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The American Revolution begun on this date

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Silent Walker

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April 19, 1775: At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, a shot was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.
 
I wouldn't call it a shadow government. The Americans had long enjoyed the right to govern their affairs on a local level. When Parliament and the King stripped those rights and placed them under royal and military authorities, the Americans simply refused to comply.

When the troops came to confiscate arms and munitions, the Americans knew it was time to defend their rights as free men.

The local militia had several small field guns in Boston. They knew the value of those pieces and rightfully believed they belonged to the Americans (since they were purchased by them) and managed to smuggle the guns sans carriages right out from under Gage's nose. That infuriated him, and he sought to find those guns before word got out.

He was not successful.
 
I find many of the lesser-known incidents leading up to April 1775 to be the most interesting. The schoolbook histories account for the events we all learned as growing up as children, and then finally the battles of April 1775. But beyond those events are lesser-known incidents like the Powder Alarm of September 1774, Portsmouth Alarm, HMS Lively incident, etc. that set the stage for April 1775. The colonists were aware of the British administrators' intentions, but those lesser-known incidents gave the colonists valuable information about the methods that the administrators would use to carryout their purpose of control. Having been through several "powder raids" before (ones the schoolbook histories often do not cover), by April of 1775, the colonists were aware of both what the British administrators intended to do and how they would carry it out. All they needed was information about where and when the next raid by the ministerial troops would happen, which was supplied so that by the morning of April 19, the militia was assembled to meet the troops...
 

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