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While museums, monuments, and burial grounds can be seen at any time, the big draw for this weekend was the reenactments and Real Time Revolution events that were happening. There was so much happening, and because of distances, traffic, and logistics, I really wish I could have been in two or three places at once!
I know I mentioned this on the previous post, but if you just skipped to this one: If you are not well versed in the timeline/history of April 18-19, 1775, the National Park Service has a great map, timeline, and overview that might be helpful as you read some of the information below: https://www.nps.gov/mima/learn/historyculture/april-19-1775.htm
On Thursday, April 17, I participated in the Patriot Vigil at Old North Bridge—not a historic event, but one they have been holding since 2017 or 2018. We gathered at the visitor’s center with lanterns holding real candles—reenactors, military, and regular people (both in costume and not) to walk down across the bridge for a ceremony of remembrance for all who lost their lives on April 19, 1775—Americans and British. It was a moving ceremony, and 400 people or more were gathered this year to remember the sacrifice made for the cause of liberty.
On April 18 and 19, my own personal marathon began—not a marathon in miles, but in sleeplessness (though over the 2 days I did put in about 33.6 miles of walking, so…)—as the events began in earnest.
I ended April 18 at the Hancock-Clarke house for the reenactment of Paul Revere’s and William Dawes’s arrival to warn the militia, Sam Adams, and John Hancock that the Regulars were out. Some of the militia were there guarding the house because rumors had been flying for several days about the British leaving Boston—Revere himself had been out to Lexington just days prior and that very day, Hancock had received a letter from Elbridge Gerry warning him that the British were rumored to be leaving Boston and might be after Adams and Hancock.
As we watched, the militia arrived, dangers were discussed, and then Paul Revere and William Dawes rode in shouting that the Regulars were out (to the cheers of the crowd). Then the militia was off to give more warning and start gathering, Dorothy Quincy (Hancock’s fiancé) insisting on returning to Boston and that John wasn’t allowed to tell her what to do yet—I loved her lines! While she, and Hancock’s aunt Lydia were convinced to remain in Lexington where it was safer, Dorothy in turn played a part in convincing Hancock to leave before the British arrived.
(This ended at about 11:00 pm and all advice said that if you wanted to have a good view of the First Shots the next morning, you needed to be at Lexington Green at about 3:00am. This meant that driving back to my AirBnB with all the road closures was impossible. I joined most of the people who had been at the Paul Revere reenactment in sleeping in our cars, though some went straight to the Green. Sleeping might be an overstatement—short naps that I gave up on at 1:45 am.)
I arrived at Lexington Green at about 2:00 am, and there were already a number of people gathered, and one of the Lexington militia reenactors was having a conversation with the crowd (I believe he was depicting Jedediah Munroe!). He was vastly entertaining and was willing to talk on any subject from the Revolution to modern day. In his opinion (and so many of the reenactors do so much research in order to be authentic), there were about 50 Lexington militia on the Common April 19, 1775—one of the men that morning counted 38 “with more arriving” just before the British reached the Common. “Our” militiaman kept up conversation with us until he was called away to his post just prior to 5:00 am.
Words cannot full explain what it was like to watch the militia bid goodbye to their families (which they reenacted on the field) and then to gather as the British approached. It was still quite dark as we watched the militia gather—the moon veiled in thin clouds, the men silhouettes against the fading night. Then, so slowly it was almost imperceptible, it was light enough to see colors of coats, faces. There was an almost unbearable weight of tension as they waited. The last report before they formed ranks was that the British were a half mile away. How long it takes to march half a mile! Thousands of us watching waited silently; the only sounds were Captain Parker’s quiet words of encouragement to his men and birdsong. As I listened to the birdsong, I thought about how soon their songs would be overwhelmed or silenced by the shouting and shooting.
(This was not the first time the Regulars had left Boston to secure powder and munitions—look up Fort William and Mary (today Fort Constitution), the Salem Powder Alarm, and Charlestown Powder Alarm—and in Salem in February 1775, the Regulars had been turned back (without shots being fired) by militia. So what made this morning different? What were the Regulars thinking as they marched out of the dark, having heard alarm bells ringing and random shots being fired (earlier, Captain Parker had ordered his men to discharge their muskets before entering Buckman Tavern), and now an armed force stood before them?
I think a few things were different. They knew militias had been training; there had been that near-violent confrontation in February; more generals and soldiers were on their way over from London; the Provincial Congress had been meeting and the Continental Congress was going to reconvene in May. A month earlier, Dr. Warren had given an impassioned Massacre Oration, and it would have been known that Adams and Hancock were (at least until an hour or less prior) in Lexington. It was a perfect storm of events culminating on that morning.)
Then, breaking through the birdsong, the tramp of footsteps, the snap of a drum became audible. Then they were there, rank upon rank of Regulars filling the Common. There were not the full 750 reenactors depicting the Regulars (they were from all over the country and some from Britain!) but the numbers of them still felt overwhelming. What must those militiamen have been thinking? (We could see it on some of their faces—the shock, the nerves, the fear, the resolve.)
As the Regulars came to a halt, Major Pitcairn came forward, yelling, “Disperse, ye rebels, disperse. Lay down your arms, you damned rebels and disperse!” For a long moment, no one moved. Then came Captain Parker’s order for his men to disperse and let the Regulars pass. Both sides had been ordered not to fire unless fired upon first. Some men had already turned from the field when a shot was heard. Immediately, the Regulars fired—a confusion of shots and shouts and smoke. Men fell and did not rise.
When the shooting stopped, eight lay dead, the rest fled. The questions begin from the officers—Who fired? You were ordered not to fire!—and the denial—It wasn’t us. We should turn back to Boston. But the British reformed and marched past the dead, off the Common and on toward Concord.
What then were their thoughts? They must have had some inkling of what they’d begun—they knew the countryside was up and in arms, and they had just killed eight of their own countrymen. Had they known exactly what they would face through the rest of the day, would they have turned around?
In the magic of reenactment, we then jumped ahead a few hours and witnessed Captain Parker rallying this men. We listened to Reverend Jonas Clarke give a speech (but it was, I believe, actually from one of his sermons) and it contained the moving words: “We are in truth Americans. […]Whatever we have been before, we are Americans now. Clear it is that maintaining that identity will require a[n ef]fusion of blood and sacrifice. […] This for us is a journey into the unknown. […] We march from the shadows of the past into the fair light of the future, and that is freedom. Beyond thrones, beyond kings, beyond tyrants that would invade our communities and destroy our homes and kill our citizens and threaten our families and to control our country, whatever trials lie before us our end is sure: it is Liberty. Will history remember our actions, our sacrifice? Will the world learn the lesson of this day, that tyranny will not be tolerated, that injustice will be resisted with courage and commitment, that all people deserve to be free and treated with compassion […]?”
Then, they marched toward Lincoln and the battle that would come to be known as Parker’s Revenge.
I set off on foot toward Minute Man National Park and, to my surprise, one of the regiments of Regulars was going by foot as well, marching over the same ground that those they represented had marched exactly 250 years ago. How strange to see them marching down the street (sidewalk, really)! When we reached the park, they stopped to rest, and I heard one of them say that they had already marched 16 miles!
Minute Man National Park was hosting Battle Road reenactments—the British retreat toward Boston (prior to April 19, 1775, it was called Bay Road). I found a seat above Hartwell Tavern (and caught about 20 minutes of sleep) and waited for the Elm Hill Tactical Demonstration to begin. I chatted with one of the reenactors (some had been assigned to explain what was happening, answer questions, and help with crowd control) for a while about the specifics of what had happened in that section of Battle Road. As the reenactment began, we witnessed one of the militiamen evacuate his wife who had recently given birth on an ox-drawn cart (the oxen used today were names Meat and Loaf (band, not food)). Then the militiamen took cover behind a stonewall.
We could hear it, the shooting from further west, up the road. The sound of musket fire carried and the trees (which would not have been there—this was farmland with set plots of trees) and stonewalls blocked the view. We couldn’t see what was happening, but we could hear it coming ever closer. One of the militiamen raised his hat—they could see the British. Then we saw them, too: flashes of red between the brown and gray trunks, branches mostly bare, leaves just budding. The militia raised their muskets, fired! And then they retreated, taking up new positions, joined by other militia who were retreating from further up the road.
Then the Regulars were there, forming up along the wall, along the road, firing one rank after another, still orderly. (One soldier ran up toward us, calling for a medic. A couple of the King’s men were suffering some form of heat exhaustion (it was somewhere near 70 degrees). Some of the people around me thought it was part of the reenactment—bravo to him for staying in character!)
The Regulars faced fire from ahead and behind, We heard the orders, the shouts of the militia. The Regulars continued their orderly retreat, firing in relays, almost constantly moving down the road.
Then, on the wall beside us, militia. A cheer rose from those of us watching as they fired and pressed on, the battle continuing down to the house of Sergeant Hartwell (which the Regulars burned that day) and ending the demonstration at the home of Captain William Smith.
Then I was off again (with hundreds of others) making our way down Route 2 (closed to traffic) to the next demonstration site: Parker’s Revenge. The Lexington militia joined for this, many of whom had been up all night (in real life as well as reenactment life) and had fought of the Common that morning. Again, we could hear the battle coming closer. So could a fox! The poor animal darted out of the trees and across the field seeking shelter. Unfortunately, the fox was headed toward the road on which the Regulars would soon appear.
We saw the Regulars first, now some (light infantry) were appearing out of the trees, scouting or flanking (maybe both) while the rest of the soldiers still marched in orderly ranks, firing in rotation down the road. The sheer amount of discipline it would have taken to keep order, to continue somewhat calmly when fired upon for hours from all sides!
As the militia advanced—also forming up before continuing their pursuit (they were not the disorganized rabble the British thought them)—the battle continued down the road, a true running battle reenactment that went around the Visitor’s Center, past the Jacob Whittemore house and ending at the site of Ebenezer Fiske’s house.
I stayed in the park a little longer and listened to one of the Regulars give a talk about the British prisoners taken on April 19. Some, of course died of their wounds, others deserted and became Americans, others were exchanged in early June.
Reaching the end of my endurance (my feet and ankles were killing me), I hiked back to Lexington and gratefully drove back to my AirBnB to collapse and get some sleep.
The last reenactment on my schedule was the afternoon of Sunday, April 20 in Arlington—once the town of Menotomy (by locals pronounced Meh-nought-mee). It was here that on the late afternoon of April 19, 1775 British patience and tolerance reached an end and some of the bloodiest fighting (and really butchery) took place. They closed off about a mile of Massachusetts Avenue and had a running battle the whole way, stopping at several points to do tactical demonstrations. I took up a spot across from the Jason Russell house because I was fairly certain they would have a larger action in front of the historic building (and for pictures and videos, it looked much better than a bank or a Starbucks).
My favorite part of this demonstration was that two little girls came to stand in front of me—kindergarten and second grade—who had never seen a reenactment before and didn’t really know what was happening, so I got to play historian! They had excellent questions and were quite patient as we waited for the battle to reach us. We could hear the gunfire echoing off the buildings (so different from on Lexington Green and in the woods surrounding Battle Road) and we could see the smoke. Women reenactors evacuated past us, some looking for family members, others encouraging us to take our silver and run. Militia marched west toward the Regulars then circled back to fight again and again as the battle continued on east.
When the battle reached the Russell house, it started in the street before going on to the Russell property. Some of the militiamen went to hide in the house, and I was more than a little relieved that the British didn’t follow them in. I had already reassured the girls that any men who fell down were just pretending to be dead (several fell on the lawn of the Russell house), and I didn’t really want to try an explain what would happen if the Regulars followed the men inside. In reality (as mentioned in my previous post), twelve people were killed inside the Russell house on April 19. My favorite reenactors were two Regulars who fell down the street for us and held their “dead” positions until the line of police on motorcycles passed them (a good 10 minutes? More?) and only then came to life and hurried down the street to rejoin the battle.
Throughout both days, all the reenactors gave an impressive display of skill and knowledge. Reading about the events is one thing—to intellectually know what happened and when—but another thing to see it brought to life. And 250 years to the day (well, plus one for Menotomy) that it happened originally! Were the spirits of those who fought that day watching, listening? If so, they know the ideals they fought for—representation, free speech, the right (as Esther Forbes wrote in Johnny Tremain) to stand up—are still alive, remembered, valued, and fought for today.