Lexington And Concord Quotes

War had come on April 19, with the first blood shed at Lexington and Concord near Boston, then savagely on June 17 at Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill. (The June engagement was commonly known as the Battle of Bunker Hill on both sides of the Atlantic.)

But Bachmann’s efforts to strut her IQ were undermined by gaffes galore. In New Hampshire, she hailed the state for being “where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord.” (That blast emanated from Massachusetts.) On June 27, the day of her official announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann proclaimed in a Fox News interview that “John Wayne was from Waterloo.” (Wayne was in fact from Winterset, Iowa; serial killer John Wayne Gacy was from Waterloo.) From now on, her son Lucas razzed his mother, “you can’t say George Washington was the first president unless we Google that shit first.

Edward Rutledge, a member of South Carolina’s delegation to the Continental Congress, said that Dunmore’s declaration did “more effectually work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies—than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.”70 Not the taxes and the tea, not the shots at Lexington and Concord, not the siege of Boston; rather, it was this act, Dunmore’s offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence.

As if to underscore the seriousness of her charge, Abigail, only partially in jest, went on to assert: “If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Laidies, we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.

Preaching after the battles of Lexington and Concord, William Stearns had said: We trust that all whose circumstance will admit of it will go. that none such will refuse to enlist in defense of his country. When God, in His providence, calls to take the sword, if any refuse to obey, Heaven’s dread artillery is leveled against them, as you may see ... Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood! (Jeremiah 48:10). Cursed is the sneaking coward who neglects the sinking state, when called to its defense—O then flee this dire curse—let America’s valorous sons put on the harness, nor take it off till peace shall be to Israel.

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. . . . At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government--the Government of the greatest Nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. . . . But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." -Lyndon B. Johnson, 15 March 1965

The Lexington company were tragic victims of one of those unreal moments when two nations are moving towards war, yet neither wishes to strike the first blow, and many on both sides cannot bring themselves to believe that the blow will really be struck, that guns will go off, that men will really bleed and die.

In most houses, militiamen received no quarter. “All that we found in the houses were put to death,” Lieutenant Barker said. Lieutenant McKenzie confirmed this practice.

Boys on horseback resupplied the militia.31 Militiamen on the way to Lexington and Concord stopped at a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. To their amusement, 8-year-old John Quincy Adams, son of Abigail and John Adams, was executing the manual of arms with a musket taller than he was.

The British attempt to disarm the militiamen and other inhabitants at Lexington and Concord could be regarded as a milestone in Second Amendment historiography. It undoubtedly helped inspire recognition of the right to keep and bear arms. Indeed, virtually every citizen was a militiaman who owned and kept his firearms at home, and the British sought to seize these private arms, as well as the stores of gunpowder and cannon held by the towns or controlled by committees of safety.

9 HENRY WARD BEECHER When I see a nation's flag, I see not the flag only, but the nation itself; the government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the nation that sets it forth. 10 HENRY WARD BEECHER If anyone asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him — it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant: which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant, young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world has ever known — the right of individuals to their own selves and to their liberties.

Today, the most numerous heirs of the farmers of Lexington and Concord are the little groups scattered all over the country whose names begin with ‘Save’: Save Our Land, Save the Valley, Save Our Mountains, Save Our Streams, Save Our Farmland. As so often before, these are designated victims – people without official sanction, often without official friends, who are struggling to preserve their places, their values and their lives as they know them and prefer to live them against the agencies of their own government which are using their own tax moneys against them.

The Revolution of 1774 was a success: all traces of British authority had vanished from Massachusetts, save for the military garrison in Boston.

their claim of sovereignty over three millions of virtuous sensible people in America, seem the greatest of absurdities, since they appeared to have scarce discretion enough to govern a herd of swine.

The story became a clash between British tyranny and colonial liberty, scheming British officials and supplicating colonists, all culminating in the clash at Lexington and Concord between General Thomas Gage’s “ministerial army” and “the unsuspecting inhabitants” of Massachusetts. All this was conveyed in what we might call the sentimental style of the innocent victim.33 It is impossible to know how much of this cartoonlike version of the imperial crisis Jefferson actually believed and how much was a stylistic affectation.

This formerly prominent citizen, accustomed to riding about in one of the few coaches in rural Massachusetts, had become a refugee.

When farmers discussed what to do about pigs in the streets, their words were set to paper by men educated at Harvard.

In the smallest town there was at least one individual who could discourse on the British Constitution even if he could not spell.”43

1774, the people of rural Massachusetts completely and forcibly overthrew the established government and began to set up their own.

In the summer of 1774, the focus of the rebellion shifted suddenly from the metropolis to the countryside.

The militia of which the Second Amendment speaks is not the National Guard, but the assembly of patriots who are willing to gather to repel invasions. They were the patriots who stood at Lexington and Concord. They were the snipers and guerilla fighters who fought with Francis Marion—better known as the Swamp Fox—to repel the British throughout the South. The militia is not an organized, standing military force; our militia is the armed citizenry. Throughout history, enemies have avoided invading our soil for a very simple reason: not only would they have to contend with the strongest military force known to man, but they would have to contend with millions of gun owners. Grandmas with handguns, ranchers with rifles, college students with Glocks—the threat of an intense guerilla war has just been too much for the enemies of America. We haven’t been invaded since the War of 1812. After decades of fighting to prop up the ludicrous notion that the Second Amendment supports a collective right to gun ownership, the 2008 Heller decision from the Supreme Court dashed the fading dreams of antigunners when they declared gun ownership to be an expressly individual right.

History isn’t just something we read; it’s also something we hear. We hear the musketry on the green at Lexington and Concord and the hoofbeats of Paul Revere’s midnight ride. We hear the moans of the wounded and of the dying on the fields of Antietam and of Gettysburg, the quiet clump of the boots of Grant and Lee on the porch steps of Wilmer McLean’s house at Appomattox—and the crack of a pistol at Ford’s Theatre. We hear the cries of the enslaved, the pleas of suffragists, the surf at Omaha Beach. We hear a sonorous president, his voice scratchy on the radio, reassuring us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself; and we hear another president, impossibly young and dashing, his breath white in the inaugural air, telling us to ask not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. And we hear the whoosh of helicopters in the distant jungles of Southeast Asia and the baritone of a minister, standing before the Lincoln Memorial, telling us about his dream.

[T]he king could conceive of no middle ground for the colonies between independence and unconditional submission.” And, of course, His Majesty would never countenance independence.

It felt like we all had added our own page to local history, letting it be known that we also stood our ground here much like we did at nearby Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. It was a continuation of the American spirit and resolve that no two Oklahoma City bombers, nor two Boston bombers, could ever truly destroy.

For a moment he wondered when the Battle of Lexington took place as he crashed down on a chair near the window. He pulled out his cell phone and sought more information on the Internet. At least free Wi-Fi was available, and Sybil didn’t rule out the use of modern equipment. He snorted. It must be odd to see a man dressed up in an old-fashioned uniform, using a cell phone. He found all the information he needed to know online. The Battles of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775. It was the first defeat of the British army. Richard frowned. “So, I joined the losers club.

In the American popular imagination, the nation’s history began with the Pilgrims and then leapfrogged more than 150 years to Lexington and Concord and the Revolution.