John Goegel: Recounting Lexington and Concord Revolutionary War start

To The Daily Sun,

Throughout the night, alarms have been sent out to all the neighboring towns of Boston, stirring ordinary people to advance a declaration of independence from their tyrannical ruler ... and consequently a declaration of war.

Paul Revere is one of the many couriers that night calling citizens to arms.

It is now dawn on April 19, 1775. After five hours of marching from Boston through the dark and cold of night, a regiment of British regulars enters the town of Lexington, Massachusetts. They skirmish with a small group of “minutemen,” members of the Lexington militia, who intend to disrupt the British plans to capture the arms and the all important powder hidden in neighboring Concord.

Upon their arrival in Concord the British are met with more resistance ― the town militias of Concord and neighboring Acton, Bedford, Lincoln, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Groton, Littleton, Stow and Westford.

Failing in their assigned task, the British turn back toward Boston, along the same route, 20 miles distance. Exhausted, carrying their dead and wounded, the march turns into a gauntlet as the British are harassed now by town militias from Reading, Billerica, Woburn, Tewksbury, Sudbury and Framingham.

These untrained “citizen-soldiers,” mostly farmers, fighting fearlessly, would deal a heavy blow to the highly skilled British Regulars at Lexington and Concord, and throughout the American War of Independence.

John Goegel

Canterbury