by Ron Carter
“That is correct, sir.”
“Did Pitcairn give the order to the first three companies to load their muskets?”
“He did, sir. In his opinion the colonials have assaulted his troops.”
For a split second Smith considered, then spurred his horse forward at a lope and reined in beside Pitcairn. “Lexington is just ahead. Under any circumstance you are not to fire unless they do. I repeat, do not provoke a fight. If one comes, it must be on their shoulders, not ours.”
“Sir, a colonial has already attempted to shoot at us.”
“So Sutherland said. Give your troops my orders, just as I gave them to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pitcairn loped his horse to the captains and repeated the orders, which were then given to the regulars, while Smith waited. Pitcairn rode back and reported.
Smith drew and exhaled a tense breath. “Resume the march.”
They moved onto the top of the rise in the road, cradled between two low hills, and started the slight descent into the town of Lexington.
The first arc of the sun had just cleared the eastern skyline.
“Down! Get down!”
Tom hissed the words, and Matthew plowed through the willows and cattails and dropped into the sand and stones of the dry streambed beside him and waited, listening. The sound of a running horse came louder from the west, and then a British officer raced past them, hunched low over the horse’s neck, cape flying in the moonlight as he galloped east towards Menotomy.
“Messenger,” Tom murmured, and stood. He listened a moment, tentative, waiting to see if others were following.
None were.
Tom climbed from the shallow, dry streambed and started east at a trot, Matthew following. They climbed the rock fence at the end of the field, jumped a small seep stream, and continued westward across another field with grain sprouts ten inches up.
“Wonder what the message was,” Tom mused.
Matthew remained silent, following Tom blindly, without thought or question, not caring about direction. He saw only Kathleen as he had last seen her, face stained with tears, eyes filled with fear, pain. He heard nothing but her last words that rang in his ears like an unending chant—Go, Matthew, if you feel anything for me, go if you feel anything for me, go—over and over again. He felt the need to fold her inside his arms and hold her until she was all right. He remembered the feel of her arms about him and the smell of her as she clung to him and then looked into his face and said yes, she would marry him, and he ached to have that moment back once more.
But she was in Boston with her life shattered, and he was near Lexington in a spring wheat field in the night, carrying a musket to war, and nothing they had ever known would ever again be as it was. Matthew’s brain was blank, unable to leave what had been, to accept what was now. He stumbled on behind Tom like a machine.
Tom stopped and stood upright. “Quiet,” he said, and turned his head to catch sound coming on the west wind.
It was there, far in the distance. The unmistakable cadence of drums and the measured tread of hundreds of men marching. Tom glanced over his shoulder eastward, where the black earth met the deep purple of heaven in the first nudgings of dawn.
“They’ll be in Lexington by sunup,” he said, “and we’ll be right behind them.” Movement to his right caught his eye and he turned, crouched. On the skyline he saw a dozen men trotting west towards Lexington, and then he saw their three-cornered hats and for a moment a smile flickered.
“Come on,” he said, and led on at his peculiar, swaying trot. Matthew followed without a word.
Six hundred yards later Tom angled south and stopped twenty yards short of the winding dirt road for a moment before he once again turned west and continued on towards Lexington. Lights shined in the windows of every farmhouse; people moved in every farmyard. To his left, on the Lexington Road, eight men rode by travelling west, muskets in their hands. Behind him a skiff of clouds caught the first rays of sun and turned the heavens into a great dome of rose and yellows that for a moment bathed the world in indescribable shades. He looked at the farmhouses and the green fields and the stone fences and oaks and maples and the spring flowers, and he slowed to feel the rare beauty and the power of the land seep into his soul.
A mile to his left he watched twenty men trot over the skyline towards Lexington, muskets in hand, and knew there was no longer reason to stay off the road. Four hundred yards farther he rounded a curve and crested a rise, and half a mile ahead they were there. He was looking at the rear echelons of the column of British regulars. Beyond the column lay the small town of Lexington, sparkling like a jewel in the morning sun.
______
Notes
The bungled crossing of the Back Bay by the British, getting mired in mud up to their chests, and their late start north towards Concord are all chronicled accurately (see French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, beginning at p. 100).
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn were both emphatic in their orders to the British troops that they were not to fire unless they were fired upon—in short, they were not to fire the first shot. However, as the British column neared Lexington, Pitcairn believed that a colonial lying in wait by the road had raised his musket and attempted to fire but that the weapon had misfired. Thus Pitcairn believed his command had been assaulted; whereupon he ordered them to prime and load. (See French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, pp. 103 and 105.)
Upon approaching Lexington, Lieutenant Colonel Smith was aware that the surrounding countryside was aroused against him, and therefore he selected a messenger, Lieutenant Ambrose of the Twenty-third Welch Fusiliers, to gallop back to Boston, requesting General Thomas Gage to send a support column to assist. This single act of requesting support was all that saved any of his men that day; otherwise not one of them would have returned to Boston that night. (See French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, p. 104.)
The names of the officers on both sides and the sequence of events as the day of April 19, 1775, began are accurate (see chapter 12 of French, The Day of Concord and Lexington).
Wednesday, April 19, 1775
Chapter XII
* * *
“ They’re coming, they’re coming!”
The distant shout and sound of a horse at stampede gait brought Captain John Parker to a standstill on the Lexington Green. He raised a hand to shade his eyes against the rising sun and squinted to make out the cloud of dust on the road. The dust became a man on a horse, waving his hat, kicking his mount at every stride.
The east road, from Menotomy to Lexington, passed between two low rises before it crossed Vine Brook and came straight on into the town. At town’s edge, the road forked. The left fork led to Concord, the right fork to Bedford. In the V formed by the two roads lay the Lexington Green. Those who had seen it declared it to be the most beautiful green in Massachusetts. Deep grass ran for more than one hundred fifty yards. The big meetinghouse was close to where the roads forked, blocking the view of most of the Green from those approaching from Menotomy. Just to the left of the meetinghouse was the white belfry with its spire. Across the Bedford Road, facing the Green, was Buckman’s tavern. The homes and farms and businesses that were Lexington surrounded the Green on both forks of the road. On the morning of April 19, 1775, the Green was a dazzling sea of yellow dandelions, sprung to blossom by the warm spring rains.
Captain Parker stood in the dandelions, across the road from Buckman’s tavern, and studied the incoming rider intently, and suddenly dropped his hand. “That’s Thad Bowman, back from patrol!” Parker broke into a trot towards the place where the road forked, to wait.
Bowman came in whooping, sweating, horse lathered and fighting for wind, and he pulled the horse to a stop and leaped to the ground. “They’re coming right now, back at Vine Brook. Maybe fifteen minutes.” His eyes were wild, voice high, cracking.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Column must be a half
mile long, maybe more.”
Parker rounded his mouth and blew air. “Tend that horse and get a musket.” He pivoted and ran back up the Bedford Road to Buckman’s tavern and burst in where militiamen were dozing after their long vigil in the night.
“Awake and on your feet!” roared Parker. “Drummer, get down to the Green as fast as you can go and sound assembly. The British will be on us in fifteen minutes.”
“How many, sir?”
Parker shook his head. “Enough! Hundreds!”
The drummer grabbed his drum and sprinted through the door barefoot and was pounding out assembly while he ran for the Green. Men jerked shoes on and left them untied as they grabbed muskets and lunged out the door into the beautiful spring morning. All over Lexington doors were thrown open and men ran into the streets still buttoning their pants, shrugging into shirts, while they clung to their muskets and ran for the Green. Women and children walked to the roadway to watch.
Parker stood in the center of the Green rubbing his suddenly dry mouth with the back of his hand while he studied the empty road from Menotomy, and then they were there, coming down the rise between the two hills. The small dot of red became the first rank of regulars, and then Parker heard their drummers beating out the cadence, and the first rank was followed by another and another. One hundred yards to the right and left of the column, the flankers moved with the drum cadence, and Parker breathed light when he realized what the formation meant. This column was not moving troops from one place to another. With flankers out, this column was ready to fight. He licked dry lips while the drum cadence continued, and the column became a great, deadly red snake creeping steadily, relentlessly toward Lexington.
Parker stared at the ground for three seconds while his orders from Warren and Sam Adams flashed in his mind. Do not provoke a fight. If they mean only to pass through town, let them. Unless they destroy private property, do nothing. Under any circumstance do not fire unless they do.
I’ve got to keep them away from the meetinghouse, away from the center of town!
He turned and shouted his next order. “Follow me.”
He led his command one hundred yards north of the meetinghouse on the Green near the Bedford Road and waited for them to fall into two ranks, and he quickly counted seventy-six men. He faced them and took a deep breath and spoke. “Our orders are to avoid a fight if we can. Protect the town, but let them pass through if that’s all they intend to do. We do not fire unless they do.”
He paced for a moment, then continued. “They’re headed for Concord, but if we block the road, they’ll fight. If we wait here we can defend the town if they attack, but if they only want to pass on to Concord, they can. So I say we wait here.”
He waited a moment and then followed the time-honored custom of all colonials. He asked for counsel. “If any of you have a different plan, speak up now.”
A murmur rose for a moment, then died.
“Are we agreed?”
“Yes,” came the shout.
“Load your muskets,” Parker answered.
From behind came a small voice and Parker turned. There stood a man scarcely five feet tall, with a musket taller than he. Parker looked at him quizzically and spoke gruffly. “Who are you?”
“Sylvanus Wood, sir. I want to volunteer.”
Despite the crushing responsibility of defending Lexington with seventy-seven men against eight hundred, Parker could not stifle a grin. “Where are you from?”
“Woburn, sir. I got Revere’s message last night and came as fast as I could.”
Parker shook his head in amazement. He was not sure the man could even shoulder the musket, yet there he stood, eyes big and soulful, wanting only to get into the fight. As he stared at the little man, Parker felt a surge of pride. “Load your musket and fall into that second rank.”
“Yes, sir!” Sylvanus Wood was in the second rank in five seconds, at rigid attention, clutching his musket.
East of the Green, across the Bedford Road, half a mile behind Buckman’s tavern, Tom Sievers slowed and stopped on the gently sloping hillside, Matthew beside him. For more than a minute Tom studied the British column, locating the officers, identifying the first three companies as marines, realizing that with flankers out they were prepared for battle. Across the road he watched Parker standing firm before his two ranks, and Tom knew.
“The British mean to fight!” he exclaimed. “Parker’s got no chance!” He started down the hill at a run, heedless that he and Matthew might be seen by the British column.
On the Green, Parker surveyed his men one more time. “Stand fast until I say,” he told them, and turned to study the incoming British, scarcely breathing as he waited to see if they would continue west on the Concord Road or turn onto the Green or into the town for a confrontation.
Steadily they came, red coats shining in the bright sunlight, white belts gleaming over their chests, canteens and powder horns swinging with their stride. Women seized their children and hurried them through open doors that closed instantly, while window curtains were pulled back and small faces appeared.
When they were eighty yards from the fork in the road, Parker realized every soldier in the column was mud stained from the waist down, and he remembered the marshes at the Lechmere landing and a grim smile flashed for a moment. At fifty yards from the fork, the meetinghouse blocked the column leaders from Parker’s view, and he waited to see which road they would take, and he heard himself saying, “Concord. Go on to Concord.”
It was not to be.
Parker stared in disbelief at what happened next.
The column of regulars, led by three companies of marines, turned right onto the Bedford Road, while Pitcairn and the other officers of the lead companies—Mitchell, Cochrane, Lumm, Sutherland, Adair—loped their horses to the left, taking the Concord Road for twenty yards, then swinging back to their right, around the meetinghouse. They emerged onto the great open space of the Green, resplendent with the carpet of tall dandelions, and the officers hauled their horses to a stop facing Parker and his men one hundred twenty yards ahead.
To the right of the officers, hidden by the meetinghouse and out of sight of the officers, the column marched onto the Green and continued directly towards the waiting militia, but the column was without leadership.
The officers had separated themselves from their command!
As though he finally realized what he had done, Pitcairn set spurs to his horse and galloped towards Parker, shouting, “Disperse your men! Disperse your men!”
At the same time, both he and Mitchell were shouting to their own regulars, “Disarm the militia. Disarm them.”
The other officers were hot behind them and joined in the conflicting orders, some shouting to their own soldiers, “Disarm the rebels,” while others shouted to Parker, “Disperse your men.”
Junior officers and sergeants who had never before been under the command of Pitcairn or the other officers shook their heads in confusion. A grizzled veteran sergeant looked at the lieutenant in charge of his squad. “Now, ’ow do we disarm ’em if they’re dispersing?”
The young, smooth-faced lieutenant had no answer.
Far back in the column, Colonel Smith could not believe what he was seeing, and started forward at a gallop. The column of regulars had by that time stopped twenty yards short of the militia, and the first two companies had spread to face them, rank for rank. Parker stood his ground in front of his men while the British assembled in battle formation.
Pitcairn, with the other officers, was approaching at the gallop, still shouting his orders while the regulars brought their muskets to the ready, and suddenly Parker was looking down the barrels of over one hundred muskets.
Avoid a fight. Defend the town if you must, but do not provoke a fight. It ran through his head like the beat of the British drum cadence. To obey that direct order, there was but one command Parker could give his white-faced militiamen, and he gritted his teeth in loathing as he turned to his men
and gave it. “Stay in formation and fall back. Do not fire.”
The militiamen began backing up without turning, watching every move made by the regulars, waiting for one of them to shoulder a musket and fire.
For both sides, it seemed the very air was charged with an all-consuming tension as the regulars stood in their battle squares, muskets loaded and ready, while the militia backed away, trying to avoid a fight, each side watching like hawks for the other side to make the move that would ignite the powder keg. Not a man among them could know that the history of the world hung in the balance while they stood thus in the yellow dandelions on the Lexington Green that beautiful spring morning. Seconds were an eternity as the militia backed up one step at a time. It seemed a hush seized the Green, and nature held her breath as the gap between the two sides widened.
Then, in the thick tension, from a source no one ever knew, the cracking bang of a single shot rolled out over the Green and echoed off the meetinghouse, and in that moment the world was changed forever.
For an instant that seemed unending both sides stood stone still, unable to comprehend that the inevitable had happened, and then the British regulars leveled their muskets and fired the first devastating volley, and one hundred musket balls ripped into the militiamen. A dozen men in the front rank groaned and went down when the big .75-caliber slugs hit.
The militia still standing returned fire while the second rank of British regulars fired their second volley over the heads of the kneeling first rank, and again militiamen went down.
Tom Sievers was five hundred yards behind Buckman’s tavern when the sound of that first shot came rolling across the Bedford Road. He stopped short in his headlong rush and stood still, horrified, unable to do anything other than stand with held breath. He watched as the regulars raised their muskets, and from deep in his throat came the shout “No!” but it was lost in the thunder of the first volley. He watched the front rank of militiamen wither and shrink as the dead and wounded crumpled, and he saw those still able return fire just before the second rank of regulars delivered the second volley. Other militiamen dropped, and those still surviving broke for the trees to the north, save for one lone colonial midway in the file.
