Posted
on April 19, 2016
On
the morning of April 19, 1775, John Parker was already dying of
consumption.
At
age 46, he only had months to live.
Still,
he had been elected as militia captain by the men of his town,
Lexington, Massachusetts. He had had experience as a soldier in the
French and Indian War – when he wasn't busy being a farmer and
mechanic – and the had Massachusetts Militia needed farmers who
were experienced in battle to lead what was basically a group of
farmers with muskets.
The
British troops, on the other hand, were trained soldiers called
“regulars.” And on this date in 1775, a group of about 700
British regulars under Colonel Francis Smith moved to Concord,
Massachusetts, to search for supplies and weapons that were rumored
to be hiding there.
Lexington
just happened to be on the road to Concord.
Captain
Parker heard that British soldiers were approaching – but of course
he didn't know why they were coming his way. The Revolutionary War
hadn't started yet...British troops had been marching through the
countryside without battles for months now...Parker had no good
reason to order an attack on the better-equipped, better-trained
Brits.
Actually,
from all accounts, Parker didn't order such an attack. But it is
uncertain exactly what did happen. British Colonel Smith had ordered
an advance guard to see if there was going to be any confrontation;
when the advance guard approached the colonists gathered on the
Common in Lexington, Parker ordered his men to avoid a confrontation.
One soldier – much later – remembered the order this way:
"Stand
your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a
war, let it begin here."
Another
soldier, a fellow you may have heard of named Paul Revere, remembered
the order to be slightly different:
"Let
the soldiers pass by. Do not molest them without they begin first."
It's
reported that the British soldiers, too, had orders not to shoot.
But....there was shooting!
Nobody
is certain who shot first, but after the “Battle of Lexington”
eight militia were killed, ten were wounded, and zero British
regulars were killed and only one was wounded.
Not
all that auspicious a beginning for the often-romanticized American
Revolution!
Later
that day Parker led his men to ambush the British soldiers as they
returned to Boston from Concord, and later still he led his men as
they resisted the British Siege of Boston...but in less than five
months, Parker died from consumption.
By
the way...
- Consumption is the old name for tuberculosis.
This statue, which stands in Lexington Battle Green, represents minutemen in general. Actually, Parker's Lexington company were not really minutemen (who were only one-quarter of the militia). The statue has come to represent John Parker, even though the statue depicts a young, healthy soldier, and Parker was a middle-aged, quite ill captain.
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