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On arriving at Concord, it was the first care of the British commander to cut off the approach of the Americans from the neighbouring towns, by destroying or occupying the bridges. A party was immediately sent to the south bridge and tore it up. A force of six companies, under Captains Parsons and Lowrie, was sent to the north bridge. Three companies under Captain Lowrie were left to guard it, and three under Captain Parsons proceeded to Colonel Barrett's house, in search of provincial stores. While they were engaged on that errand, the militia of Concord, joined by their brave brethren from the neighbouring towns, gathered on the hill opposite the north bridge, under the command of Colonel Robinson and Major Buttrick. The British companies at the bridge were now apparently bewildered with the perils of their situation, and began to tear up the planks of the bridge; not remembering that this would expose their own party, then at Colonel Barrett's, to certain and entire destruction.

The Americans, on the other hand, resolved to keep open the communication with the town, and perceiving the attempt, which was made to destroy the bridge, were immediately put in motion, with orders not to give the first fire. They draw near to the bridge, the Acton company in front, led on by the gallant Davis. Three alarm guns were fired into the water, by the British, without arresting the march of our citizens. The signal for a general discharge is then made ;—a British soldier steps from the ranks and fires at Major Buttrick. The ball passed between his arm and his side, and slightly wounded Mr. Luther Blanchard, who stood near him. A volley instantly followed, and Captain Davis was shot through the heart, gallantly marching at the head of the Acton militia against the choice troops of the British line. A private of his company, Mr. Hosmer of Acton, also fell at his side.

A general action now ensued, which terminated in the retreat of the British party, after the loss of several killed and wounded, toward the centre of the town, followed by the brave band, who had driven them from their post. The advance party of British at Colonel Barrett's was thus left to its fate; and nothing would have been more easy than to effect its entire destruction. But the idea of a declared war had yet scarcely forced itself, with all its consequences, into the minds of our countrymen; and these advanced companies were allowed to return unmolested to the main band.

It was now twelve hours since the first alarm had been given, the evening before, of the meditated expedition. The

[Lesson 30. swift watches of that eventful night had scattered the tidings far and wide; and widely as they spread, the people rose in their strength. The genius of America, on this the morning of her emancipation, had sounded her horn over the plains and upon the mountains; and the indignant yeomanry of the land, armed with the weapons which had done service in their fathers' hands, poured to the spot where this new and strange tragedy was acting. The old New England drums, that had beat at Louisburgh, at Quebec, at Martinique, at the Havana, were now sounding on all the roads to Concord. There were officers in the British line, that knew the sound; they had heard it, in the deadly breach, beneath the black, deep-throated engines of the French and Spanish castles.

With the British it was a question no longer of protracted hostility, nor even of halting long enough to rest their exhausted troops, after a weary night's march, and all the labour, confusion, and distress of the day's efforts. Their dead were hastily buried in the publick square; their wounded placed in the vehicles which the town afforded; and a flight commenced, to which the annals of British warfare will hardly afford a parallel.

On all the neighbouring hills, were multitudes from the surrounding country, of the unarmed and infirm, of women and of children, who had fled from the terrors and the perils of the plunder and conflagration of their homes; or were collected, with fearful curiosity, to mark the progress of this storm of war. The panick fears of a calamitous flight, on the part of the British, transformed this inoffensive, timid throng into a threatening array of armed men; and there was too much reason for the misconception. Every height of ground, within reach of the line of march, was covered with the indignant avengers of their slaughtered brethren. The British light companies were sent out to great distances as flanking parties; but who was to flank the flankers? Every patch of trees, every rock, every stream of water, every building, every stone wall, was lined (I use the words of a British officer in the battle), was lined with an unintermitted fire.

Before the flying troops had reached Lexington, their rout was entire. An English historian says, the British soldiers were driven before the Americans like sheep; till, by a last desperate effort, the officers succeeded in forcing their way to the front," when they presented their swords and bayonets against the breasts of their own men, and told them if they advanced they should die." Upon this, they began to

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form, under what the same British officer pronounces very heavy fire," which must soon have led to the destruction or capture of the whole corps.

At this critical moment, it pleased Providence that a reinforcement should arrive. Colonel Smith had sent back a messenger from Lexington, to apprize General Gage of the check he had there received, and of the alarm which was running through the country. Three regiments of infantry, and two divisions of marines with two fieldpieces, under the command of Brigadier General Lord Percy, were accordingly detached. They marched out of Boston, through Roxbury and Cambridge, and came up with the flying party, in the hour of their extreme peril. While their fieldpieces kept the Americans at bay, the reinforcement drew up in a hollow square, into which, says the British historian, they received the exhausted fugitives, "who lay down on the ground, with their tongues hanging from their mouths, like dogs after a chase."

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A half an hour was given to rest; the march was then resumed; and under cover of the fieldpieces, every house in Lexington, and on the road downwards, was plundered and set on fire. Though the flames in most cases were speedily extinguished, several houses were destroyed. Notwithstanding the attention of a great part of the Americans was thus drawn off; and although the British force was now more than doubled, their retreat still wore the aspect of a flight. The Americans filled the heights that overhung the road, and at every defile, the struggle was sharp and bloody. At West Cambridge, the gallant Warren, never distant when danger was to be braved, appeared in the field, and a musket ball soon cut off a lock of hair from his temple. General Heath was with him, nor does there appear till this moment, to have been any effective command among the American forces.

Below West Cambridge, the militia from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Brookline came up. The British fieldpieces began to lose their terrour. A sharp skirmish followed, and many fell on both sides. Indignation, and outraged humanity, struggled on the one hand, veteran discipline and desperation on the other; and the contest, in more than one instance, was man to man, and bayonet to bayonet.

The British officers had been compelled to descend from their horses to escape the certain destruction, which attended their exposed situation. The wounded, to the number of two hundred, now presented the most distressing and con

stantly increasing obstruction to the progress of the march. Near one hundred brave men had fallen in this disastrous flight; a considerable number had been made prisoners; a round or two of ammunition only remained; and, it was not till late in the evening, nearly twenty-four hours from the time when the first detachment was put in motion, that the exhausted remnant reached the heights of Charlestown. The boats of the vessels of war were immediately employed to transport the wounded; the remaining British troops in Boston came over to Charlestown to protect their weary countrymen during the night; and, before the close of the next day, the royal army was formally besieged in Boston.

LESSON XXXI.

Reflections on the affair of Lexington and Concord.E. EVERETT.

It was one of those great days, one of those elemental occasions in the world's affairs, when the people rise, and act for themselves. Some organization and preparation had been made; but, from the nature of the case, with scarce any effect on the events of that day. It may be doubted, whether there was an efficient order given the whole day to any body of men, as large as a regiment. It was the people, in their first capacity, as citizens and as freemen, starting from their beds at midnight, from their firesides, and from their fields, to take their own cause into their own hands.

Such a spectacle is the height of the moral sublime; when the want of every thing is fully made up by the spirit of the cause; and the soul within, stands in place of discipline, organization, resources. In the prodigious efforts of a veteran army, beneath the dazzling splendour of their array, there is something revolting to the reflective mind. The ranks are filled with the desperate, the mercenary, the depraved; an iron slavery, by the name of subordination, merges the free will of one hundred thousand men, in the unqualified despotism of one; the humanity, mercy, and remorse, which scarce ever deserts the individual bosom, are sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous, irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. It is hard to say, who are most to be commiserated, the wretched people, on whom it is let loose,

or the still more wretched people, whose substance has been sucked out, to nourish it into strength and fury.

But, in the efforts of the people, of the people struggling for their rights, moving not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart, though I like not war nor any of its works,—there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle, without entrenchments to cover, or walls to shield them.

No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier, the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror, has turned the veteran's heart into marble; their valour springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life, knit by no pledges to the life of others. But in the strength and spirit of the cause alone they act, they contend, they bleed. In this, they conquer.

The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated; kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed by foreign arms on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued.

If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks, and everlasting hills, are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket, their palisado; and nature,God, is their ally. Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies, beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; and never gave, and never will give, a full and final triumph over a virtuous, gallant people, resolved to be free.

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