James May-June 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 73
army arrived back in Boston that evening after dark. Behind them, as one historian noted, “the sun was setting
on the ruins of an empire.”
It is not overstatement to say that the American nation was born that morning. Perhaps more than July 4,
the events of April 19 created the mindset necessary to
make a collected group of colonists a truly united nation.
In every corner of the American colonies, from Maine
to Savannah, the news of this event— and the American
interpretation that shaped this news—changed attitudes
and hardened minds. It was a turning point from which
most Americans never looked back. After April 19, the
Americans had to choose sides, and for many, the choice
was not an easy one. For many Americans, their loyalty
to the crown was as solid as is ours for our flag and country. For other Americans, it couldn’t have been clearer:
the government and king they had so long revered would
send out troops if necessary to murder them at their very
doorsteps in order to enforce laws and policies they had
no part in approving. The plight of Massachusetts became the plight of everyone, and something truly national was born that day.
As the years went by, the legend surrounding the
events of that day grew. The Massachusetts Rebels
stopped being rebels and armed protestors and instead
became Patriots, and April 19 was celebrated in New England as Patriot’s Day. With the publication of Longfellow’s
poem in 1861, Revere was transformed from a regional
hero to a national icon.
The last survivor of the Lexington Green was Jonathan Harrington, who played the fife for the Lexington
minutemen that morning as a 17-year-old. He died at age
96 in 1854, the year the country was pre-occupied with the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, seven years before the Civil War.
As the 250th anniversary of that famous day approaches, we should remember that it set in motion the train of
events that led to American independence, to Yorktown,
the US Constitution, Gettysburg, emancipation, the beaches of Normandy, the streets of Selma, right to our own day.
If the midnight riders had stayed home, if the minutemen
and women of Massachusetts had slept and let the British army do whatever it wanted, what would be different
about us now? How different would our world be? We will
never know. But something good and positive came about
because of the decisions they made, and they demonstrated the power that individuals— singly and collectively—
have in this world to make a difference.
Every year in Wayland, Massachusetts, at the same
hour the messenger arrived on the night of April 18, they
again ring the town’s bells, so that the people of the town
will awaken suddenly in their beds, and listen, and remember. The ringers always include children, so that the rising
generation will remember too. The town’s bell was made
by Paul Revere, continuing to carry his message.
The shots fired 250 years ago echo still.
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