town-meeting, and lately the patriot members of the provincial congress twice a day to their little senate house. Near that spot Winthrop, the father of Massachusetts, had given counsel; and Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, had spoken words of benignity and wisdom. The people of Concord, of whom about two hundred appeared in arms on that day, derived their energy from their sense of the divine power. This looking to God as their sovereign brought the fathers to their pleasant valley; this controlled the loyalty of the sons; and this has made the name of Concord venerable throughout the world.

The alarm company of the place rallied near the libertypole on the hill, to the right of the Lexington road, in the front of the meeting-house. They went to the perilous duties of the day" with seriousness and acknowledgment of God," as though they were to engage in acts of worship. The minute company of Lincoln, and a few men from Acton, pressed in at an early hour; but the British, as they approached, were seen to be four times as numerous as the Americans. The latter therefore retreated, first to an eminence eighty rods farther north, then across Concord river, by the North Bridge, till just beyond it, by a back road, they gained high ground, about a mile from the centre of the town. There they waited for aid.

About seven o'clock, under brilliant sunshine, the British marched with rapid step into Concord; the light infantry along the hills, and the grenadiers in the lower road. Left in undisputed possession of the hamlet, they made search for stores. To this end, one small party was sent to the South Bridge over Concord river; and, of six companies under Captain Laurie, three, comprising a hundred soldiers or more, were stationed as a guard at the North Bridge, while three others advanced two miles farther, to the residence of Barrett, the highest military officer of the neighborhood, where arms, it was thought, had been concealed. But they found there nothing to destroy except some carriages for cannon. His wife, at their demand, gave them refreshment, but refused pay, saying: "We are commanded to feed our enemy, if he hunger."

At daybreak the minute-men of Acton crowded at the drum-beat to the house of Isaac Davis, their captain, who "made haste to be ready." Just thirty years old, the father

of four little ones, stately in his person, a man of few words, earnest even to solemnity, he parted from his wife, saying: "Take good care of the children;" and, while she gazed after him with resignation, he led off his company.

Between nine and ten the number of Americans on the rising ground above Concord bridge had increased to more than four hundred. Of these, there were twenty-five minutemen from Bedford, with Jonathan Wilson for their captain; others were from Westford, among them Thaxter, a preacher; others from Littleton, from Carlisle, and from Chelmsford. The Acton company came last, and formed on the right. The whole was a gathering not so much of officers and soldiers as of brothers and equals, of whom every one was a man well known in his village, observed in the meeting-house on Sundays, familiar at town-meetings, and respected as a freeholder or a freeholder's son.

Near the base of the hill Concord river flows languidly in a winding channel, and was approached by a causeway over the wet ground of its left bank. The by-road from the hill on which the Americans had rallied ran southerly till it met the causeway at right angles. The Americans saw before them, within gunshot, British troops holding possession of their 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 afterward 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 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 independence. Had they doubted, they must have despaired. Prudent statesmanship would have asked for time to ponder. Wise philosophy would have lost from hesitation the glory of opening a new era on mankind. The train-bands 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 heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain." Just thirty-seven days had passed since John Adams published in Boston: "That there are any who pant after independence, is the greatest slander on the province."

The American revolution grew out of the soul of the people, and was an inevitable result of a living affection for freedom, which set in motion harmonious effort as certainly as the beating of the heart sends warmth and color through the system. The rustic heroes of that hour obeyed the simplest, the highest, and the surest instincts, of which the seminal principle existed in all their countrymen. From necessity they were impelled toward independence and self-direction; this day revealed the 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 school

master of Concord, who was present, could never afterward find words strong enough to express how deeply 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!" His company, being on the right, led the way toward the bridge, he himself at their head, 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.

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; to prevent it, the Americans 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 volley followed, and Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer fell dead. Three hours before, Davis had bid his wife farewell. That afternoon he was carried home and laid in her bedroom. His countenance was pleasant in death. The bodies of two others of his company, who were slain that day, were brought to her house, and the three were followed to the village graveyard by a concourse of the neighbors from miles around. Heaven gave her length of days in the land which his self-devotion assisted to redeem. She lived so see her country reach the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific; when it was grown great in numbers, wealth, and power, the United States in congress bethought themselves to pay honors to her husband's martyrdom, and comfort her under the double burden of sorrow and of more than ninety years.

As the British fired, Emerson, who was looking on from an upper window in his house 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: "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 disVOL. IV.-11

order toward 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 stood astonished at what they had done. They made no pursuit and did no further harm, except that one wounded soldier, attempting to rise as if to escape, 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 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 placed themselves in ambush a little to the eastward of the village, near the junction of the Bedford road. There they were re-enforced by men 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 resolved to "use a different style from that of petition and complaint," came down from the north, while the East Sudbury company appeared on the south. A little below the Bedford road at Merriam's corner the British faced about; but, after a sharp encounter, in which several of them were killed, they resumed their retreat.

At the high land in Lincoln the old road bent toward the north, just where great trees on the west and thickets on the east offered cover to the pursuers. The men from Woburn came up in great numbers, and well armed. Along these defiles