The Hidden History of “Patriots’ Day”–Three Things You May Not Know

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

   And fired the shot heard round the world.

— “Concord Hymn,” Ralph Waldo Emerson (July 4, 1837 Source: Academy of American Poets)

 

Concord Minuteman by Daniel Chester French (Photo Courtesy of National Park Service

And so it began on April 19, 1775 –240 years ago. A legendary midnight ride. Some Minutemen dropping farm tools and grabbing their guns. And a “shot heard round the world.”

What began that April morning, of course, was the American Revolution. The fighting would last for more than six years, until the last major battle at Yorktown, Virginia and the British surrender there on October 19, 1781. (A peace treaty ended the war officially in 1783.)

Few subjects in American history are draped in as much mythology as the American Revolution and especially the opening salvos at Lexington and Concord. Almost immediately, a proud patriotic narrative of the American Revolution was spun out. Like many such narratives, it was prompted by politics not fidelity to the truth.

“The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod— and thenceforward these two conducted all the policies, negotiations, legislatures, and war.”

—John Adams Letter to Benjamin Rush, April 4, 1790

Here are three quick things your schoolbooks probably didn’t tell you:

• Washington’s army of Continentals –not militiamen grabbing trusty muskets—and America’s French allies won the war. Professional soldiers were derided and mistrusted by many of the Founding Fathers, while Washington complained that to rely on the militia was “to lean upon a broken stick.”
• About one in five of Washington’s soldiers were black, even though Washington refused to enlist black soldiers when he took command in 1775.
• After the British surrendered at Yorktown, Washington’s first order of business was returning some confiscated “property” to rightful owners. Thousands of African American refugees hoping to escape slavery were with the British at Yorktown; they included enslaved people from Washington’s Mount Vernon and Jefferson’s Monticello.

These are some of “untold tales” I relate in my forthcoming book, THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR. (HACHETTE BOOKS/RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO MAY 5, 2015)

The Hidden History of America At War-May 5, 2015 (Hachette Books/Random House Audio)