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Lexington and Concord
“Now the war has begun and no one knows when it will end,” said one minuteman after the fight.
Editor's Note: Rick Atkinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and winner of the prestigious George Washington Book Prize for The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1
This special issue looks at the dramatic and momentous events that occurred 250 years ago this month.
Given the importance of April 19, 1775 in our nation’s history, the editors of American Heritage have produced a special issue dedicated to the events of that day.
Overshadowed in memory by Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts town of Menotomy saw the most violent and deadly fighting on April 19, 1775.
Editor's Note: Michael Ruderman is an author who frequently lectures on New England history to community groups and historical societies. He earned a degree in history at Harvard College.
What began as a civil war within the British Empire continued until it became a wider conflict affecting peoples and countries across Europe and North America.
Editor’s Note: One of the leading historians of the American Revolution and Founding era, John Ferling is a professor emeritus at the University of West Georgia and the author of two dozen books.
Previously unknown, a map drawn by Lord Percy, the British commander at Lexington, sheds new light on the perilous retreat to Boston 250 years ago this month.
The Percy map is the first record of the first battle of the American Revolution, sketched within hours of the deadly return from Lexington.
A team from American Heritage helped document some of the most important maps of the Revolution — still stored in the medieval English castle where scenes from Harry Potter were later filmed.
America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.
On April 22, 1775, three days after a British column marched out of Boston and clashed with militiamen at Lexington and Concord, the news—and the cry of Revolution!—reached Danbury, Connecticut, where 18-year-old Stephen Maples Jarvis was working on the family farm.
The Battle of Bunker Hill
Early on the morning of June 17, Gen. Thomas Gage, governor of Massachusetts and commander in chief of British forces in North America, awoke in his Boston home to learn of a serious new threat.
Sixth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
The first and most unusual battle of the American Revution began in earnest when the seven hundred British regulars under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith left Concord and started back for Boston on the afternoon of April 19, 1775.
On a new bridge that arched the flood Their toes by April freezes curled, There the embattled committee stood, Beset, it seemed, by half the world.
Captain John Parker’s company of minutemen stood in formation, some seventy strong, waiting on Lexington Green in the dim light of early dawn. They had gathered during the night in response to Paul Revere’s warning that the British were coming.
What was it like to actually be there in April, 1775?
This is how the participants, American and British, remembered it
Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington
Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington
Participants describe the opening of the American Revolution
Participants describe the opening of the American Revolution
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