The Minutemen and Their World

“The movements of population reflected a regular adjustment of social life to the changing seasons. Men and women stirred at the deepest levels to nature’s spring renewal. In the town clerk’s register, one reads the evidence: every year April through June was the most common time to conceive, as indicated by recorded births nine months later. During the hot summer of exhausting labor in the fields and the succeeding rush to harvest, conception fell to an annual low. It rose to a secondary peak in autumn when families could relax and enjoy the feeling of plenitude a good harvest brought; decline set in again during the long winter night. Marriage followed another rhythm, surging in May and in November and December, traditional months for Christian celebration. Death had its own seasons that mocked the promise of late autumn and spring. Infants were likely to enter the world during the periodic killing times: not only the bitter winters but also the summers when, as Concord’s pastor Emerson noted in 1775, ‘Many were sick with dysentery—sickness continues and increases and in general prevails in this and other Colonies.’” 

Here, the often-harsh realities of 18th-century American life are portrayed as existing in harmony with the natural rhythms of the seasons. The community portrayed here is one with a deep sense of place, and the specific conditions of the surrounding areas were the most important influences on how Concordians lived their lives, with the religious calendar a distant second. This quote conveys the degree to which the residents of Concord were disconnected from regional and global political trends, at least on the day-to-day level. The coming decades would bring a much different situation, and the somewhat idyllic picture of Concord life painted by this passage contrasts with what came after, when Concord found itself briefly thrust onto the world stage.

“When the eighteenth-century Yankee reflected on government, he thought of his town.” 

Similarly to the quote above, here the local outlook of Concord society is emphasized. By the mid-18th century, local government was meeting most of the needs of colonists, and an important change had quietly taken place: colonists had begun to think of themselves less as British subjects than as members of local communities. This pattern of identification persisted as people began to move west from established towns. Many historians of the Revolutionary period have remarked that the British government choosing not to continue its relatively hands-off approach to governing the colonies prompted a reckoning where local loyalties combined with the strength of opposition to British policies overcame colonists’ loyalties to the British crown.

“The New England town of men’s deepest aspirations was a utopia: a corporate body free from power-seeking, from conflict, from hard bargaining among separate interests, from exploitation of the weak; free, in short, from politics.” 

This quote contains important insights into the book’s working definition of politics: specifically, that politics necessarily involves imbalances of power. The conflict over church leadership and membership is presented as a central part of local politics, one that influenced all aspects of town administration. But with this definition in mind, the reluctance with which the residents of Concord addressed the problem becomes understandable. Religion in particular was a painful but unlikely site for discord; the church was the center of communal life, and as much founded on the principle of communal unity as it was an arbiter of influence. Though the drama of church politics seems trivial in comparison to the years-long struggle of the war, it created divisions in the town that would persist for decades.

“Before they could become the ‘embattled farmers’ of history, the townspeople had to transcend their traditional immersion in local affairs and to transform their constitutional opposition to British policies into many personal commitments to resistance shared throughout the town. In mid-1774 this point was reached. Then, making up for lost time, Concordians marched with single-minded militancy into the front ranks of the Revolution.”

This quote describes a turning point in the outlook of Concordians: before they could take their place on the world stage as the first fighters of the Revolution, they had to shift their political priorities to focus on concerted resistance to British rule. The reality of the period immediately before the Revolution was perhaps more complicated, however; Concordians did not sign up for Minuteman companies without repeated encouragement, and there remained a few holdouts in the town who harbored Tory sympathies. It was true, however, that town consensus favored British resistance, though this fact may have disadvantaged colonists in practice; the assumption that Concordians and others were united in their anti-British sentiments led to more than one success for British spies.

“Opposition to British policies outside Boston was at best an intermittent event in the life of most towns. Men would mobilize only in the face of the most blatant outrages, and when these were lacking—as they were after Britain in 1770 repealed all the Townshend duties but the one on tea—they preferred to be left alone.” 

Although there was plenty of outrage about new British colonial policy, in 1770, there was not yet a widespread feeling that a response was needed. Besides the lack of “the most blatant outrages,” there was not yet a feeling of social cohesion across Massachusetts that might compel some colonists to fight for a change in the principles by which the British governed, or to come to the aid of others if their town, family, and friends were not directly affected. In the coming years, the British government and the colonists alike would prove themselves willing to use force to defend their claims to sovereignty, and the need to answer force with force would pave the road to war.

“What they wanted, along with most colonists, was a new definition of the imperial relationship: Americans would control their internal affairs free from Parliamentary interference while paying allegiance with Englishmen to a common British sovereign. This was akin to the ‘dominion’ status Canada would later gain in the Empire, but in the late eighteenth century it was unthinkable to most English political figures, including the king. Sovereignty, they maintained, could not be divided. After Parliament retaliated for Boston’s destruction of the tea, the American position was politically untenable.”

The book focuses on the social and practical motivations for anti-British sentiment, but here the ideological dimensions of the conflict are stated explicitly. It is worth noting that this articulation came about after resistance to new British policies was already well-established; though the core group of Boston-based leaders of the resistance movement drew on political philosophy to justify their position, the justification for their goals developed over the 1760s and 1770s. The quote also asserts that the Boston Tea Party made significant escalation of the conflict inevitable. This in turn shows the limits of ideological positions in creating conflict; here, the need to react to provocation precluded the measured pursuit of a considered political position.

“The people of Concord pursued a course of ‘well-ordered resistance’ to tyranny, as the Middlesex County Convention had prescribed. In defiance of the Massachusetts Government Act, the town met regularly without the governor’s consent on a wide range of provincial business. It finally established its own committee of correspondence. As in earlier years, Concord frequently acted in response to outside initiative, but the Boston Committee of Correspondence was no longer its mentor. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the First Continental Congress now assumed the guiding roles.”

This quote sums up the development of freestanding administrative bodies in the pre-Revolutionary period. Building on formal and informal practices of local government, the colonists kept their own institutions running, in effect daring the British to enforce their recent assertions of sovereignty and proving that the colonies no longer needed the British in order to function. Though most Massachusetts dwellers were at least somewhat skeptical of the Continental Congress’ authority, its rightful inclusion here as the highest independent governmental organization in the land at the time is a first step on the long road to the creation of the United States.

“Concordians were republicans, not democrats. Despite the upsurge in popular power, they still regarded as illegitimate those values and practices we now consider essential to modern democratic politics.”

Here, the author draws a distinction that would be unfamiliar to many who are not immersed in contemporary American politics. In the 18th century, “democracy” usually referred to direct democracy, a form of government where people vote directly on new laws and policies. “Republicanism” referred to representative democracy, where elected representatives would make those decisions with the interests of their constituencies in mind. The “values and practices” might refer to modern America’s rejection of the connection between aristocracy and fitness to rule. Though the Revolution had radicalized some, earlier notions of social hierarchy remained largely unchanged.

“In the successful drive to forge a united stand against British policies, many townspeople had glimpsed the possibility of transcending the tense divisions that had beset their community in the pre-Revolutionary period. Through their shared struggles and sacrifices in the defense of liberty, all Concordians—magistrates and subjects, Old Lights and New Lights, villagers and outliers—might finally realize the trust, the fellowship, and the peace of the ideal New England town. Concord would become a harmonious Whig community—one that would meet the test of April 19 and the difficult long war that followed.” 

Here, a concerted approach to the large-scale political question of America’s status as a British colony is presented as a possible antidote to the deep divisions that persisted in local politics. But with a few Tory sympathizers still remaining in town, how would Concord become a “harmonious Whig community?” By the eve of the war, community divisions stemming from the First Great Awakening had become identified, at least to some extent, with those supporting and opposing British rule. Joseph Lee, who informed the British about a planned march to Cambridge and was placed under house arrest during the first year of the war, is only one prominent example. By the end of the war, those remaining diehard Tories had either softened their stance or fled to England. Postwar Concord, though battered from the war, was no longer defined by the conflicts of an earlier era.

“Geography probably dictated the choice. Strategically located along the main routes to the west, accessible only by bridge from two directions, and commanded by surrounding hills, the town was well placed for defense in case the Regulars attacked.”

This quote refers to the decision to store weapons and other stockpiled supplies in Concord. As in the description of the town’s founding, environmental factors are the key to good strategy, and the account of the battle and its aftermath shows that the surrounding hills did indeed offer a strategic advantage. This is just one of many times when the placement of Concord is used to justify its prominence (or lack thereof) among Massachusetts towns. In the mid-1760s, during an unsuccessful bid to have the county seat relocated to the town, justices raised an objection to “‘the Fogs arising from the River and low grounds there,’” which would cause illness to those who were not Concord natives. And, after the war, Concord touted its superior position as it dreamed of a future in which it, not Boston, was the most important town in Massachusetts.

“The expanding ranks of the young were eventually a cause for concern as well as pride. As one generation after another bent to the task of clearing woods, cultivating fields, and establishing its mark on the landscape, it became evident that Concord fathers presided over an ever-diminishing patrimony.”

This quote sums up the tensions over land distribution that defined Concord life in the 18th century. As the town grew and prospered, the population grew. Families that had lived in Concord for several generations already had an advantage over newcomers, because they had received a portion of the common lands that were divided up. But even the wealthiest families felt the squeeze when thinking of their children’s future, as very few could provide enough land to set up their sons without additional maneuvering. The word “patrimony” is key here: it evokes the crisis of fatherhood that went alongside the land crisis. The decline of paternal authority coincided with a reexamination of the idea of authority in general as resistance to British rule became more widespread.

“If moral argument failed, practical necessity might yet carry the antislavery case. During every colonial war in the eighteenth century, Americans had eventually been driven by manpower shortages to violate their own laws and enlist blacks into active military service. For many blacks, then as now, the Army provided an avenue of opportunity; slaves could win their freedom by fighting for king and country. In 1775, with more than enough whites ready to enlist, the provincials felt no need to call on slaves for help. Philip Barrett and his fellows were reduced to tending the parade grounds and cleaning their masters’ boots. William Emerson never mentioned them in his sermon: blacks were, as usual, an unnoticed presence in the town. But as the militiamen marched on the common, the slaves may have recalled earlier wartime experiences and looked forward to better days ahead. In the approaching war for self-determination, Concord’s least had the most to gain.”

The prospect of including the history of black Concordians in a social history of the period is complicated by the fact that, compared to the prominent white citizens of Concord, they left relatively few records; the best details are available for the slaves of prominent families. As a result of the relative lack of first-person narratives or other personal documents, the author makes the choice to infer how the black residents of Concord might have felt on the eve of the Revolution. By the end of the war, the lack of available or willing white troops would create a void that would be filled by blacks and poor whites; for many black soldiers, the end of the war meant the beginning of a new life as a free man, itself replete with challenges and uncertainties.

“...a married woman in eighteenth-century New England had even fewer rights than a slave. She was considered by the male-dominated courts to be ‘civilly dead,’ spoken for in the world by her husband. She could not vote, sue, make contracts, testify in court, or execute a will on her own. Whatever dowry she brought to her marriage was not hers, nor were any wages she earned; men succeeded to the property of their wives. No woman could effectively challenge this ordering of the world. A wife was bound by male law to obey her husband; if she did not, he could confine her to home or even administer a flogging. An unhappy woman had no recourse except in extreme cases of abuse. If a man strayed from the marriage bed, that was no ground for divorce. Adultery was only a woman’s crime—a crime against property and the moral code. An enraged husband was entitled not only to divorce but also to monetary damages from the lover for lessening the value of his wife. Yankee women literally belonged to their men.”

It is sometimes difficult to remember that women made up roughly half of the population of Concord, since they appear so rarely in the text, relative to men. Gross makes the most of the information that does exist about the women of Concord, but the lack of basic legal personhood that he describes here is reflected in the lack of documentation of women’s lives. As is evident here, women did affect the economic fortunes of Concord, both as partners to their husband in work and home management and as a financial liability to their fathers, who were obliged to provide a dowry for them if they married or support them if they did not. As can be seen above, adultery was also considered an act with economic consequences, since women themselves were considered economic assets.

“Gage’s plan was, as noted, what every well-informed colonist had been anticipating for weeks. The only question was when the governor would move, not where. But what neither side expected was the explosive combination of events that formed the so-called Battle of Lexington and Concord: an assault on unresisting militiamen at Lexington common, a military confrontation at Concord’s North Bridge, and a classic guerrilla action by ill-disciplined provincials, drawing on Indian fighting experience to harry the British retreat to Charlestown on the bloody Battle Road.” 

This quote summarizes the most important events of April 19, 1775, acknowledged as the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. It conveys the tension that preceded the battle on both sides, which was increased by the fact that the basic contours of Governor Gage’s plan were, unbeknownst to him, common knowledge. This fact in turn highlights his lack of connection with (or interest in) the local mood, a common attitude among British officials. This, in combination with the colonists’ reliance on guerilla fighting tactics during the British retreat, assured their victory, and foreshadows a pattern that would characterize the war itself: British attachment to the conventions of warfare was again and again subverted by colonists, who knew the territory better and used this knowledge to their advantage.

“The Acton and Bedford men were marching to defend relatives and friends in the town to which they had once belonged. So, too, were Minutemen from much farther away. Fifteen of the ninety-eight-man company that answered the alarm from New Ipswich, New Hampshire, were one-time Concordians, returning to the homes they had only recently left behind. For some, the battle would be not only a fight for American rights but also a home-town reunion.” 

Though the battles at Lexington and Concord are associated with those towns, Minuteman companies from many other towns took part. The Concord company itself was a dense network of familial relations, and those who had set out for the frontier to seek their fortunes still maintained personal links to Concord as a hometown. This fact highlights the importance of local ties to the Minutemen—for many, the most important personal identity was local, and separate from their status as British citizens.

“As they marched, David Brown, along with Purchase, passed right by his own house, where earlier his feeble-minded uncle Elias had spent the morning drawing cider for the Redcoats (‘They were,’ he later remembered, ‘the prettiest men he ever saw’). The house was now deserted. In that remarkably warm spring, the grain already stood green in his fields. And the apple trees were beginning to blossom. All that Brown defended lay about him: the British were trespassing on his home. Every one of the Minutemen could have said the same.” 

Here, the author imagines father and son catching a glimpse of the household they have worked hard to build as they march in their Minuteman company. The image of the apple tree evokes a sense of natural beauty and the abundance of the land, despite the struggles of Concord farmers. This heightens the sense that the Redcoats’ presence in the town is against the colonists’ interest, though they are subjects of the same government. The quote also emphasizes that the experience of the Revolution smoothed over some longstanding conflicts in Concord society, including the tension between fathers and sons over questions of land and inheritance. In the presence of a common enemy, the country they are defending together appears unusually beautiful, and capable of providing for all those who cultivate it.

“The cry of ‘Fire! Fire!’ flew through the ranks from front to rear. The resulting discharge wounded nearly a dozen of the enemy, three of them mortally. The provincials pressed on to cross the bridge; the British, jammed together at the end, panicked and ran, unpursued, toward town. The Concord fight—’the shot heard round the world’—had taken two to three minutes.” 

Here is the book’s account of the famous “shot heard round the world” that opened the American Revolution. The question of who fired the first shot does not have a clear answer, but it has been immortalized in poetry, as well as by the work of historians and political figures attempting to assign responsibility for the beginning of armed revolt. This quote provides atmospheric details; the reader gets the sense of what it might have been like to be at the fight, on either side. The elements of confusion, urgency and panic that come through here contrast with the heroic mood of Emerson’s famous poem. It is also a key turning point in the larger battle: the British troops began to retreat, a costly process that would take them the rest of the night and end in American victory.

“The fighting grew fiercer and bloodier after the Redcoats left Concord. This was war as provincial Indian fighters had long known it: every man for himself. To the British, accustomed to open field fighting, it was the action of ‘rascals’ and ‘concealed villains,’ as one put it, ‘making the cowardly disposition…to murder us all.’” 

This quote characterizes the tail end of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. As the British retreated, they were trapped by colonists waiting in the woods on the hills above the road back to Boston. This is the first significant example of a style of warfare that would become commonplace during the war, and the first example of colonists fighting not simply to defend themselves or their supplies, but to inflict more damage on British forces. The embedded quote from a British source encapsulates a common reaction to this tactic, which contrasted with the British approach. To an army that expected war to be fought according to established protocol, the colonists’ approach seemed to indicate their ruthlessness.

“The demand for manpower was immense, but the town never failed to meet its quota, one way or another. In the process, though, the very character and social meaning of the war were transformed: from a voluntary struggle to a battle by conscripts and eventually from a community-wide effort to a poor man’s fight.”

As the war wore on, constant demands for new troops became harder and harder to meet. Concordians took to paying for replacements for those who were called up for the draft as a matter of course; this was even more true for those older men and women who received draft notices. This, combined with George Washington’s call for troops who would serve for three years at a time as an efficiency measure, meant that increasingly, the ranks were filled with poor whites and blacks, who were not pulled between military duty and the need to maintain their farms. The change in the “character and social meaning” of the war followed from this change: as a broader swath of society took direct part in the war, these soldiers became personally invested in the form that the post-war American government would take, making ideas of citizenship that favored property-owning whites less politically popular.

“The war, combined with depression, left an exhausted people in its wake. Concord learned the news of the Treaty of Paris in a sour mood. Pausing only briefly to congratulate representative Hosmer on the restoration of peace ‘to this (of Late) Bleeding Land,’ the voters instructed him to investigate reports that Massachusetts had paid more than her fair share of the war. The conflict had begun in Concord with brave pledges to ‘go to the utmost with Lives and Fortunes’ to defend the country’s freedom. It was now ending in resentful muttering that the town had done too much.”

After eight years of war, Americans were exhausted. Massachusetts had been the cradle of the Revolution, but the seeds of regional divisions that would plague the United States in the next century had already been sown. The wide geographical distribution of the war meant that some recruits were fighting in areas of America that they had never before set foot in, and the uniting authority of the Continental Congress was not enough to inspire a sense of cohesion and mutual responsibility among colonies. Though Concord society emerged from the war a more harmonious whole, regional (and soon, national) tensions persisted.

“By 1782 a revolution of opinion had taken place, as a result of the heavy taxes and hard money policies of the state. The townspeople did not simply oppose the legislature’s deflationary program and then drop the subject when their position lost. Instead, out of the experience of political defeat and economic depression, many developed a deep distrust of all those magistrates who gathered in Boston far from their constituents’ view and who, thus insulated from popular pressures, proceeded to spend the substance of the country, often to enrich themselves.”

Notions of political authority began to shift in response to the experience of war. The role of wealth in the construction of political authority in particular underwent a shift. The definition of an ideal leader that the author provides in the first chapter includes personal wealth, and the wealth of the leader is in some sense a testament to his good character. By the end of the war, however, deeper investment in Massachusetts and American politics meant that Concordians often did not see the direct results of the money, provisions, and troops that they contributed to the war effort. The role of taxes in motivating the war in the first place also primed Concordians to be especially critical of the way that political leaders allocated funds.

“Fewer than twenty years after the American Revolution, the people of Concord pulled down the venerable North Bridge. They were looking ahead to the future and not toward symbols of the past, and as a result of highway improvements, the old bridge was obsolete. Its planks were removed a few hundred yards down river to a new bridge near John Flint’s farm. Only the stone abutments remained to remind passers-by of the stirring scenes that had happened there. Having served its historic purpose, ‘the rude bridge that arched the flood’ was cast away, an early victim of progress.”

The destruction of the North Bridge is an apt symbol for the forward-looking attitude of post-war Concord. The bridge was pulled down as part of a larger-scale effort to improve transportation infrastructure, in which roads were straightened and obstacles removed from roadways. The fact that the “stone abutments” were left indicates the incorporation of the Battles of Lexington and Concord into narratives of local history in the decades after the war, and the importance of the site to Concord’s self-presentation as a landmark of Revolutionary war tourism. The incorporation of the bridge’s beams perhaps also serves a symbolic purpose, as a testament to the enduring nature of local history despite progress and the passage of time.

“The Revolution initially made little difference in the lives and social position of New England women. Not until the early decades of the nineteenth century did courtship and marriage change, as young people came to exercise greater control over their own destiny. Women now chose their own mates, subject to their parents’ veto, and not the other way around.”

Many definitions of revolution center on deep change not only in politics, but society. Here, the limited nature of the social changes brought about by the Revolutionary War are clear. The author credits economic change as the primary driver of changes in women’s social status, but even in the early 19th century, the choice of a husband was the primary way in which an American woman exercised agency. The author also credits increasingly available opportunities for young men to earn livings outside of the home as a cause for reduced rates of premarital pregnancy: men delayed marriage longer, and this may have made chastity a more popular value.