Battles of Lexington and Concord

On April 19, 1775, British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith marched from Boston toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize provincial powder and military stores. Captain John Parker's Lexington militia faced the column on Lexington Green at dawn, and an unknown shot touched off the first exchange of the Revolutionary War. At Concord's North Bridge and along the road back to Boston, Massachusetts militia from Middlesex County, including men rallied by figures such as James Barrett, turned the expedition into a running battle that cost the British heavy losses.

Lexington and Concord transformed the imperial quarrel over taxation and parliamentary authority into open war between the Crown and the colonies. The fighting answered the Coercive Acts with armed resistance and convinced many delegates that petitions alone would not secure the rights claimed in the Suffolk Resolves and other provincial declarations. Within weeks, militia from New England surrounded Boston, and the crisis forced the Second Continental Congress to confront military questions that the First Continental Congress had tried to postpone.

The battles led directly to the Siege of Boston and to the Continental Congress's appointment of George Washington as commander in chief on June 15, 1775. They also pushed Congress toward the Olive Branch Petition, the Declaration of Independence, and the creation of a continental government capable of directing war.