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April 19, 2001 - Bill Cooper
58:17
(Unlisted) Concord
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♪♪ ♪♪
♪♪ I'm William Cooper.
Good evening, folks.
Last night you heard the preparations for and the causes of the first actions in the war that brought about the creation of this country and the first battle at Lexington Green.
Tonight you're going to hear about the battle that took place at Concord Bridge, and probably Monday we will carry on with the skirmish of the American militia with the retreating British soldiers all the way from Concord back to Boston.
The militia is still alive and well today.
There are minute companies all across this There are large militia organizations.
And if you want to see some of the members of the Arizona militia, check out our website at williamcooper.com.
They're looking for a few good men.
Not that they don't have quite a few already.
But we are constantly recruiting, training, and preparing.
And you should be doing the same.
Get ready, folks.
This is the part of our history that's not taught in school anymore.
Most children don't know anything about the events that occurred on April the 19th, 1775.
19th 1775. This is Patriots Day.
the the
the April 19, 1775, 8 a.m.
The withdrawal of the Minutemen to Punka-Tasset Hill was completed just before the seven British companies under Captain Lorry and Parsons got to the North Bridge.
When Barrett saw the companies of Parsons cross the bridge and take a road to the left over a causeway that led to his farm two miles further on, he galloped home ahead of them to give warning and last orders.
Meanwhile, two of Lorry's companies, the 10th Lincolnshires and the King's own 4th Royal North Lancashires, were sent across the bridge to the first rise of ground beyond.
The forty-third Oxford sheriff assigned to watch the bridge itself remained on the east bank.
Troops from this company, in turn, surrounded the well in front of the Elisha Jones House, bullet-hole house, not far from the bridge, and drank its cool water.
Little did they realize that stores of fifty-five barrels of beef and one thousand seven hundred pounds of salt fish were concealed there in a cellar and shed.
While these activities were going on at the North Bridge and beyond, officers in the British force strolled about the center of the town, directing the grenadiers in their task of seeking out hidden stores and refreshing themselves in the public houses.
At Wright's Tavern, Major Pitcairn, in a bad humor from an encounter with an aged citizen of the town, is supposed to have stated, as he called for a glass of brandy and stirred it with his bloody finger, that he hoped he should stir the Yankee blood so before night.
The search of the Grenadiers did not prove very successful.
About five hundred pounds of musket balls were thrown into the mill pond But many of them were dredged up afterwards.
The grenadiers also set fire to the townhouse and Reuben Brown's harnessed shop, but were prevailed upon by the inhabitants to put out the flames.
The mill pond, which formerly occupied a sizable area in the center of town, was subsequently filled and now comprises a good part of the business section.
9 A.M.
Earl Percy finally got his delayed orders to go out from Boston with the 1st Brigade as a relief party.
General Gage had issued this order at 4 a.m., but two mistakes in the force consisting of 1,000 men and two light field pieces.
The minute men and militia on Punkatasset Hill, now made up of a force of over 400, began to move down to a lower elevation near the North Bridge.
From there they saw the smoke rising from fires in the town.
They did not know the exact cause, but had reason to suspect the worst.
Colonel Barrett consulted with his officers, and Joseph Hosmer, the Concord adjutant, raised the question, Will you let them burn the town down?
The decision was made to march into the middle of town for its defense or die in
the attempt.
Barrett gave the order to march, but not to fire until fired upon.
Lieutenant Colonel John Robinson of Westford and Major John Buttrick of Concord led the procession, followed by Captain
Isaac Davis' Acton Company of Minutemen.
The three Concord companies, the militia of Acton, Bedford, and
Lincoln and a column of volunteers.
A pair of fifers and drummers struck up the tune of the White Cockade, and the embattled farmers were on their way to engage some of the finest troops in the King's Army.
As soon as the Americans were in motion on Pocatasset Hill, Captain Lorry's two outer companies retreated before them and soon joined the third company at the bridge.
Lorry was able to perceive that the oncoming force outnumbered his and dispatched a messenger to Colonel Smith for reinforcements from the town.
Smith ordered out two or three companies of grenadiers, but putting himself at their head and being a very fat, heavy man, so slowed up the advance to the bridge as to make it impossible to arrive in time to be of any help.
9.30 A.M.
Captain Lorry moved most of his men to the east end of the north bridge, leaving only a few to pull up the planks.
Major Buttrick, coming on at the head of the American column, ordered the men at work to desist and accelerated the pace of the militia.
The men removing the planks stopped and hastily formed for action in the road at the end of the bridge.
Lorry had time to arrange his men effectively.
For, as one of his lieutenants later wrote, the rebels got so near him his people were obliged to form the best way they could.
The three companies got one behind the other so that only the front one could fire.
Captain Warry's men, without doubt, attempted to form in a tactical design known as street firing.
They lined up in columns of fours.
After the men in the first two or three ranks had fired from kneeling and standing positions, they broke to the right and left and filed to the rear to reload, while their positions in front was taken by ranks moving up in succession.
Thus it was a theory that a narrow way or bridge could be kept under a steady fire.
It was clearly Lorry's intention to check the American advance at the North Bridge.
And his leading ranks of light infantry burst forth with the first shots, three of them which fell harmlessly into the river.
The first full British volley followed at a range of seventy-five yards or less.
Their balls whistled well, as Isaac Davis, the Acton captain, was killed as he was raising his gun, and Abner Hosmer, one of his men, fell to the ground with a bullet through his head.
In obedience to Barrett's order, The Americans had not fired first.
Major Buttrick now leaped into the air and fervently shouted, Fire, fellow soldiers!
For God's sake, fire!
The words rang down the ranks, and a volley was fired by all who could fire and not kill our own men.
A few more shots came from the British, but their morale was broken by the number and force of the round balls that came smashing among them, and they began to scatter.
As the advancing column of inspired minute men stepped on to the bridge, the Redcoats turned and fled, leaving two men on the ground.
At the end of the episode at the bridge, three privates were to become fatalities, while four of the eight British officers present were wounded, besides a sergeant and four men.
Concord fight.
Physically so little, spiritually so significant.
was over in two or three minutes.
But, as a noted student of that one day in history has further remarked, the way lay open for all that America since has done.
The two British soldiers who were left on the ground are buried beside a stone wall at the left of the approach to the bridge.
A slate tablet bears a suitable inscription of verses from James Russell Lowell.
Though the British were able to carry away one of their dead, their flight from the bridge was so complete that their wounded had to hobble away as best they could.
As they passed the Elijah Jones house, Jones pointed his musket out of a second-story window, but his wife knocked it from his hands before he could fire.
Determined, however, to witness the spectacle before his eyes, Jones went downstairs and stood in the doorway of his shed.
A retreating redcoat No doubt welcoming the chance to shoot an insolent rebel, took hasty aim as he hurried by and fired.
The shot pierced the wall of the shed about a yard from Jones' head.
The hole thus made is preserved today under glass and gives to the place the popular name of the Bullet Hole House.
The Redcoats fleeing the North Bridge met Colonel Smith coming to their aid with his About a quarter of a mile away, they were pursued by the Americans for only a short distance.
With his forces still divided, Smith was nervous and undecided what to do.
According to Rev.
William Emerson, who was watching from the old man's nearby, for half an hour the enemy, by their marches and counter-marches, discovered great fickleness and inconstancy of mind, sometimes advancing Sometimes returning to their former posts, before definitely withdrawing into the village.
While the British were engaged in these evolutions, about half the American force of four hundred recrossed the bridge to the West Bank.
There the bodies of Davis and Hosmer, the Acton Minutemen, were taken to the home of Major Buttrick, a handsome clapboarded dwelling that still stands on the slope of Puncatasset Hill.
But no longer in view of the picturesque river setting.
A monument with a suitably inscribed tablet commemorates Major John Buttrick beside the road nearly opposite the house.
When Captain Mundy Pohl and his company of light infantry, who had seized the South Bridge at eight a.m., heard the guns at the North Bridge, they at once started back to the center of town to rejoin the main body.
They removed the plank from the bridge to protect their retreat.
Some of Pole's troops were on Lee's Hill, an elevation about one hundred feet high, across the South Bridge, when the reports of musketry at the other end of the town echoed in the sky.
Lee's Hill, now called Nashawaterkill, was the home of Joseph Lee, a Tory, and the town's physician.
During their stay of an hour and a half at the South Bridge, Captain Pole's company Entered and searched at least three houses and got food for which they were careful to pay the womenfolk.
They came upon three twenty-four pound iron cannon which they knocked from their trunnions and destroyed a small quantity of flour.
Some gun carriages were also found and set on fire, together with a number of barrels containing wooden trenchers and spoons.
The smoke that rose from the burning of these supplies may have been seen by the Minutemen gathering on Punkatusset Hill and prompted their attack at the North Bridge, perhaps as much as the fire started by the grenadiers in the town.
While the action at the North Bridge was taking place, the four companies of White Infantry under Captain Parsons, returning from Colonel Barrett's farm, had got to a crossroads still more than a mile away.
A lad of fifteen, then living at a tavern kept by the Widow Brown, claimed later that he heard guns at the bridge, but the British did not appear to hear them.
10 A.M.
The main body of the British began to reassemble in the center of Concord as Smith got back from the North Bridge and Pohl's company came in from the South Bridge.
who had been on the move since the night before, were exhausted and needed rest.
The wounded required attention, and provision had to be made to carry them back to Boston.
Chases and horses were confiscated from stables and bedding from nearby houses.
The companies of Captain Parsons, returning from the Barrett Farm, recrossed the North Bridge without interference from the Americans and rejoined the main body of troops in the square.
They brought back the first story of atrocity in the Revolution.
They had observed the bodies of two of their slain comrades lying beside the road near the east end of the bridge.
One of them had been killed instantly, but the other, though wounded in the brief engagement, had not immediately expired.
About a half hour later, a boy, hatchet in hand, had crossed the bridge to join the force of Americans.
As he went by, the wounded soldier was sitting up and trying to raise himself to his knees, whereupon the boy, doubtless under the spell of the exciting action that had just taken place and possibly fearing the soldier meant to do him harm, decided to finish the unfortunate victim by sinking the sharp blade of his weapon into his skull.
The returning troops of Captain Parsons, seeing the corps thus mangled and bloody, originated accounts of exaggerated barbarism and cruelty.
It soon became popular in England to believe that the rebels, in Indian fashion, scalped and cut off the ears of their adversaries.
Noon, or soon thereafter.
The British Expeditionary Force, at last rested and organized as well as possible for the return to Boston, Pulled out of Concord with flankers ordered up along the ridge on the north of the road to Merriam's Corner.
1230 P.M.
As soon as the Americans who had been present at the fight at the North Bridge received warning that the British were heading back toward Lexington, they crossed the great meadows that lay in the north of the village and arrived at Merriam's Corner about as soon as the retreating Redcoats.
In the vicinity of Merriam's Corner, The numbers of the militia were increased to as many as 1,100 as more men from neighboring towns appeared.
From the north came the Ballerica, Chelmsford, Reading, and Woburn companies.
From the south those of Framingham and Sudbury.
Three companies from Westford and at least one from Stowe had been too late at the North Bridge, but were now on hand to take up the pursuit.
At Merriam's Corner, the old Bedford Road runs in from the north to join the highway to Lexington.
As the reading companies were coming down this road and were nearly abreast the old Merriam House, they saw the British flankers, about one hundred in number, rejoin the main column in the highway.
Taking care not to be outflanked, the reading men then advanced to the cover of the buildings and stone walls at the homestead and waited while the British slowly made their way over a little bridge that spanned Mill Brook a few hundred feet farther along the highway.
Up to this moment, the remainder of the day might have passed without further incident.
The few minutes of action at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge might even have been written off as part of a chronicle without any fulfillment or far-reaching end.
Such, however, was not destined to be the case, as the last of the grenadiers reaching the east side of the narrow bridge suddenly turned and fired a volley in the direction of the reading companies gathered around the Merriam House.
From this volley there was to be no point of return.
A war had opened that was not to end until Yorktown.
During the course of the next few hours, a continuous battle was to rage around the retreating Redcoats on a battlefield only several hundred feet wide, but sixteen miles long, all the way from Merriam's Corner to Charlestown.
The volley fired by the exasperated grenadiers ushered in the real results of the eventful The militia company, swarming in at the corner from both sides of the road, replied with more deadly effect.
A Concord Minuteman was perhaps a bit overzealous in reporting that a great many lay dead and the road was bloody.
Yet at least two British privates were killed in the road beyond the stream, while several more were wounded.
From Merriam's Corner on The warfare of the day became more and more of a guerrilla nature.
It, indeed, was open season for shooting at the British.
Any directing force and discipline beyond the company unit were lacking, and even there they were slight as the Minutemen chose to fight as individuals, either exposed in pursuit or behind shelter.
By these tactics The British commander tried to maintain his force in a solid formation on the highway, except when he sent out detachments of light infantry in flanking movements.
These flanking parties were effective, and more than once caught the local yeoman by surprise as they fired from roadside walls, boulders, and trees.
Of the total of forty-nine Americans killed during the day's fighting, it is probable that more than twice as many met their fate at the hands of the flankers as from the soldiers marching or retiring along the highway.
1 p.m.
As the British approached the top of Brooks or Hardee's Hill, half a mile east of the bridge at Marion's Corner, they were attacked by the Sudbury Company of Captain Nathaniel Cudsworth, which took cover by the roadside.
A constant fire was kept up by the Minutemen as the Redcoats sped down the slope past the Brooks Tavern and over the line into Lincoln.
Crossing Tanner's Brook, the British marched rapidly on.
Across the bridge, the old road turned sharply to the left.
On the left-hand side was a tall growth of trees, and on the right one somewhat smaller.
Many minute men, including the Bedford Company of Captain Jonathan Wilson, raced to reach the advantageous position afforded by these woods.
1.30 P.M.
When the regulars reached this wooded portion of the highway, now cut off from the main route and known as Old Bedford and Virginia Road, the Americans under cover of the forest grove laid down a devastating fire that killed eight men outright and wounded many more.
Fittingly, this curving section of the road was soon to be named the Bloody Angle.
The losses, to be sure, were not all one-sided.
In the heat of the action on the road, the Minutemen forgot all about the British flankers.
Captain Wilson and two others were shot or fatally jabbed from the rear and a fourth injured and disabled for life.
Half a mile farther on, The three old houses, only a few hundred feet apart.
The first was a tavern kept by Ephraim Hartwell, and also the home of the Sergeant John Hartwell of the Lincoln Minutemen.
The second, the Sergeant Samuel Hartwell House, and the third, the Captain William Smith House.
As the broken ranks of the British staggered on, a grenadier were shot and fell before a pair of bars on the side of the road midway between the two Hartwell houses.
A little farther on, another grenadier was mortally wounded near the Captain Smith house and left by the roadside to die.
Members of the family carried him into the house, where his wound was dressed, and he lingered on for three or four days.
The shattering fire faced by the British at Bloody Angle had turned their retreat into
a rout.
The British were forced to retreat, and the British were forced to retreat.
The British were forced to retreat.
Just east of the pasture on the north side of the highway where Revere had been captured
Lay two fields enclosed by stone walls.
They were part of the homestead of Josiah Nelson, who, after taking a sword slash on
his head from a British officer at an earlier hour, had spread the alarm to Bedford.
A venturous Lincoln minuteman, William Thorning, had sunk into one of the holes in the first
field and had the redcoats and the road under incessant fire when their bullets began to
bounce upon the ground around him.
He narrowly missed being hit, but finally made good his escape by flattening himself in another trench and waiting for the party to pass on.
Thorning, minutes later, ran into the second field, or pasture nearer the Nelson House, and took up a position behind a huge boulder, about fifty feet from the road, where the main body of the British were still hurrying along.
He resumed his fire with fatal effect.
Two soldiers fell and were buried on a knoll in an orchard across the road.
The rock over which Thorning leveled his musket at the fleeing Redcoats goes today by the appropriate name of the Minuteman Boulder.
As soon as the news was received that General Percy's wagon train of supplies would be along without a sufficient escort, the old men of Monotony, Arlington, assembled at the Cooper Tavern in the center of the village to make plans for seizing it.
They were all old men.
Exempt from the alarm list, for the younger men in the militia had already been called out.
David Lamson, a half-Indian who had served in the old war against the French, was chosen leader, and accompanied by Reverend Phillips Payson of Chelsea, the little band of about twelve men took their position behind a bank wall of earth and stone nearly opposite the meeting house of the First Parish.
When the wagon train came abreast of Lamson and his aged companions, Lamson called on the sergeant in charge to surrender.
His request was not heeded, and the drivers whipped up their horses to get away.
The old men, who had taken aim, then fired, killing several of the horses and two of the soldiers, while some of the others were wounded.
The drivers and guards who were not wounded or killed leaped in panic from the wagons and ran to the shore of Spy Pond a half-mile to the southward, where they threw their guns into the water.
Continuing their flight, they came upon an old woman named Mother Bathrick, who was digging dandelions.
Begging for protection, they insisted on surrendering to her.
Imagine her surprise!
She took them to the home of Captain Ephraim Frost, where she delivered them as prisoners, saying, If you ever live to get back, you tell King George that an old woman took six of his grenadiers prisoners.
When the story reached England, the opposition papers picked it up and pointedly asked the question.
If one old Yankee woman can take six grenadiers, how many soldiers will it require to conquer America?
Those wagons, abandoned at monotony, provided the Americans with the first provisions and stores to be taken as the result of a forcible attack in the Revolution.
2 P.M.
Now back in Lexington, we're once again to encounter Captain Parker's little band of Minutemen under less favorable circumstances.
Just over the line from Lincoln, the land rises sharply at a bend in the old road.
There, many of Parker's men, who had not already gone on into Lincoln, gathered and waited for vengeance.
As the sorely pressed regulars came into sight and finally drew opposite their advantageous positions, the Lexington men poured down a resounding volley.
The British returned their fire in desperation, but without effect.
A quarter of a mile further along the road, the famished British troops came to the Bull Tavern.
Making a swift entry and departure, they ransacked the bar for liquor and devoured what food they could find.
In the bluff Fisk Hill area, just beyond the Bull Tavern, some of the most colorful and
furious but least known and publicized action in the course of the British retreat took
place.
As the broken ranks of the main body of troops got around the bluff and started up the west
side of Fisk Hill, Colonel Smith decided to make a desperate effort to rally his men.
A rear guard was thrown up on the bluff, while the troops were halted in the road beyond and steps taken to restore some semblance of order.
That this attempt failed is made clear in accounts left by two young British subalterns.
Lt.
John Barker observed that the number of the enemy was increasing from all parts While ours was reducing from deaths, wounds and fatigue, and we were totally surrounded with such incessant fire as it's impossible to conceive, our ammunition was likewise near-expended.
Ensign de Bernier reported an even more humiliating situation.
When we arrived within a mile of Lexington, our ammunition began to fail.
And the light companies were so fatigued with flanking that they were scarce able to act, and a great number of wounded, scarce able to get forward, made a great confusion.
Colonel Smith had received a wound through his leg.
A number of officers were also wounded, so that we began to run rather than retreat in order.
We attempted to stop the men and form them too deep, but to no purpose.
The confusion increased rather than lessened.
In such a condition, the British were to go on the remaining mile from Fisk Hill to the village of Lexington.
Major Pitcairn, as well as the wounded Smith, was a conspicuous target for the Minutemen and militia, whom Lieutenant Barker found so concealed there was hardly any seeing them.
With his superior in command, the Major tried valiantly to bring the men into line, but any hope of successfully reorganizing the British column had to be abandoned.
The distraught men, to the consternation of their officers, broke and ran down the east side of the hill, and in greater disarray than before, hastened on toward Lexington.
2.30 p.m.
The Americans kept a harassing fire on the flying foe as he sped over Concord Hill and on past Lexington Green.
No stop was now made to disperse any rebels.
No Minutemen were now lined up to oppose the retreat.
It was too easy to add to the enemy discomfiture on the flanks and at his rear.
The situation had radically changed since the initial clash of arms at sunrise.
As the British ran on in confusion, more of their number were killed and wounded.
Three more soldiers were abandoned near the Lexington Green and carried into the Buckman Tavern, where one of them died three days later.
The beaten British force was now threatened with complete dissolution before the relief party under Earl Percy could come to its aid.
One last effort to restore discipline, however, was made and succeeded in bringing the discomfited troops together until they could reach the protection of their reinforcements.
D'Bernier described how it was done.
At last, after we got through Lexington, the officers got to the front and presented their bayonets and told the men that if they advanced they should die.
Upon this they began to form under a very heavy fire.
3 p.m.
General Percy opened his ranks a half-mile east of Lexington.
To admit Smith's men, so much exhausted with fatigue that they were obliged to lie down for rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs after a chase.
The rescue party was the King's own Fourth Regiment.
Colonel Smith's men rested for a half hour or more inside the line thrown out by the rescue party.
Meanwhile, Percy, with the two field pieces he had brought along, opened the first cannonade of the Revolution.
No Americans were killed or wounded, but the Meeting House on Lexington Green was struck and damaged.
Percy's men, moreover, took pains to destroy any structure that might be used as cover by scattered groups of the rebels for sniping at the British flanks.
Three houses and three outlying buildings were both looted.
and burned.
While this destruction was taking place, the wounded were conveyed into the Monroe Tavern, where their wounds were dressed.
John Raymond, a cripple, mixed drinks for the thirsty redcoats at the bar.
When he tried to escape by the rear door, he was shot and killed.
Despite the precautions taken by Percy, Marksmen among the militia crept up in small numbers to woods and meadows on both sides of the road, and from behind trees and the second line of walls, at more than point-blank distance, resumed a fire that had been momentarily interrupted by the British artillery.
About this time, three companies of militia from Newton also entered the fight.
The minute men had to give up the chase as soon as their ammunition gave out.
Their numbers, however, were continually replenished along the way.
3.30 p.m.
The retreat of the British in the direction of East Lexington and Monotony was resumed.
Flankers prevented the Americans from using any close cover, and at the same time they entered and pillaged houses by the roadside.
without restraint from their officers.
William Heath, one of five generals appointed by the Provincial Congress to take charge of the militia, arrived at Lexington and soon was joined by Dr. Joseph Warren.
Both had attended a meeting of the Committee of Safety at Monotony that morning after receiving
news of the baptism of blood at Lexington Green.
4.30 p.m.
The British troops trudged slowly on under the burden of goods they had stolen along
the way.
After advancing about two and a half miles, and soon after leaving the Lexington line, they had to climb Pierce's Hill near the west end of Monotony, now Arlington Heights, and a half a mile further on came down again to lower ground known as the Foot of the Rocks.
There, once again, They were exposed to a fierce fire as militia from towns to the eastward and nearer the coast began to enter the fray.
Beginning at the foot of the rocks, the firepower of the Americans was greatly increased as over 1,700 men in no less than thirty-five companies began to swell the force of militia that had the regulars under attack.
Companies from Watertown, Medford, Malden, Dedham, Needham, Lynn, Beverley, Danvers, Roxbury, Bookline, and Monotony itself now thronged the roadsides.
The British were severely harassed in some of the bloodiest fighting of the day as they retreated over the long stretch of more than a mile and a half of Massachusetts.
Avenue from the Rocks to the center of the present Arlington.
Besides firing in the street or from cover, the militia and unattached individuals engaged the Redcoats in hand-to-hand fighting.
In this manner, Dr. Elephant Downer, who had arrived with the Brookline and Roxbury companies, faced up to a British soldier and killed him in a celebrated duel.
The bellicose physician, Quickly discovering he was no match for the regular in the fine points of bayonet play, Deathly reversed his musket.
Using the butt as a club, he then stunned his adversary with a swift blow before finishing him with eight inches of cold steel.
General Percy, riding his white horse, offered a conspicuous target.
He escaped death or injury, but a button was shot from his uniform.
The increasing number of minute men brought such pressure on his rear and flanks that Percy finally halted his column not far from the rocks and turned his two field pieces upon them.
The cannon shot hit no one, but temporarily, at least, scattered his pursuers.
The destructive aspect of real war was now fully present as cannonballs blasted the road, smashed into stone walls and trees, and tore jagged holes through houses.
5 p.m.
Jason Russell, 58, and lame, was one citizen of monotony who believed that an Englishman's house is his castle.
So after taking his wife and children to a place of greater safety, he had returned to his dwelling and prepared for any forays the British might make.
A group of minutemen who ran into a British flanking party got to Russell's doorway just as Earl Percy's column Coming up the road, saw them and fired, forcing them to take shelter in the home.
The unfortunate Russell, with his disabled foot, was the last to reach the door and was struck by two bullets.
As he lay in the doorway, the Redcoats stabbed him with no less than eleven bayonet thrusts.
In the house, the Minutemen, who had no bayonets, were at a great disadvantage, and the Redcoats readily slew all they could reach.
Some men from Beverly and others, eight in number, fled into the cellar, and pointing their muskets up the stairway, threatened instant death to any soldier who should follow.
One venturesome redcoat took a chance and was shot on the stairs.
Another was killed in the fight on the floor above.
After the British had gone, the dead in and about the house were gathered in a single room.
When Mrs. Russell came home, she found her husband and eleven-minute men lying side by side on the floor in a common pool of blood.
They were the largest number of combatants, either American or British, to give up their lives in any one place and at any one time during the course of the day's conflict.
The Jason Russell House commendably saved by the Arlington Historical Society in 1823,
stands today not far from its original location near the corner of Jason Street and
Massachusetts Avenue.
the the
There's not too much more to go.
What happened on April the 19th, 1775, was very similar to what's happening today.
Our founding fathers, our ancestors, if you will, were living under tyranny.
They were English citizens who did not have the rights or the protection of English citizens.
They were treated differently than those who lived in England.
They were taxed unmercifully, and instead of accepting the tax like people do today, they refused to pay it.
There was a document tax.
Every document, every will, Every paper filed, every deed, every transaction, every note, every newspaper printed had to have a tax stamp affixed to it, and the tax had to be paid.
The colonists refused to pay the tax, and whenever the document stamp tax collector would present himself at a door he would be run off.
Some were tarred and feathered.
Some were killed.
Some had their homes burned to the ground.
When the king put a tax on tea that the English in England did not have to pay, and were forbidden to purchase tea from any other source but English ships, They refused to pay the tax and to drink the tea.
So many ships that reach Boston Harbor and other harbors of the colonies loaded with cargoes of tea for the colonies sat there and sat there and sat there full of tea.
They were unable to unload the tea or to sell it.
No one would purchase it.
Anyone who lived in the colonies caught drinking English tea We're punished.
Put into the stocks.
Received social pressure.
Some were outcasts.
On one memorable night, after a meeting at the local Masonic Lodge Hall,
columnists dressed up as Native American Indians went aboard some of the
tea ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea overboard.
One of the major complaints of the colonists was that England took control of their money
and their economy.
Thank you.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason That the colonists eventually went to war with England to create a new nation.
They had their own banks, which coined money.
During the early part of this nation's history, the taler was used, and that's where the word dollar eventually came from.
It was a silver coin, used all over the world in trade.
England put a stop to all of this.
American banks were not allowed to issue money, paper or coin.
And there was a prohibition put up on the use of the tower.
Well, nobody paid any attention to that because nobody knew what coins you had and nobody watched your transactions and there was a big black market.
But large sums of money Any money put into circulation in the colonies had to be borrowed from the Bank of England.
And so the colonies, in order to exist, in order to have an economy at all, had to go deep into debt.
In other words, the Bank of England was doing to the colonists what the Federal Reserve Banks do to us today.
You see, we have a debt-based system today.
No dollar goes into circulation that is not borrowed.
The government does not print money.
The government does not coin money.
The government borrows every single penny that's put into circulation, ladies and gentlemen, and it's borrowed against notes, bonds.
What is borrowed has to be paid back.
And what has to be paid back has to be paid back with interest that was never created or borrowed into circulation in the first place.
It is a method of stealing the sustenance and the property of the nation without paying
for it.
Our ancestors who fought the Revolutionary War against England would not stand for it.
It is a crime.
For many years a central bank was prohibited.
When finally one got a foothold here, and existed for a few years, when its charter ran out, it was cancelled because they learned their lessons.
And then so many years followed between that day and 1913 that Americans forgot all about those lessons, and now we're in the same pickle that they were in then, that they went to war to get us out of.
The tyranny is much worse today, ladies and gentlemen, than it ever was back then.
Everybody in this country has been working since January the first to pay all the taxes
they're going to pay this year.
I And they will not have paid them until sometime after the middle of May.
I believe the date now is May 19th.
May 19th.
Can you imagine that?
If the colonists were alive today, they would have been at war over this a long time ago.
As if that's not enough, there's not even any law ever been passed by anybody that requires us to file and pay these taxes.
The colonists were not fools, ladies and gentlemen.
Apparently, we are.
The initial battles of the war were fought to prevent the British soldiers from seizing the arms and stores and provisions of the colonists that were warehoused at Concord The government is going about taking away our arms and have been doing it for quite some many years now.
And Americans have forgotten the lessons of our past.
Not just our past, but the history of the world.
A disarmed people is an enslaved people, or a dead people.
It's never failed to happen.
In every instance in history where peoples have been disarmed, they have been either enslaved or destroyed as a people.
There are so many laws now that nobody knows what the hell is going on.
People walk around every day breaking laws they don't even know exist.
Even the lawyers can't figure out what the law is now.
And we're supposed to No one will listen to you if you say, I didn't know there was such a law like that.
Who knows it?
They won't listen to you.
appear in court. No one will listen to you if you say, I didn't know there was such a
law like that. Who knows it? They won't listen to you. You're presumed to know the law. But
Have you ever been in a law library and seen the volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes that contain the law?
Most of which is oppressive, despotic and tyrannical.
Have you ever tried to start a small business and survive?
Complying with all the requirements of government It's almost impossible today, ladies and gentlemen, and it's going to get much worse.
Tune in Monday night and we'll finish up our little documentary on Patriots Day.
Don't ever forget this is Patriots Day.
It commemorates the first battle fought in the Revolutionary War.
I should say battles.
Running battles.
Good night.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night, Annie Poon Allison.
I love you.
I am a guy who can't sleep at night I am a guy who can't sleep at night
I am a guy who can't sleep at night Don't forget to visit our website, folks.
Take a good look at the picture there of the four Second Amendment sisters, members of the Arizona militia.
You'll know why Arizona women very seldom have any trouble with their men.
You've been listening to the most dangerous radio host in America, according to William Jefferson Clinton.
And now you know why.
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