Battle of Lex and Conc Define the Subject/Evaluate the Sources

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought on two fronts in Middlesex County, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. Principle adversaries included the British armed forces and the colonial militia known as Minutemen. The night before the battles on April 18, British officials entered Concord, Massachusetts with the intent of both seizing an arms cache and also capturing key rebels including John Hancock and Samuel Adams. The colonists intercepted the message, and their being forewarned allowed the minutemen time and opportunity to intercept the British. The minutemen instigated a skirmish in Lexington and Concord simultaneously, and won decisively. The Battles of Lexington and Concord are therefore widely referred to as the starting point of the American Revolutionary War.

Research sources for studying the Battles of Lexington and Concord include books, journal articles, new media, and multimedia. Tourtellot's (1959) book is seminal but needs to be supplemented by more recent sources. Fradin's (2009) book contains valuable facts and analysis, even if it is written for young readers. McCullough's Pulitzer prize-winning book 1776 is among the most indispensible sources showing how the Battle of Lexington and Concord fits into the chronology of Revolutionary War history. Full-format electronic or digital books like Hamilton's (2014) Battles of Lexington and Concord are also helpful. In addition to books, scholarly articles and websites round out the discussion and often provide details that may be easier to access and navigate than they would be in a narrative-format book. Because most of the books, articles, and websites accessed tend to be written by American authors for an American audience, there will most certainly be pro-American biases. However, books like Tourtellot's are as objective as possible.

Review the Setting/Set the Stage

The Battles of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775, and...

The War of Independence itself lasted for eight years; in 1783 the Treaty of Paris marked the formal end. From the perspective of the colonists, the British had been remotely collecting taxes for the Crown without offering corresponding political power or representation in parliament. A series of increases in tariffs hurt the colonies, such as the Stamp Act, Sugar Act, and Townsend Acts. The colonies were a valuable source of raw materials for the Crown, and colonists felt exploited. Discontent and active rebellions were becoming increasingly commonplace, and thus, when the Battles of Lexington and Concord erupted it was a surprise to neither party.
From the British perspective, the colonies were Crown territory and the colonists were in active rebellion against Great Britain. The British conceived of Samuel Adams and John Hancock as rebel leaders, and viewed the stash of gunpowder in Concord as a sign that the rebels were committing acts of treason.

Based on the fact that the colonies had trained militias, and that men like Paul Revere were expecting regiments of British troops outside of Boston, the colonists and the British alike were somewhat expecting armed conflict. However, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were not pre-conceived of as first battles to start the Revolutionary War. No primary source material would suggest an organized, conscientious attempt on the part of colonial strategists to initiate an eight-year war with Britain at this time. In fact, the colonial militias were not trained to fight British soldiers, but to stave off attacks from Native Americans and French aggressors.

However, colonial intelligence gathered information about British General Gage's plan to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock from Lexington and seize the colonists' stash of gunpowder from Concord. Given the British intent to capture key rebels like Adams and Hancock, as well as a weapons stash, it is likely…