XXVIII 1775. CHAP. had rallied, ran southerly till it met the causeway at right angles. The Americans saw before them within April gunshot British troops holding possession of their 19. bridge; and in the distance a still larger number occupying their town, which, from the rising smoke, seemed to have been set on fire. In Concord itself, Pitcairn had fretted and fumed with oaths and curses at the tavern-keeper for shutting against him the doors of the inn, and exulted over the discovery of two twenty-four pounders in the tavern yard, as though they reimbursed the expedition. These were spiked; sixty barrels of flour were broken in pieces, but so imperfectly, that afterwards half the flour was saved; five hundred pounds of ball were thrown into a mill-pond. The liberty pole and several carriages for artillery were burned; and the court house took fire, though the fire was put out. Private dwellings were rifled; but this slight waste of public stores was all the advantage for which Gage precipitated a civil war. The Americans had as yet received only uncertain rumors of the morning's events at Lexington. At the sight of fire in the village, the impulse seized them "to march into the town for its defence." But were they not subjects of the British king? Had not the troops come out in obedience to constituted and acknowledged authorities? Was resistance practicable? Was it justifiable? By whom could it be authorized? No union had been formed; no independence proclaimed; no war declared. The husbandmen and mechanics who then stood on the hillock by Concord river, were called on to act, and their action would be war or peace, submission or XXVIII independence. Had they doubted, they must have CHAP despaired. 1775. April But duty is bolder than theory, more confident than the understanding, older and more imperative 19. than speculative science; existing from eternity, and recognised in its binding force from the first morning of creation. Prudent statesmanship would have asked anxiously for time to ponder, and would have missed the moment for decision by delay. Wise philosophy would have compared the systems of government, and would have lost from hesitation the glory of opening a new era on mankind. The humble trainbands at Concord acted, and God was with them. "I never heard from any person the least expression of a wish for a separation," Franklin, not long before, had said to Chatham. In October, 1774, Washington wrote, "No such thing as independence is desired by any thinking man in America." "Before the nineteenth of April, 1775," relates Jefferson, "I never had heard a whisper of a disposi tion to separate from Great Britain." Just thirtyseven days had passed, since John Adams in Boston published to the world: "That there are any who pant after independence, is the greatest slander on the province." The American revolution did not proceed from precarious intentions. It grew out of the soul of the people, and was an inevitable result of a living affection for freedom, which actuated harmonious effort as certainly as the beating of the heart sends warmth and color and beauty to the system. The rustic heroes of that hour obeyed the simplest, the highest, and the surest instincts, of which the seminal principle VOL. VII. 26 XXVIII 1775. CHAP. existed in all their countrymen. From necessity they were impelled by a strong endeavor towards indeApril pendence and self-direction; this day revealed the 19. plastic will which was to attract the elements of a nation to a centre, and by an innate force to shape its constitution. The officers, meeting in front of their men, spoke a few words with one another, and went back to their places. Barrett, the colonel, on horseback in the rear, then gave the order to advance, but not to fire unless attacked. The calm features of Isaac Davis, of Acton, became changed; the town schoolmaster, who was present, could never afterwards find words strong enough to express, how his face reddened at the word of command. "I have not a man that is afraid to go," said Davis, looking at the men of Acton; and drawing his sword, he cried, "March." company, being on the right, led the way towards the bridge, he himself at their bead, and by his side Major John Buttrick, of Concord, with John Robinson, of Westford, lieutenant colonel in Prescott's regiment, but on this day a volunteer without command. His Thus these three men walked together in front, followed by minute men and militia, in double file, trailing arms. They went down the hillock, entered the by-road, came to its angle with the main road, and there turned into the causeway that led straight to the bridge. The British began to take up the planks; the Americans, to prevent it, quickened their step. At this, the British fired one or two shots up the river; then another, by which Luther Blanchard and Jonas Brown were wounded. A vol XXVIII 1775. April 19. ley followed, and Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer, CHAP. the latter a son of the deacon of the Acton church, fell dead. Three hours before, Davis had bid his wife and children farewell. That afternoon, he was carried home and laid in her bedroom. His countenance was little altered and pleasant in death. The bodies of two others of his company who were slain that day were brought also to her house, and the three were followed to the village graveyard by a concourse of the neighbors from miles around. God gave her length of days in the land which his generous self-devotion assisted to redeem. She lived to see her country touch the gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, and when it was grown great in numbers, wealth, and power, the United States in congress paid honors to her husband's martyrdom, and comforted her under the double burden of sorrow and more than ninety years. As the British fired, Emerson, who was looking on from his chamber window near the bridge, was for one moment uneasy, lest the fire should not be returned. It was only for a moment; Buttrick, leaping into the air, and at the same time partially turning round, cried aloud, as if with his country's voice, "Fire, fellow-soldiers, for God's sake fire;" and the cry, "fire, fire, fire," ran from lip to lip. Two of the British fell; several were wounded. In two minutes, all was hushed. The British retreated in disorder towards their main body; the countrymen were left in possession of the bridge. This is the world renowned BATTLE OF CONCORD; more eventful than Agincourt or Blenheim. The Americans had acted from impulse, and stood XXVIII 1775. CHAP. astonished at what they had done. They made no pursuit and did no further harm, except that one April wounded soldier, attempting to rise as if to escape, 19. was struck on the head by a young man with a hatchet. The party at Barrett's might have been cut off, but was not molested. As the Sudbury company, commanded by the brave Nixon, passed near the South bridge, Josiah Haynes, then eighty years of age, deacon of the Sudbury church, urged an attack on the British party stationed there; his advice was rejected by his fellow-soldiers as premature, but the company in which he served proved among the most alert during the rest of the day. In the town of Concord, Smith, for half an hour, showed by marches and countermarches, his uncertainty of purpose. At last, about noon, he left the town, to retreat the way he came, along the crooked and hilly road that wound through forests and thickets. The minute men and militia, who had taken part in the fight, ran over the hills opposite the battle field into the east quarter of the town, crossed the pasture known as the "Great Fields, and acting each from his own impulse, placed themselves in ambush a little to the eastward of the village, near the junction of the Bedford road. There they were reinforced by men who were coming in from all around, and at that point the chase of the English began. Among the foremost were the minute men of Reading, led by John Brooks, and accompanied by Foster the minister of Littleton as a volunteer. The company of Billerica, whose inhabitants, in their just indignation at Nesbit and his soldiers, had openly re |