The Spirit of ’75

Midnight. April 19, 1775. The British were coming. Paul Revere galloped into Lexington, Massachusetts, with an urgent warning: Roughly 850 British soldiers were approaching the town. The British planned to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were staying in Lexington, and then march to Concord to seize patriot military supplies.

As a history lover, I think I know the story of Paul Revere, but the tale is loaded with myths. Revere, for example, never said, “The British are coming.” Henry ­Wadsworth Longfellow wrote those words in his 1861 poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” Revere likely would have said, “The redcoats are headed to Concord” or “The regulars are on the march.” (The colonists considered themselves British, so “The British are coming” is like saying “We’re coming.”) Nor was Revere the only rider. William Dawes, a tanner and militiaman, also rode that night, and a third rider joined them in Lexington. They encountered a British patrol en route to Concord, and Revere was captured.

Perhaps the chief myth of 1775 involves the year itself. 1776 has become the nation’s symbolic birth year, and with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence coming in 2026, the reverence for July 4, 1776, as our nation’s birthday will only grow.

But what about 1775? What about the battles in Lexington and Concord (and yes, the towns are celebrating the anniversary)? What about Bunker Hill? The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775. As the 13 colonies’ provisional government, it named George Washington commander-in-chief of the American army, issued and borrowed money, launched a postal service, and established a navy, all in 1775.

“If 1775 hadn’t been a year of successful nation building, 1776 might have been a year of lost opportunity, quiet disappointment, and continued colonial status,” writes the late historian Kevin Phillips in his book 1775. That pivotal year, Phillips argues, was “in many ways more important than 1776.”

And yet 1775 feels oddly overlooked. That’s why I’ve traveled from my home in Virginia to Lexington, Concord, and Boston five months before the 250th anniversary of the Revolution’s first shots. I’m here, in part, out of history-geek curiosity about this neglected year. I want to rediscover old stories and forgotten heroes. But I’m here, as well, for a deeper reason: I’m suffering a crisis of faith in my country. I worry about our divisions, but unity, too, is one of the myths of 1775. The Revolution was in many ways a civil war pitting family against family, loyalist against patriot, American against American. And yet despite enormous odds, our forefathers and foremothers managed to build a nation. They fought for self-government. They defied a king. They confronted the most powerful military in the world. And so I am here to embrace their courage and sacrifices, and to nourish my sagging patriotic soul. I am here to recapture the spirit of ’75.

The Lexington Green seems to sparkle under a surprisingly warm-for-November-in-Massachusetts sun. Gerry Marrocco, a historical interpreter and guide, leads me and my partner on a battlefield tour; he is dressed in 1775 attire, from his black tricorn hat and cape to his knee-length yellow breeches. With his New England accent — he grew up in Newton and now lives in Boston — dark is “dahk” and horse is “hoaas.”

The Green is a grassy, 2.5-acre triangular space surrounded by two-lane roads and classic New England homes. In 1775, the Green — or the Common as it was then known — was “a scrubby cow pasture on the edge of town,” as one historian wrote, where farmers brought sheep to graze. Four homes date back to the battle; each retains bullet holes from April 19, 1775.

Years of cross-Atlantic tensions had led to that confrontation. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the colonies, to help the British government pay off debts from the French and Indian War and to maintain an army in North America. Colonial outrage spurred the act’s repeal, but Parliament passed more taxes in 1766 — and sent troops to Boston to enforce them. After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts (or, as Americans called them, the Intolerable Acts). The harsh measures — from closing Boston Harbor to ending self-government — generated sympathy and camaraderie throughout the colonies.

On April 16, 1775, Gen. Thomas Gage, the British commander in Boston, planned a march to Concord to seize gunpowder. And because of Adams and Hancock, he had one more vital destination: Lexington.

 

As we stand on the Lexington Green, Marrocco sets the dramatic scene of April 19, 1775. Around 5 a.m., an advanced column of about 100 light infantry arrive in Lexington. British Maj. John Pitcairn surveys the militia, around 70 men, standing with their muskets.

“Maj. Pitcairn says in no uncertain terms, ‘Rebels! In the name of the king, lay down your arms and disperse!’” Marrocco says. “There’s a lot of noise and confusion. Pitcairn says it a second time. And then a third. Finally, Capt. Parker, the militia leader, says to himself … This is crazy. I’m outnumbered. These are the best troops in the world. They have bayonets, we don’t. He tells his men to leave. But he never says lay down your arms.”

The militia leaves the field, but two men stay on the line, holding their muskets. One is Capt. Parker’s cousin, Jonas Parker, 53. Before the battle, he declared he would never back down.

And then, a shot is fired.

No one knows who pulled the trigger. But many scared and inexperienced redcoats start shooting.

“Some of our militia have their backs to them — boom, boom! A couple shots in a scattered volley,” Marrocco says. “Boom, boom, boom, boom! A lot of our men run, but others turn and fire back. Jonas Parker fires his musket. He’s shot. He drops to his knees. He’s trying to reload his musket. A redcoat kills him with his bayonet.”

Asahel Porter, 23, a frightened prisoner who’d been arrested during the march, attempts to flee and is shot in the back. Caleb Harrington, also 23, is shot in the back as well. Both men are killed. A bullet hits Harrington’s cousin, Jonathan, in the chest.

“[Jonathan] falls on the Green and looks up at his house,” says Marrocco, pointing at a white home on the edge of the Green. “He sees his wife and his child looking out the window. He gestures to them. He drags himself off the Green, across the road, across the front lawn, up on his front steps. His wife opens the door. He dies at her feet.”

Eight colonists are dead, 10 wounded. The names of the dead appear on a monument, erected in 1799, on the Green. It serves not just as a memorial, but as a reminder: This is sacred ground.

Charles Bahne, a Boston historian, author, and tour guide, never forgets that. On a phone call, he tells me about a school group on a tour of Lexington in 2023. Their teacher had said that 15 million Americans have died fighting in wars for the armed forces. Bahne reminded them of that on the Green, telling them, “You are standing at the spot where the first eight of those millions of people gave their lives. It’s mindboggling. They made a stand. They gave birth to our nation. And some of them lost their lives for that.”

Concord, to my Virginia eyes, is what a New England town should look like. Shops and restaurants line a charming Main Street. Churches with white steeples point to the heavens; old homes with inviting front porches face thick trees as stout as the local history. The Colonial Inn, where we spend the night, served as a hospital following the battle in 1775, and is well known for its ghosts. Walden Pond is about a mile away. Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women here. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson were residents as well.

On the morning of April 19, 1775, the town bell rang in Concord. “The message has been spread that something happened at Lexington,” says Joe Palumbo, our tour guide, who grew up here. Two companies of militia and two ­companies of minutemen gathered at the Wright Tavern, which still stands today.

Every town had a militia, but some, like Concord, had a militia and minutemen, who were first responders. Many served in the French and Indian War, and they’ve been training for months. As for the militia, every white male aged 16 to 60 was required to serve. About 20 to 40 men of color were also at the battle on April 19, National Park Service research shows.

“It’s unlikely that [a slaveholder] would leave his enslaved person at home,” Palumbo says. “He would want him to help carry stuff, to help participate. Plus, there had been a big conspiracy in the newspapers that when the British come, the slaves are going to rebel. So there was fear.”

After the skirmish in Lexington, the British reached the Concord town center around 7 a.m. The militia and minutemen withdrew from the tavern to nearby Punkatasset Hill. Back in town, British soldiers started a bonfire to burn supplies such as gunpowder, hardtack, and flour. The flames spread to another building, igniting the roof. A Concord woman convinced them to douse the fire, generating plumes of smoke. When the militia and minutemen saw the smoke from the hill, they assumed the British were torching the town.

The men were enraged. Someone shouted, “Will we let them burn the town down?” Col. James Barrett asked Capt. Isaac Davis if he would lead a march into town.

“I have not a man who is afraid to go,” Davis replied.

We walk down the same path the colonists used as they approached the British on the North Bridge, which spans the Concord River.

The outnumbered redcoats told the Americans to stop, drop their arms, and disperse. But the militia and minutemen kept coming. The British retreated over the bridge and fired warning shots into the river. Then they shot into the colonial ranks.

Two men were killed instantly. Maj. John Buttrick yelled to his men, “Fire, fellow soldiers, fire, for God’s sake, fire!” It’s the first time a colonial officer has ordered his men to fire against their countrymen, immortalized by Emerson as “the shot heard round the world.”

The British attempted to fire back, but quickly turned and ran. Two British soldiers were killed, another was mortally wounded. The Revolutionary War had begun.

 

On March 20, 1775, one month before the bloodshed on the North Bridge, lawyer Daniel Bliss welcomed two men to his Concord home. The guests dressed like local farmers yet carried muskets, a sign of their true identities. They were British spies, seeking information from Bliss, one of many New England loyalists.

“There weren’t just like two loyalists in these towns,” Palumbo tells us. “It was more like maybe 60-40, sometimes 50-50, depending on the community.”

He’s leading us up a steep, grassy hill to Concord’s Sleepy Hollow cemetery. We walk to the weathered gray headstone of John Jacks, a former slave who bought his freedom and became Concord’s first Black landowner. Following Jacks’s death in 1773, Bliss wrote a fiery epitaph for his stone that includes these words, aimed at his liberty-seeking neighbors:

Tho’ born in a land of slavery,

He was Born Free,

Tho’ he lived in a land of liberty,

He lived a slave

“Bliss was no abolitionist,” Palumbo explains. “He thinks these protests are crazy. So on the stone, he puts a loyalist message to tweak the locals: You’re running around saying you shall not be enslaved to the king, but we have enslaved people in our midst.”

Townspeople were furious, but the epitaph appeared in the London Times and spread through the empire as an example of American hypocrisy.

Local patriots quickly learned of Bliss’s meeting with British spies. He received a message: If he was still in town the next morning, he would “pay for his treachery with his life.” The two spies whisked him to the safety of a British garrison in Boston. His wife and children soon joined him; his home was used to treat wounded redcoats after the battle at Concord. Many loyalists faced similar choices.

“When British spies came here in the weeks before April 19, people like Bliss were giving out information,” Palumbo says. “Once the war breaks out, the loyalists get nervous. Many abandon their homes and go to Boston, because that’s the only place that’s safe.”

Bliss and his family escaped to Canada. He joined the British army, became a colonel, and fought against the Continental Army in Quebec.

Hearing the story of Bliss — and reading John Jacks’s stone — is a reminder to me. The problems of 2025 are not new. They existed in 1775. Racism, ideological hatreds, misinformation (partisan newspapers were often the deep fakes of their time), and of course, division. Our divide is not a result of a two-party system or social media or evolving cantankerous politics. Division is part of our birth. We were founded on division. It’s wired in our national DNA. But surely it is not the dominant gene in our American societal code.

 

After the defeat at Concord, the British returned to Boston, and we do the same. The difference: My partner and I are on a commuter train, while the redcoats were harassed by snipers and militia on their 20-mile march. Near Lexington, two soldiers died following an ambush by Capt. Parker’s men, an event known as Parker’s Revenge. Eight more were killed near Lincoln. Another 40 died at Menotomy (now Arlington). By the end of April 19, 1775, 73 redcoats were dead, 174 wounded — more than double the American casualties.

In Boston, we wander through the Old North Church, famous for its signals the night of Paul Revere’s ride. The old floor crunches as we walk past box pews, each with closed white doors. Later we head to Bunker Hill, technically an American defeat, though the redcoats suffered 226 dead, 828 wounded. A 221-foot-high obelisk marks the battle, fought on June 17, 1775. The site feels like a neighborhood park, with dog walkers wandering the grass and brownstones surrounding the square.

The moment that most moves me, however, occurs in the city’s North End, a ten-minute walk from the Old North Church. We have lunch at a pizza joint called Ernesto’s, and I devour two savory slices of pepperoni pie. As we eat, we notice an old man sitting by a window. He appears to be homeless. My partner asks a guy behind the counter if it’s okay to buy him a slice of pizza.

“No, no, he’s fine,” the aproned man tells her. “His sister used to own the place, and we take care of him.” He repeats that. We take care of him.

That’s what I want the spirit of ’75 to be. Yes, there were divisions. But there was also community. There was a dedication to self-government. “Even in England, normal citizens didn’t have the right of self-government that we did here,” Bahne says. Those are ideals worth fighting for.

In Concord, I had talked with a minuteman about our rocky present and reverent past. Doug Ellis is one of about 30 minutemen — and minutewomen — who appear at parades, ceremonies, reenactments, and other events. Like Marrocco, his time-machine attire includes a black tricorn hat and yellow breeches. His round Ben Franklin-style glasses were custom-made by his optician; his musket is a reproduction, but it fires. The license plate number on his car: 1775.

Ellis is a Mason, so we sit in Concord’s 204-year-old Corinthian Lodge, which was chartered by Paul Revere in 1797. We revere the minutemen, he says, but they were ordinary people facing an uncertain and potentially volatile future.

“They were farmers and they were scared for their freedom,” he says. “They were afraid that they were going to be economically, if not physically, enslaved. They had the highest living standards in the world, really, for middle class. They knew that. And they had seen what had happened in Ireland. They’d seen what happened in Scotland.”

Representing the minutemen, he says, helps him to focus on our shared identity. When people want to join their ranks, they receive a message: “Leave your politics at the door. We’re Americans.”

Marrocco made a similar comment. “We’re not red, we’re not blue,” he said. “We’re all Americans.”

Later, I ask him to elaborate: Has his knowledge of 1775 fortified his belief in the country?

“I feel there was a positive force behind the battle on Lexington Green. It was providential,” he says. “I think of those simple farmers on the Green, angry because they were losing their rights, standing up against the strongest army in the world. So many times in the Revolution, the situation looked dark, but we prevailed. If you look at our history — the divisive election of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, as mean or worse than any election since; the Civil War; all the other times our country has been in turmoil — we came out of that and kept going. It may sound corny, but I believe God has been intervening for all Americans, from different places, with different beliefs and views.”

Of the future, he offers this: “We will be all right.” I hope so.  In his book On Tyranny, Yale professor Timothy Snyder shares this advice for being a patriot: “Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.” By embodying the history and heroes of 1775, men like Marrocco and Ellis are doing just that.

 

Ken Budd has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, National Geographic Traveler, and many more. He is the cohost of a new book podcast, Upstart Crow.

This article is featured in the March/April 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.