"Surely the People of Boston are not Mad enough to think of opposing us," Hugh, Earl Percy wrote one year and two days before the people of Boston (and points beyond) answered in the affirmative. The tenacity of the Minutemen sent the earl in retreat, scurrying from Lexington through my hometown of Arlington (then known as Menotomy), through Cambridge, and finally to the safety of Charlestown. The Americans won the day, but would not win the war for another eight, grueling years.
If there is a persistent misconception about April 19, 1775, it is the same misconception that surrounds the war that Lexington launched. Both the battle for Lexington Green and the Revolutionary War were defensive rather than offensive operations. The British ordered the governor (Yeah, that's right, we won the war and we spell it governor and not governour!) of Massachusetts to use force against the rebellious colonists. And that he did by sending troops to destroy a weapons cache in Concord. The message wasn't "The Americans are coming!" but rather "The British are coming!"
Similarly, the war was fought not to establish new rights, but to preserve, to defend the rights of Englishmen that the colonists had inherited. As the New Jersey legislature informed the mother country more than a decade prior to Lexington: "we look upon all Taxes laid upon us without our Consent as a fundamental infringement of the Rights and priveleges Secured to us as English Subjects by the Charter." From the perspective of Americans, the British were the revolutionaries altering custom. Virginian Richard Land spoke for many when he wrote: "every Act of Parliament that imposes internal Taxes upon the Colonies is an Act of Power, and not of Right." The internecine conflict stands rare among insurrections: the patriots fought the revolution to conserve what was theirs, not to destroy what wasn't.
Damn right. Massachusettsians like myself kick ass.
Or at least, we did in 1776. Somewhere along the line the Kennedies got thrown in there...and then there was that nasty John Kerry debacle...and...
Well forget it.
It’s quite amazing how far backwards we’ve gone here in Mass. where the citizenry once fought (and won) against high taxes (and taxation without representation) to a state that has become one of the highest taxed in the country. State and municipalities are out of control. The British were less of a burden.
Here are tax dollars at work (used loosely).....
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0418/p01s01-uspo.html
Excuse me for singing...
The shot heard 'round the world
Was the start of the revolution
The Minutemen were ready and on the move
Take your powder, take your gun
Report to General Washington
Hurry men, there's not an hour to lose
I'll be singing them all now, all day, but that's all good.
