibility. Keeping his prize—Paul Revere—Mitchell ordered the other three rebels to dismount. “I must do you an injury,” one soldier told Sanderson, drawing his sword. Expecting the worst, Sanderson, Brown, and Loring were relieved when their captors merely cut the bridles and saddles off their horses and drove them away. The three men, on foot but very near Lexington Green, were told they “might go about their business.”
Revere asked Mitchell to dismiss him as well, but the major “said he would carry me, lett the consequences be what it will.” But a few more minutes of riding brought them within sight of the meetinghouse and the sound of another alarm volley—likely fired by those gathered at Buckman’s Tavern. Major Mitchell quickly quizzed Revere about the distance to Cambridge and ordered him to trade his horse for a burly sergeant’s wearying mount. The exchange made, the bridle and saddle girth on the sergeant’s original horse were also slashed. Then Major Mitchell’s patrol and Paul Revere’s horse hurried past the meetinghouse and disappeared down the road toward Cambridge at full gallop. Revere was left standing in the road near the edge of Lexington Green.12
WHILE PAUL REVERE HAD TAKEN his ride toward Concord and been returned to Lexington a prisoner, Lexington’s militia had not been idle. Even before Revere had arrived, an initial guard had formed around the Clarke house, and another group gathered at Buckman’s Tavern. The call to turn out Lexington’s full complement was not given until after the receipt of Dr. Warren’s warning, sent via Revere. According to Reverend Clarke, “the militia of this town were alarmed, and ordered to meet on the usual place of parade,” that being Lexington Green. Clarke’s account was decidedly one-sided as to the peaceful intent of the militia and the militant purpose of the approaching regulars. The call out was made “not with any design of commencing hostilities upon the king’s troops,” Clarke maintained, “but to consult what might be done for our own and the people’s safety.” They would be ready, however, “in case overt acts of violence, or open hostility should be committed by this mercenary band of armed and blood-thirsty oppressors.”13
The commander of Lexington’s militia company was Captain John Parker. In the tradition of the militia, his position was an elected one, as were those of his officers. The practical nature of hardened countrymen usually assured that they voted for military experience over popularity. Parker had plenty of both. He was forty-six that spring, dying of tuberculosis but not one to let such personal inconvenience stand in the way of duty. His family recalled him as “a great tall man, with a large head and a high, wide brow.” His military experience had been honed through some of the toughest fighting of the French and Indian War. Parker had been with Brigadier James Wolfe at the siege of Louisbourg and on the Plains of Abraham before the fall of Quebec. There were rumors that along the way he had spent some time with Rogers’ Rangers.14
Despite Parker’s position as captain, the seventy-some men who answered this middle-of-the-night summons had truly come—in Reverend Clarke’s words—“to consult what might be done.” While a far-reaching alarm system was already spreading word of the regulars’ advance to similar militia units across much of eastern Massachusetts, at this particular moment Captain Parker’s men were very much on their own. They looked to Parker for leadership, but as a volunteer force of independent-minded individuals they expected to have some say in whatever action they took. And whatever action that might be, they would first and foremost be concerned with the immediate safety of their persons, their families, and their homes.
So by ones, twos, and threes the men of Lexington assembled on their village green. Many were related by blood or marriage, and all were neighbors and friends. While their ages ranged from sixteen to sixty-six, most were middle-aged men of some substance—men who worked hard on their farms, ran businesses, and took active part in the affairs of the town and the Congregational church. Its meetinghouse was so central to the activities of the town that it served as a makeshift armory for guns and munitions. Many times its congregation had heard Reverend Clarke espouse the blessings of liberty and the rights of man. Benjamin Estabrook’s slave, Prince, didn’t share in those blessings, but having taken an oath as a militiaman, he was among those who assembled in the darkness.
Robert Munroe was an example of how connected the men were on Lexington Green that morning. He was two weeks shy of his sixty-third birthday, definitely of the older generation in that era. He had already given his service in the Louisbourg campaign of the French and Indian War. His daughter Anna was married to Daniel Harrington. His daughter Ruth was the wife of William Tidd. These sons-in-law and Munroe’s own two sons, Ebenezer and John, stood beside him on the green that morning. Tidd was a lieutenant in the company; Daniel Harrington owned the blacksmith shop that fronted on the northern edge of the green.15
As his company formed on the green, Captain Parker sent two scouts down the road toward Cambridge to attempt to locate the approaching column of regulars. It is unclear how far they traveled, but one of them returned between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. and reported “no appearance of the troops, on the roads, either from Cambridge or Charlestown; and… that the movements in the army the evening before, were only a feint to alarm the people.”16
Given the inactivity and the coolness of the early morning air, Parker decided to dismiss his company, provided the men stay within earshot of a drumroll so they might be readily reassembled. Some retired to nearby homes, but most sought refuge in the warm confines of Buckman’s Tavern while Parker calmly awaited the return of his second scout. Little did he suspect—though perhaps he should have—that the scout was returning to Lexington as a prisoner of Major Pitcairn’s advance guard.
HAVING BEEN LEFT STANDING IN the road by Major Mitchell and his patrol, Paul Revere avoided crossing Lexington Green and instead circled north across the town cemetery toward the Clarke house. Most likely he did so to avoid other soldiers, should they be lurking around the green. Like Major Mitchell, Revere may have been unsure of the meaning of the commotion coming from the direction of Buckman’s Tavern—originating, unbeknownst to him, from Parker’s men. Perhaps the regulars were already in town in force.
Just whom Revere expected to find at the Clarke residence is uncertain, but he certainly did not expect to find the objects of his midnight ride. But yes—some three hours after receiving Revere’s urgent warning from Dr. Warren, John Hancock and Samuel Adams were still ensconced in Reverend Clarke’s parlor debating a course of action. When Hancock had written Elbridge Gerry a few hours before that “I intend doing myself the pleasure of being with you to-morrow,” he had meant in a committee meeting and not on a field of battle, but now Hancock seemed quite determined to be present at the latter. Never mind that his only weapons at hand were a pistol and a ceremonial sword meant more for fashionable dress than rugged combat.
John Hancock had become who he was in Boston society and commerce through no lack of ego. Samuel Adams understood this completely and had long used Hancock’s self-esteem to the advantage of the rebel cause. But Hancock, who had become an acknowledged political leader under Adams’s tutelage, rather grandly considered himself a military leader as well. Until removed from the post some months before by General Gage, Hancock had held the title of captain of the First Corps of Cadets. It sounded very official, but the cadets more closely resembled a local fraternal order that turned out occasionally for ceremonial roles than a military force. Other than drilling with the cadet company, Hancock had never had the slightest military training, never commanded troops in battle, and never been in the line of fire.
Hancock was nonetheless quoted as saying, “If I had my musket, I would never turn my back upon these troops,” and other words to that effect as he busily cleaned his pistol and polished his sword.17 Adams was more at ease. The signal event that might spark the open and irrevocable break with Great Britain that he had been planning for more than a decade was likely at hand, but he had no desire to stand on Lexington Green. Their task, Adams assured his friend, was to focus on the bigger picture and avoid being struck down to little benefit. “That is not our business,” Adams told Hancock of the coming confrontation on the green. “We belong to the cabinet.”
As Hancock and Adams went around and around about this, the rest of the Clarke household was in an uproar. When Dorothy Quincy fretted over the thought of her aging father stranded in Boston and vowed she would return to him in the morning, Hancock spoke to his fiancée as if she were a newly hired clerk in one of his warehouses. “No, madam,” Hancock decreed. “You shall not return as long as there is a British bayonet left in Boston.” Dorothy Quincy was cut from some of the same determined cloth as Hancock’s aunt Lydia, and, according to Dorothy’s reminiscence many years later, she replied, “Recollect, Mr. Hancock, I am not under your control yet.”18
Finally, with Revere’s added weight brought to bear on Hancock, he agreed with Adams to seek safety away from Lexington and up the road toward the north. Leaving Lydia Hancock and Dorothy Quincy with the Clarkes—arguably they were safer in the parsonage than on the open road with the rebels’ two best-known leaders—Hancock, Adams, Revere, and John Lowell, who was one of Hancock’s most trusted clerks, departed Lexington. When they arrived at what was judged to be a safe house several miles away, Revere and Lowell left Hancock and Adams and returned to the Clarke house in Lexington. For Revere, it was his third arrival there in the span of four hours in the early morning of April 19.
Perhaps it had been Hancock’s design all along, but some way or another, young Lowell persuaded Revere to continue with him to Buckman’s Tavern and rescue a heavy trunk of Hancock’s that was located in one of the upper rooms. It was a treasure trove of papers from the Provincial Congress and also held Hancock’s correspondence with committees of safety throughout the colony. Revere must have sighed just a little as he started off on yet another errand. But when the two men entered the tavern, they found a surprise.
The bulk of Parker’s militia were still inside warming themselves. On the basis of the return of Parker’s first scout and no other alarms from the east, the rumor that Revere’s earlier shouts of alarm were false had gained strength. Revere doubted the false alarm rumors, but before he could sit down and savor a refreshment he was interrupted. A rider burst into the tavern with news that the regulars were not coming. They were here—marching into town at the quick less than half a mile from the tavern.
Whether a scout dispatched by Parker or a nearby farmer along the Cambridge Road raised this cry is not entirely clear from contemporary accounts. But Captain Parker immediately ordered nineteen-year-old William Diamond, a newcomer from Boston who had been taught “the art of military drumming by a kindly British soldier,” to beat a loud roll on his drum and summon all men within earshot to assemble once more on the green.19
As the militiamen scrambled out of the tavern, Revere and Lowell exchanged looks and knew what they must do. Up the narrow stairs they climbed to the chamber containing Hancock’s trunk. Loaded with papers, it was far more than one man could manage alone—four feet long, two feet wide, and some two and one-half feet high. As they bent to lift it and carry it downstairs, Revere chanced a glance out the window. The eastern sky was lightening, and he could make out the long column of British regulars approaching the three-way intersection adjacent to Lexington Green and the meetinghouse.
On the road, Major Pitcairn heard William Diamond’s long roll on his rebel drum, halted his troops, and ordered them to load their muskets. Bells and signal guns were one thing, but to someone who had been a marine for almost thirty years, the ruffle of drums could only mean a call to battle.
Revere and Lowell lugged Hancock’s trunk down the stairs and out the door of Buckman’s Tavern. The Lexington men had assembled in front of the tavern and then followed Parker to form a line on the northern end of the green, adjacent to Bedford Road, which led to the Clarke parsonage. It is possible that Parker chose this position with a thought to protecting what until a short while before had been the safe haven of Hancock and Adams. More likely, he chose it to have a sweeping view of the green and the road to Concord in the early morning light. Revere and Lowell “made haste” and passed through the line of militia with the trunk. As they did so, Revere heard Parker tell his men, “Lett the troops pass by, and don’t molest them, without They being first.”20
These instructions appear to have been standing orders well known to all Massachusetts militia captains, and they dated back to the previous September, when the First Continental Congress, after approving the Suffolk Resolves, made it clear that the continued support of its sister colonies depended on Massachusetts showing restraint and being “on the defensive.”21
This restraint may well have been the most likely reason for Parker’s position on the far northern corner of the green. Outnumbered at least three to one by Pitcairn’s advance guard—Colonel Smith and his main force were still well down the road toward Menotomy—the Lexington men sought no confrontation but were nonetheless out to show the regulars that they could not march freely through the town without notice. Later, Parker would be quoted as saying, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war let it begin here.”22
If Pitcairn’s force had continued along the road to Concord at a brisk march, it is possible that no confrontation would have occurred on the green. But what triggered a halt by Pitcairn’s men and gave rise to the confusion that so often breeds errant action in such situations was that one or more of Pitcairn’s light infantry companies—likely the company from the Fourth Regiment, as well as those of the Fifth and Tenth, at the head of the column—turned the wrong way at the intersection and marched up Bedford Road between Buckman’s Tavern and the meetinghouse instead of bearing left toward Concord and paralleling the southwestern edge of the green.
This took them directly toward Parker’s force rather than past it at an angle. To add to the confusion, Major Mitchell and his mounted officers were scurrying around the advancing infantry. After a sleepless night—what with the anxieties of capturing messengers and listening to Paul Revere assure them of both the size and ready response of the rebel force—Mitchell was not displaying steady British calm. Again the issue of divided command dogged the British force. Lieutenant Jesse Adair of the Royal Marines was leading the van, but was he following Pitcairn’s orders or did Mitchell issue different orders to Adair in the field?
By the time Pitcairn saw what was happening at the intersection, approximately half his force—some one hundred men—had followed Adair along the northern edge of the green. Pitcairn frantically tried to recall them as his remaining companies turned left and followed the Concord road. To Parker and his men, the result was that the lightening sky silhouetted British troops appearing on both sides of the meetinghouse and advancing on their position. Given the morning light, it was difficult to see just how many soldiers were on the Bedford road coming straight toward them.
If the Lexington men were suddenly seized by the fear of being surrounded, Pitcairn was also gripped by similar thoughts. This was because, in addition to the line of militia on the green, there were two knots of would-be spectators—perhaps twenty or so each—lurking in the wings. One group gathered near Buckman’s Tavern and the adjacent stable on Pitcairn’s right flank, and the other stood partially hidden behind the home of Nathan Munroe along the Concord road, on his left flank. Their purpose was uncertain, but to Pitcairn, they appeared to be mostly male, armed, and threatening. Suddenly, he thought, it might be his command that was surrounded.
It is certainly possible, as many reports have claimed, that it was Major Pitcairn who galloped across the line of British infantry that had turned off the Bedford road and spread across the green behind the meetinghouse, facing across the green toward the assembled militia. It is also possible that this rider was Major Mitchell, still highly charged with the events of the previous night. Whoever it was, this officer yelled some version of, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels, and disperse.”23
Elijah Sanderson recalled that there were perhaps as many as five mounted British officers in front of the British line, which seems to suggest that Mitchell and at least some of the officers from his patrol were at the forefront. Sanderson stepped into line, but he had sent his musket home the prior evening before his nighttime ride toward Concord. He later wrote, “Reflecting I was of no use, I stepped out again from the company” and fell back about thirty feet as the regulars were “coming on in full career.”24 John Robbins, who stood in the militia’s front line, later swore that “there suddenly appeared a number of the King’s Troops”—about one thousand, he mistakenly believed—“about sixty or seventy yards from us, huzzaing and on a quick pace towards us, with three officers in their front on horseback, and on full gallop towards us; the foremost of which cried, ‘Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels.’ ”25
In the account of Captain Parker, given six days later, he reiterated that having “concluded not to be discovered, nor meddle or make with said Regular Troops (if they should approach) unless they should insult us; and upon their sudden approach, I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse and not to fire.”26 Indeed, for whatever confusion was about to ensue, “sixty-two depositions collected from American eyewitnesses all testified that Parker’s militia was dispersing before it was fired upon.”27
As bystander William Draper remembered the sequence of events, the Lexington men had “turned from said Troops” and were “making their escape,” but in the meantime “the Regular Troops made a huzza and ran towards Captain Parker’s Company, who were dispersing.”28 Thomas Fessenden, who was not in the militia ranks but rather standing “in a pasture near the meeting-house,” also recalled three officers on horseback in front of the advancing infantry, one of whom “cried out, ‘Disperse, you rebels immediately;’ on which he brandished his sword over his head three times.” A second officer was riding just behind him with a pistol in his hand.29
For a fraction of a second, the scene froze. Then a shot rang out.