Retreat of the British

Rumors of the events at Lexington, vague and uncertain, had reached the Minute-men at Concord. All Middlesex was awakened. The militia were flocking in from Carlisle, Chelmsford, Weston, Littleton, and Acton; and before ten o'clock the force amounted to full four hundred men--about one-half that of the regulars. They were drawn up in line by Joseph Hosmer of Concord, acting adjutant, and Major Buttrick of the same village took the immediate command. When they saw the smoke ascend from the town, the question pressed itself upon the heart and judgement of every man; "What shall we do?" There was no Continental Congress; they had no orders from the Provincial Congress; they were a little army of Middlesex farmers gathered for the defence of their homes and their rights: by what authority might they attack British troops acting under lawful orders? Would it not be treason? But the troops were trampling upon their rights, and the smoke of their burning property was rising before their eyes. They took counsel of duty, and acted promptly. In the burying-ground on a hill near by, was the following epitaph on a stone over the grave of a slave:

Acting in the spirit of these lines, Isaac Davis of Acton drew his sword, and, turning to the company of which he was captain, said: "I haven't a man that's afraid to go." Then Colonel Barrett gave the word march, and the Acton company, followed by others, all under the command of Major Buttrick, pressed forward, in double file with trailed arms, to drive the British from the North Bridge. The latter began to destroy it, when Buttrick urged his men forward to save it. As they approached the river, they were fired upon by the regulars. Captain Davis and one of his company were killed, when Buttrick Shouted: "Fire, fellow-soldiers; for God's sake fire!" Immediately a full volley was given by the Minute-men, which killed three of the British and wounded several. Some other shots were fired, when the invaders retreated and the Minute-men took possession of the bridge.

The war begun at Lexington that morning was seconded at Concord at the middle of the forenoon, and at meridian the same day, British power in America began to wane, when British regulars made a hasty retreat before an inferior number of provincial militia. Colonel Smith, hearing the firing at the bridge, sent out reinforcements. These met the retreating detachment. Seeing the increasing strength of the Minute-men, they turned about, and at noon the whole invading force retreated toward Lexington, the main column covered by strong flanking parties. It was soon perceived that the whole country was in arms. Minute-men appeared with muskets everywhere. They swarmed from the woods and fields, from farm-houses and hamlets. It appeared as if the old fable of the sowing of dragons' teeth, that resulted in a crop of full-armed men, had become history. "The Americans," wrote a British officer, "seemed to drop from the clouds." The blood shed at Lexington and Concord loosed the bands of conscience, and wiped out all the scruples of those who had been governed by a nice sense of the duties of a subject, and of honor and discretion. War had begun. In open highways the exasperated yeomanry attacked the retreating invaders; behind stone-walls, fences, buildings and in wooded ravines they ambushed, and assailed their foes with the single shots or deadly volleys; and man after man fell dead in the British ranks or was badly wounded, until great wagons were filled with the slain and the maimed. The heat was intense, and the dust in the roads was intolerable. Exhausted by want of sleep, fatigue of marching, famine and thirst, the eight hundred men--the flower of the British army in Boston--must have surrendered to the armed yeomanry of Middlesex, soon after reaching Lexington had not relief arrived. It came in the form of reinforcements under Lord Percy, and met the fugitives within half a mile of Lexington Common.

The request sent to Gage early in the morning for reinforcements had been promptly answered by ordering Lord Percy to lead about a thousand men to the support of Smith and Pitcairn. They left Boston at nine o'clock in the morning and marched over the Neck and through Roxbury, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, played in derision, it being used as a sort of "Rogue's March" when offenders were drummed out of the ranks. A lad in Roxbury, by many pranks attracted the attention of Percy, who asked him why he seemed so joyful. "To think," said the boy, how you will dance to "Chevy Chase" by-and-bye. The earl was inclined to be superstitious and the remark of the boy worried him all day. He was a son of the Duke of Cumberland, a lineal descendant of Earl Percy, one of the heroes of the battle of Chevy Chase, who was there slain.