Lexington and Concord – A Bridge Too Far?
April 19, 1775
While Benjamin Franklin is travelling across the Atlantic from London en route to Philadelphia, approximately 400 essentially, untrained men have decided to take a stand. A wooden bridge crossing a narrow, insignificant river near Boston was worth the potential cost of a musket round ending their life.
That insignificant river, the Concord River, would soon become synonymous to this day with the words spirit, and liberty. It would enter the history books not as a particular river, but as the combined battles of Lexington and Concord. The beginning of the American Revolution.
Actually, things had been happening for several years that were leading to this day. A Tea Party in Boston. A Massacre in the same city, that should not have happened. Similar “Tea Parties” throughout the colonies. Secret meetings. The formation of a group that would be called The Sons of Liberty. But liberty from what?
As this is a blog and not a history class, I will not provide a minute-by-minute account of what happened on the 19th April 1775. Entire books and many Master’s and Phd. papers have beaten the subject to its demise (at least until next semester). The preface and the aftermath that got the colonists riled enough to take up arms against the most powerful army in the world … researched to its demise (at least until next semester).
It was that bridge! The one that the British couldn’t cross. A small wooden bridge, across a small river in rural Massachusetts. In 250 years, it has been reconstructed six times since that day. The original bridge was taken down in 1788. But that didn’t stop people from deciding that a monument to courage needed to continue to cross that small river.
The bridge that I walked over a few years ago is the current reconstruction from the summer of 2005. It appeared and felt to be much improved over the actual bridge of 1775. But that wasn’t the point. It was a bridge, if not the bridge from 1775. Although the British sent approximately 700 men from Boston, only approximately 90 held the bridge. Approximately 400 colonists decided that the military stores of weapons and ammunition not far from that spot needed protecting. The British with their approximately 90 men, disagreed! Supposedly, the British fired warning shots, then towards the colonists. The American Revolution had begun!
The many approximately numbers in the previous paragraph show that history is not perfect. Records are lost, observers have memory lapses, stories are written long after the events took place—sometimes with very little facts, or eyewitnesses still alive to tell the tale.
I was standing on history, maybe not the original piece of history, but it was close enough. Unfortunately, one family walking across the bridge did not have the same sense of historic honor to be there as I did.
A middle school and high-school-aged brother and sister were on their cell phones. Doing what, I don’t know. And their smaller sibling was running back and forth over the bridge, yelling and screaming the way elementary school kids on the playground do. But, at least the father had a sense of honor as he took a selfie with all of them smiling and making funny faces in front of the Minuteman Statue.
My wife could see that my head was about to explode as she directed me back onto the bridge. I guess, like those non-uniformed, ill-trained men who called themselves Patriots, I pulled myself together as I decided, like them 250 years before, how much I was willing to put up with.
Anybody have a musket circa, 1775?
Unfortunately, Benjamin Franklin wouldn’t be able to help, as he was not a firearms type of guy. As a sort of Quaker, firearms were not part of his accoutrements. He probably wished he had some knowledge when he was directed into the basement of a soon-to-be demolished building. His nemesis was going to make Ben part of the foundation of his new real estate development outside of Clarke Gardens Theme Park. Who said Williamsburg, Virginia, couldn’t be a fun place?
Ben wasn’t liking this 2024 alternate timeline where history didn’t turn out quite as he expected.
“Read All About It!” in the upcoming Franklin In Time series introduction.
