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FIRST STROKE
On April 19, 1775, in the gray interval between dawn and sunrise, some thirty-eight Americans formed two uneven lines on
the wet, dandelion-speckled grass of the triangular two-acre
common in the center of Lexington, Massachusetts. They were
summoned by the rolling beat of sixteen-year-old William Diamond’s brightly painted drum. The order to sound this call to
arms had been given by Lexington’s big, burly militia captain,
John Parker, forty-five-year-old veteran of the French and Indian War. The men had been waiting all night for the summons,
most of them in the Buckman Tavern, a white clapboard building just east of the green. Others hurried from twelve houses
that faced three sides of the green. As more men joined the
ranks, Captain Parker’s numbers grew to approximately seventy, still considerably short of the 130 names on his muster
list.
William Diamond’s drum had rolled, and Parker’s men had
formed up in response to a shouted warning from a rider Captain Parker had sent out to scout the Boston road. A British
column, the excited man said, was only fifteen minutes away
and marching fast.
Parker and his men were on the north end of the common close
to where one branch of the Boston road led to Bedford. Another
branch, leading to Concord, bent left past the opposite side of
the common. Their view of the fork, from which the road ran to
Boston eleven miles away, was blocked by the town’s bulky
two-and-one-half-story meeting house, where they gathered on
Sundays to hear their minister, the Rev. Jonas Clarke, tell them
the British were plotting to deprive Americans of their liberty
and it was every man’s sacred duty to resist them.
Although they had guns in their hands, these men of Lexington
were not regular soldiers. They wore their everyday clothes loose brown or gray homespun cloth coats and leather or cloth
knee breeches. They elected their officers once a year and
wrote their own rules and regulations, which included a fine of
three shillings for “any person of the Company that shall Interrupt the Capt[ain] or Commanding Officer while under Arms by
talking laughing or any Indecent Behavior.” About a quarter of
the men were related to Captain Parker by blood or marriage.
Most of the men came from families that had been living in Lexington for several generations, and almost all shared some
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degree of kinship. The company clerk, Daniel Harrington, whose
house stood only a few steps from the common, was a son-inlaw of sixty-three-year-old Robert Munroe, one of the
company’s ensigns (the eighteenth-century equivalent of a
second lieutenant). Another Harrington - Jonathan - lived in the
house next door, with his wife and small son. Thirty-eight-yearold William Tidd, the company’s lieutenant, was also married to
one of Ensign Munroe’s daughters. The men included grandfathers like Jonas Parker, the captain’s cousin, and Moses
Harrington, who were there with their married sons. Six
younger men such as John Muzzy were also there with sons in
their teens or early twenties.
Incongruous among the two rows of white faces was the
glistening black skin of the slave, Prince Estabrook. He had become a member of the company by majority vote, in
accordance with the regulation that “any Person Desiring to be
Admitted . . . shall have a vote of the Company for the same. .
. .”
If Captain Parker and his men had any plan, it was to keep as
far away as possible from the Concord road. They knew Concord was the British column’s destination, and earlier in the
evening, when the first alarm was brought to Lexington by
riders from Boston, they had been told the British numbered
between 1,200 and 1,500 men. Captain Parker and his men
had conferred and decided “not to . . . meddle or make with
[the] Regular troops.”
The Lexington men heard hundreds of feet striking the ground
with military precision. Parker and his company waited, their
eyes on the Concord road. At any moment, they thought they
would see it full of red-coated infantry. But around that side of
the meeting house came only a single British officer on horseback, gesturing with a sword, followed by at least three other
mounted officers. Around the Bedford Road side of the meeting
house came six companies of red-coated British light infantry,
three abreast, twelve men to a file. Beside them were at least
six civilians they had captured on the road.
There was a split-second pause in the British pace. Then the
light infantry raced toward the Americans, shouting furiously,
the two lead companies forming a line of battle twelve abreast
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FIRST STROKE
and three deep. The officer waving the sword was Major John
Pitcairn of the Royal Marines. He was in command of these light
infantrymen, traditionally the most agile and active soldiers in
their regiments. “Lay down your arms,” he shouted to Parker’s
men. From the other officers on horseback came contradictory
commands. “Disperse, ye rebels!” one roared. “Surrender,”
cried another. “Damn them we will have them,” bellowed a
third.
The appalled Captain Parker turned to his men and told them to
disperse without firing. Most of them began to scatter, some at
a slow, grudging pace, others more quickly. Old Jonas Parker
and a few others hesitated. Grandfather Parker had vowed
never to retreat if the British attacked them.
“Surround them,” shouted Pitcairn to the charging light infantrymen. But they were not listening to him nor to anyone else.
No one knows how the shooting began or who fired the first
shot. Pitcairn later said he thought he saw a gun held by a man
behind a stone wall on the edge of the green “flash in the pan.”
(The powder in the musket’s firing pan ignited but not the cartridge in the barrel, so the gun failed to go off.) American
witnesses - there were about forty men, women, and children
standing around the green or watching from the windows and
doorways of the adjacent houses - say one of the British officers on horseback fired a pistol. If either occurred, it only
confirmed the intentions of the light infantrymen from the moment they saw Parker’s men facing them on the common.
No one knows for certain if the red-coated soldiers in the two
lead companies followed the drill-book routine which they had
practiced hundreds of times in Boston during the preceding
months. If they did, the men in the two lead companies
stopped a few dozen yards from Parker’s men and the second
rank stepped a half pace to the right. The third rank stepped
another half pace to the right. This gave every man in the two
companies a chance to fire without hitting the soldier in front of
him. Eyewitness comments about a “ragged fire” suggests that
excitement may have prevented them from performing this
maneuver with precision. But within a few seconds, the soldiers
of the two lead companies began blasting away at the Lexington men.
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