Essay 4-C: The Battles Of Lexington & Concord And Bunker Hill And Founding Documents

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The Battles of Lexington and Concord responded to ideals and initiated a series of events that mark the true beginning of America’s national creed. While April 19, 1775, initiated the fighting of the Revolution, these events followed and were influenced by an even more radical intellectual revolution that began “in the Minds and Hearts of the People.” The battles marked a shift from allegiance to the King to allegiance to universal principles, including humans’ unalienable rights and their entitlement to consent-based constitutional government, ideals later articulated in the Declaration of Independence. 

Historian Bernard Bailyn explains that the colonists’ philosophy gave meaning to the events preceding Lexington and Concord. Some Patriots, guided by their understanding of “Nature’s God,” experienced a “Change in their Religious Sentiments of their Duties and Obligations” to the Crown. These individuals could no longer believe that the King, who threatened their liberties, was “ordained of God for their good.” Others were impelled to battle by “their Education” in the Lockean “Laws of Nature,” which conceived Great Britain’s relationship with the colonies as a social contract for protection by King George in exchange for the allegiance of the colonists. But when the King’s “Protection was withdrawn, they thought Allegiance was dissolved.”

“Dissolve” is a Lockean term that denotes revolution. In this case, the King and his Parliament offensively declared war through the “repeated injury” of the colonists’ inherent liberties prior to the physical fighting. By this logic, the colonists’ use of arms at Lexington and Concord was a defensive response to the usurpations of a tyrant. Historian Gordon Wood cites the Boston Tea Party as the pivotal point that “continentalized the resistance movement” beyond Massachusetts. “In a period of two months in the spring of 1774, Parliament took revenge in a series of coercive actions no liberty-loving people could tolerate.” The Crown intended these “Intolerable Acts” to punish Massachusetts and warn the other colonies to comply. However, they “scared everyone from Massachusetts to South Carolina. They closed the Port of Boston; they did away with the Massachusetts Bay Charter” leading George Washington to fear that the same things could happen to Virginia.

Responding to these perceived violations of colonial rights, the First Continental Congress formed the Articles of Association in October 1774, uniting the colonies in a boycott of British goods. Parliament retaliated with the Restraining Act of 1775 to further restrict New England trade. As tensions mounted in April, the British hoped to prevent violence by seizing colonial arms held at Concord. After a random shot of unknown source was fired in Lexington on April 19, the British returned fire killing several militiamen. As the British marched toward Concord, American militia advanced on them, “Mistakenly assuming the Redcoats [were] torching the town.” With the physical war underway and increasingly restrictive measures expected from Parliament, the Second Continental Congress organized to enumerate their principles, explain the King’s continued violation of them, and justify their direct action on their behalf in the Declaration of Independence. 

The Declaration is not simply a political act of separation from Great Britain; it articulated the newly formed Nation’s creed. First, all humans are equally endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights deserving of respect. Because humans are imperfect, we need to establish a government, whose authority comes from the consent of the governed, to protect those rights. Finally, the government must provide institutional safeguards to ensure the “future security” of these rights. A written constitution must include protective mechanisms, such as separation of powers and checks and balances, to limit the errors of future leaders and the People. These ideals not only justify the separation from Great Britain but are also the values that the colonists sought to protect at Lexington and Concord. 

The Declaration not only declares individual rights, but it also encourages the exercise of prudence and duty by those who would enjoy them. “[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” But prudence must guide such decisions so that not every grievance leads to war. It is “their duty, to throw off such Government” only in extraordinary conditions after “a long train of abuses and usurpations, … design[ed] to reduce them under absolute Despotism.”

But since “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,” the Declaration also intends to convince those not eager for war to anticipate greater injustices if King George is not stopped. Though we ultimately do not know whether the British or the colonists fired the first shot at Lexington, the war that began there was the culmination of an intellectual movement. As John Adams remarked, this defense of principles that came to define the Nation “was the real American Revolution.”

Dr. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch is the Pete and Laura Walker Professor of American Studies and the Director of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

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