From Soldier Systems:
Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
On this day, some 241 years ago, John Parker, Captain of Militia, uttered those instructions to his men as they stood on Lexington Green, ready, if need be, to engage 500 British troops set to sieze the militia’s arsenal.
What may have begun as a show of force on the side of the militia soon became an active firefight as the British advance guard met a percieved provocation with demands to disperse. The fog of war set in and a firefight soon broke out. The Colonist militia quickly gained the upper hand and drove a British force, which over the course of the day had grown to 1700, all the way back to Charlestown and beyond. This action would ultimately become the siege of Boston, happened over a year before the Declaration of Independence.
Whether they intended to or not, the concept of Liberty became cause as those men stood their ground.
We owe these men our very nation. Their sheer determination in the face of tyranny embodies the American spirit. Please join me in honoring their memory this Patriot’s Day.
Here:
Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American . . . . The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
– Tench Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788
And here:
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788
A re-write of the Shot Heard Round the World, per “the AP”, here.
(H/T: Soldier Systems)
