The Regulars came closer. To men on both sides, time itself seemed to stop—a temporal illusion that often occurs in moments of mortal danger. When the mind begins to move at lightning speed, the world itself seems to slow down. But in fact events were unfolding at a rapid rate. The Regulars came hurrying on at the quick march. Swarming around the head of the column was a cloud of mounted British officers—the same men who had captured Paul Revere and been told that they were in mortal danger. Many were highly excited. Prominent among them was the mercurial Major Mitchell.
In the British van was Marine lieutenant Jesse Adair, the hard-charging young Irishman who had been put at the head of the column by Major Pitcairn to keep it moving. Adair was a bold and aggressive officer—quick to act, but sometimes slow to understand. 22
As he approached Lexington Common this young Marine had a momentous decision to make. The main road divided just before it reached the meetinghouse. Adair’s Loyalist guide would have told him that the left fork led to Concord, running along the southwest edge of the Green. The right fork carried toward the northeast, past the Buckman Tavern to the Bedford Road.
Lieutenant Adair found himself in a dilemma. To bear left on the main road toward Concord would leave an armed and possibly hostile force on the open flank of his column. To take the right fork would carry the Regulars headlong toward the militia. The choice was his to make. His immediate superior, Major Pitcairn, was back in the column and could not help him. The commander of the expedition, Colonel Smith, was far in the rear with the grenadiers, and completely out of touch.
The young Marine did not hesitate. He made a snap decision of momentous consequence. Lieutenant Adair instantly turned to the right, and led the three forward companies directly toward the militia. “No sooner did they come in sight of our company,” Lexington’s minister later wrote, “but one of them, supposed to be an officer of rank, was heard to say to the troops, ‘Damn them, we will have them!’” 23
Back in the column Major Pitcairn saw what had happened, and kicked his horse into a canter, riding rapidly to the front. As he reached the fork, Pitcairn decided differently from Adair. He turned left instead of right, and the rest of the column followed him. It separated from the van and marched along the left fork that ran southwest of the meetinghouse. Beyond that building, Pitcairn halted them in the Concord Road. Somebody also stopped the last of Adair’s three forward companies just beyond the meetinghouse, near the spreading oak tree. 24
Two companies, light infantry of the 4th and 10th Foot, continued straight toward the Lexington militia. In this critical moment Pitcairn lost touch with those men. Adair led them onward at an accelerating pace. The quick march became a run that took the Regulars halfway across the Common in a few moments. About seventy yards from the militia, the two leading companies were ordered to deploy from a column into a line of battle. The men in the rear came sprinting forward. Sergeants and subalterns dropped back to take their places behind the line. The long files dissolved in a swirl of movement. The Regulars began to shout the deep-throated battle cry that was distinctive to British infantry—a loud “huzza! huzza! huzza!” Orders were difficult to hear above the cheering. One British officer remembered that he was deafened by the shouts of his own men. 25
Pitcairn cantered across the Common toward the British line. Other mounted officers were already there. A Lexington militiaman, Elijah Sanderson, observed that “several mounted British officers were forward, I think five. The commander rode up, with his pistol in his hand, on a canter, the others following, to about five or six rods from the company, and ordered them to disperse. The words he used were harsh. I cannot remember them exactly.” 26
Many believed that this officer was Major Pitcairn, but others were unsure of his identity and uncertain of his words. Several men on both sides heard an officer shout, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!” In the front rank of the militia, John Robbins saw a party of three mounted British officers come directly toward him at “full gallop,” and thought he heard the foremost officer say, “Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels.” Jonas Clarke thought that the officer said, “Ye villains, ye rebels, disperse, damn you, disperse!” 27
Major John Pitcairn (Royal Marines) was British commander in the skirmish on Lexington Green. Born in 1722, he was an officer of long experience, very near the end of his career. A strong Scottish Tory, he had no sympathy for the colonists; but American Whigs admired his character if not his principles. A New England clergyman described him as “a good man in a bad cause.” (New England Historic and Genealogical Society)
Lexington’s commander, Captain Parker, turned to his men and gave them new orders, different from before. He later testified, “I immediately ordered our militia to disperse and not to fire.” Some began to scatter, moving backwards and to both sides. The town minister Jonas Clarke wrote, “Upon this, our men dispersed, but not so speedily as they might have done.” In the confusion, some of the militia did not hear the order and stayed where they were. None of the militia laid down their arms. 28
Behind the Lexington militia, Paul Revere and John Lowell were still struggling with their trunk. At last they reached the far end of the Common and crossed the road, heading toward a patch of woods beyond a house. Paul Revere glanced back over his shoulder and saw the red-coated Regulars approach the militia. As he returned to his task, suddenly he heard a shot ring out behind him. It sounded like a pistol, but he could not be sure, and he did not see where it came from or who fired it. He looked again and saw a cloud of white smoke in front of the Regulars. Revere could no longer see the American militia. He had passed beyond the houses on the edge of the Green, and a building blocked his sight. Later, his testimony indicated that he could not tell who fired first. With John Lowell he went back to his work, carrying the trunk to a place of safety. 29
On the other side, Lieutenant Edward Gould was very near the center of the action. As an officer of light infantry in the King’s Own, he was part of the force that Adair led directly toward the militia. As the two lines drew near, Gould heard the sharp report of a gun. Like Paul Revere he could not see where it came from, and was unable even to hear it clearly because his own men were cheering wildly. Lieutenant Gould, like Revere, was an honest man and a careful observer. He later testified, “Which party fired first I cannot exactly say, as our troops rushed on shouting and huzzaing.” 30
As the bitter smell of black powder began to spread across the Common, men on both sides searched quickly around them, looking for the source of the shot. On that field of confusion, one fact was clear enough. Nearly everyone, British and American, agreed that the first shot did not come from the ranks of Captain Parker’s militia, or from the rank and file of the British infantry. 31
Several British officers were convinced that they saw a “provincial” fire at them from behind a “hedge” or stone wall, some distance away from Parker’s line. Lieutenant Sutherland of the 38th Foot wrote, “Some of the villains were got over the hedge, fired at us, and it was then and not before that the soldiers fired.” Major Pitcairn to his dying day believed that “some of the Rebels who had jumped over the wall, fired 4 or 5 shott at the soldiers… upon this, without any order or regularity, the Light Infantry began a scattered fire.” 32
It might have been so, but other Regulars thought that the first shot came from “the corner of a large house to the right of the Church,” which could only have been the Buckman Tavern. This also could have happened. Many armed men had been in the Buckman Tavern that night, and more than a few had partaken liberally of the landlord’s hospitality. Firearms and alcohol made a highly explosive mixture. 33
The Lexington men saw things differently. Most believed that the first shots were “a few guns which we took to be pistols, from some of the Regulars who were mounted on horses.” As many as five or six mounted men were present with the forward companies. Most of the Lexington militia, only thirty yards from these men, clearly saw one of these British officers f
ire at them. 34
Some thought that the first shot came from Major Pitcairn himself. One swore that he “heard the British commander cry, ‘Fire!’ and fired his own pistol and the other officers soon fired.” Pitcairn, an honorable man, absolutely denied that he did any such thing, and insisted that he told his troops not to fire. His brother officers strongly supported him. Lieutenant Sutherland wrote, “I heard Major Pitcairn’s voice call out, ‘Soldiers, don’t fire, keep your ranks, and surround them.’” 35
Other Americans believed that the first shot came from another British officer. Thomas Fessenden testified that as Pitcairn rode to the front, a second officer “about two rods behind him, fired a pistol.” The minister Jonas Clarke also thought that “the second of these officers fired a pistol towards the militia as they were dispersing.” It might have been the excitable Major Mitchell, or possibly Lieutenant Sutherland, an aggressive young volunteer who was armed with a pistol and mounted on a fractious horse that he could not control. 36
What probably happened was this: several shots were fired close together—one by a mounted British officer, and another by an American spectator. Men on both sides were sure that they heard more than one weapon go off; men on each side were watching only their opponents. If there were several shots at about the same time then all spoke the truth as they saw it, but few were able to see the entire field. 37
It is possible that one of these first shots was fired deliberately, either from an emotion of the moment, or a cold-blooded intention to create a incident. More likely, there was an accident. Firearms seemed to have a mind of their own in the 18th century. Only a few years earlier, such an accident had happened at a military review of the 71st Foot in Edinburgh, “some of the men’s pieces going off as they were presented.” Many weapons at Lexington, both British and American, were worn and defective. An accident might well have occurred on either side. If so, it was an accident that had been waiting to happen. 38
We shall never know who fired first at Lexington, or why. But everyone on the Common saw what happened next. The British infantry heard the shots, and began to fire without orders. Their officers could not control them. Lieut. John Barker of the 4th Foot testified that “our men without any orders rushed in upon them, fired, and put ‘em to flight.” Major Pitcairn reported that “without any order or regularity, the light infantry began a scattered fire.”
The British firing made at first a slow irregular popping sound, which expanded into a sharp crackle. Then suddenly there was a terrible ripping noise like the tearing of a sheet, as the British soldiers fired their first volley. That cruel sound was followed by what Paul Revere described as a “continual roar of musketry” along the British line.
Things were moving very quickly, but to the New England men who received this fire only a few yards away, events seemed to be happening in slow motion. Lexington militiaman Elijah Sanderson saw the Regulars shoot at him, but he was amazed that nobody seemed to fall, and thought that the Redcoats were firing blanks. Then one British soldier turned and fired toward a man behind a wall. “I saw the wall smoke with the bullets hitting it, Sanderson recalled, “I then knew they were firing balls.”
John Munroe also believed that the Regulars were firing only powder, and said so to his kinsman Ebenezer Munroe who stood beside him. But on the second fire Ebenezer said that “they had fired something more than powder, for he had received a wound in his arm.” He added, “I’ll give them the guts of my gun,” and fired back. 39
The two lines, British and American, were very close—about sixty or seventy yards apart, John Robbins remembered. Others thought them even closer. Sanderson was amazed that the Regulars “did not take sight,” but “loaded again as soon as possible.” The British infantry were doing automatically what they had been taught. There was no command for “take aim” in the British manual of arms in 1775, only “present.” The men were firing, reloading, presenting, and firing again with the incredible speed that made the British infantryman and his Brown Bess so formidable on a field of battle. One of the officers wrote that the firing “was continued by our troops as long as any of the Provincials were to be seen.” 40
With the crash of musketry, one of the British officers, Lieutenant Sutherland, lost control of his captured horse. The frightened animal bolted forward, straight through the New England militia to the far end of the Green. Sutherland managed to turn his terrified horse and galloped back again, as the militia and spectators scurried out of his way. Two New England men, Benjamin Tidd of Lexington and Joseph Abbott of Lincoln, were also looking on from horseback. After the volley from the Regulars they testified, “Our horses immediately started, and we rode off,” not of their own volition.
The spectators fled for their lives. Timothy Smith of Lexington testified that after the Regulars fired, “I immediately ran, and a volley was discharged at me, which put me in imminent danger. Thomas Fessenden, watching from near the meetinghouse, said, “I ran off as fast as I could.” 41 Heavy lead musket balls flew in all directions, making a low whizzing noise which sounded to some like a swarm of bees. Paul Revere, still struggling with John Hancock’s trunk, found himself directly in the line of fire, about “half a gunshot” from the British troops. He later remembered that the balls were “flying thick around him.” Revere and Lowell stayed bravely with the trunk as the British rounds passed close above their heads. They carried their precious burden into the woods beyond the Common, and remained there for about fifteen minutes. 42
Ralph Earl’s sketch of the fight at Lexington Green was made shortly after the battle, on the basis of interviews with eyewitnesses. It is an important piece of evidence, very accurate in its location of British and American units, and in its rendering the Common itself. (New York Public Library)
The Common was shrouded in dense clouds of dirty white smoke. One militiaman remembered, “All was smoke when the Foot fired.” Another recalled that “the smoke prevented our seeing anything but the heads of some of their horses.” The British infantry fired several ragged volleys, then charged forward without orders through the smoke, lunging with their long bayonets at anyone they found in their way. 43
A few American militia managed to get off a shot or two. The youngsters ran, but several of the older men were determined to fight back. Many remembered seeing Captain John Parker’s kinsman Jonas Parker “standing in the ranks, with his balls and flints in his hat, on the ground between his feet, and heard him declare, he would never run. He was shot down at the second fire… I saw him struggling on the ground, attempting to load his gun… As he lay on the ground, they run him through with the bayonet.” 44
John Munroe also fired back. “After I had fired the first time, I retreated about ten rods, and then loaded my gun a second time, with two balls… the strength of the charge took off about a foot of my gun barrel.” Ebenezer Munroe stood and fought too. He wrote later, “The balls flew so thick, I thought there was no chance for escape, and that I might as well fire my gun as stand still and do nothing.” He remembered trying to take aim, but the smoke kept him from seeing the Regulars, and he did not hear Captain Parker’s orders to disperse. 45
Most of the American militiamen did not return fire. Their minister Jonas Clarke wrote that “far from firing first upon the King’s troops; upon the most careful enquiry, it appears that but very few of our people fired at all.” 46 The British infantry suffered only one man wounded, Private Johnson of the 10th Foot, shot in the thigh. Major Pitcairn’s horse was hit in two places, and Pitcairn himself was later seen nursing a bloody finger in Concord. 47
On the other side, the toll was heavy. Two militiamen (only two) fell dead on the line where they had mustered—Jonas Parker and Robert Munroe. The rest were killed while trying to disperse, as they had been ordered. Jonathan Harrington was mortally wounded only a few yards from his home on the west side of the Common. His wife and son watched in horror as he fell in front of the house, and struggled to get up again, his life’s blood cours
ing from a gaping chest wound. Jonathan Harrington rose to his knees and stretched out his hands to his family. Then he fell to the ground and crawled painfully toward his home, inch after inch, across the rough ground of the common. He died on his own doorstep.
Samuel Hadley and John Brown were also shot while running from the Common. Hadley’s body was found near the edge of a nearby swamp. Asahel Porter, the Woburn man who had been taken prisoner, tried to run and was killed a few rods beyond the Common. 48
Four Lexington militiamen were in the meetinghouse, which was also the town’s powder magazine. They came out just as the shooting started. One of them, Caleb Harrington, was killed as he tried to flee. Another, Joseph Comee, was wounded in the arm as he ran for cover. A third, Joshua Simonds, ducked back into the meetinghouse with British soldiers in pursuit. He raced to the upper loft where the munitions were kept, sank to the floor, and thrust his loaded musket into a powder barrel, determined to explode the entire magazine if the Regulars entered. British soldiers moved toward the building; several began to enter it. Joshua Simonds heard their footsteps on the stair, and prepared to blow up the powder. 49
At that moment Colonel Francis Smith suddenly arrived on the field, with the main body of his force. Smith was horrified by the scene that greeted him. The bodies of wounded and dead militiamen were scattered about the bloody ground. The British infantry, famous for their discipline in battle, were running wildly out of control. Their officers appeared helpless to restrain them. Small groups of Regulars were firing in different directions. Some were advancing on private houses. Others were moving toward the Buckman Tavern. A few were inside the meetinghouse, and preparing to assault the upper story where Joshua Simonds awaited them, with his musket plunged into a powder barrel and his finger on the trigger.
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