Battle at the Old North Bridge
April 19, 1775
Camille M
The History of the Old North Bridge
The Battle at the Old North Bridge
What Does the Bridge Symbolize?
Shot Heard Around the world The "shot heard 'round
the world" was a momentous event which took place on April 19th, 1776.
The skirmish, the shot set in motion only lasted five minutes. Despite
its short duration, this battle started the American Revolution. General
Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, had received orders
from England to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, two of the leading
Colonial revolutionaries. Gage ordered that soldiers be sent to arrest
the men, after which the solders, stationed in Boston, were to continue
to Concord to seize and destroy the military supplies that the colonists
were keeping there. Word got out among the Colonists about what General
Gage was planning. The Colonists sent two minutemen, Paul Revere and William
Dawes, to warn the inhabitants of Concord. This was the beginning on the
two's famous "midnight ride." "The shot heard 'round the world" was fired
at Lexington Green, a village common in the town of Lexington, which is
on the route from Boston to Concord. There is controversy on this subject,
no one actually knows who fired first. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "The
Shot Heard 'Round the World", he refers to the British firing upon the
colonists. Yet some historians and park rangers feel that the shot was
actually fired when colonists at the Old North Bridge, a bridge in Concord
spanning the Sudbury/Concord River, opened fire on the Redcoats. Upon
hearing that the British were coming, the Concord townsfolk had gone about
hiding as much of their ammunition as they could. Once they arrived, however,
the British destroyed what the colonists had been unable to hide. Some
of the ammunition that the British soldiers found was next to the Concord
town hall. When the British soldiers began to burn the ammunition, the
town hall caught on fire. Meanwhile, at the old North Bridge, about ninety-six
British solders were awaiting orders. About three hundred armed Colonial
militia, nowadays, referred to as minutemen, were across the river, away
from the town hall. When the minutemen saw smoke in the town, they advanced
over the bridge. The British solders fired warning shots into the water,
hoping that the colonists would go away. That tactic did not work. The
minutemen, not knowing that the fire was accidental, assumed that the
solders had purposely set the fire to the town, and were enraged. Joseph
Hosmer, a leader of the minutemen rtoops, shouted, "Will you let them
burn the town down"; his men replied "no". Major Buttrick of the minuteman
then said "Fire, for God's sake, fire". The minutemen charged towards
the Redcoats, the British Solders, who then began to retreat towards the
Charlestown Harbor, across the Charles River from Boston. Along the way
to the harbor, the two grouped continued to fight. Minutemen joined the
battle as the British continued their retreat. In the end, the British
suffered approximately three hundred men dead or wounded. The colonists
lost one hundred. Whoever fired first, it remains true that these battles
marked the first time that colonists fired on the British army - an act
of treason in the eyes of the British, and an act sparked the American
revolution. 
Bibliography:
Colby, Jean P. Lexington and Concord, 1775. New York: Hastings House, 1975
Birnbum, Lewis. Red Dawn at Lexington. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986.
Nichipor, Mark A. The Lexington-Concord Battle Road. USA: Eastern National Park and Monument by Wee Bee Publishing, 1977.