The American Revolution Begins

For John, BLUF:  I think I had been fuzzy about the sequences of events in the American Revolution, but this helps to make it clearer,  The British march on Lexington and Concord and then later comes the Declaration of Independence.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Today Should Be a National Holiday:  An Annual Tradition.

Here is the sub-headline:

If there were any justice today would be a national holiday at least as big as Independence Day.  I’m not kidding.

From The Writer in Black, by Writer David L. Burkhead, 18 April 2021.

Here is the lede plus two:

Back in the 1770’s an unrest that had started more than a century before–with Colonial reaction to the English Civil War, the Catholic reign of James II, and the Glorious Revolution that followed–was growing in the American colonies, at least those along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire down through Georgia.  Protests over taxes imposed without the taxed having any voice in the matter, complaints about a distant monarch and legislative body making rules and laws over people to whom they are not beholden.

There had been clashes which fed that unrest, including the famous “Boston Massacre” where British troops fired into a rioting mob resulting in several deaths.  Think of it as the Kent State of the 18th century.

In an effort to quell the unrest, or at least have it be less of a threat to British officials, General Thomas Gage, Military governor of Massachusetts, under orders to take decisive action against the colonists, decided to confiscate firearms and ammunition from certain groups in the colony.  His forces marched on the night of April 18, 1775.

This is about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which played out on the 19th of April 1775.  When Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about Paul Revere and his mission to warn every Middlesex village and farm he is talking about the County in which I now live, and proudly so.

A lesson to be learned is that soldiers shooting into a crowd of rioters doesn't always work out well for the Government then in power.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff