By David Harmer, National Director
Few of us have earned the freedoms we enjoy; we’ve received them by bequest, as gifts of grace. Memorial Day invites us to remember who gave us those gifts: those who, from the American Revolution to the present day, sacrificed their lives in our nation’s armed services.
It is they who secured America’s independence. And it is they who’ve maintained it ever since. Indeed, the freedoms we celebrate on Independence Day are ours only because of the sacrifices we commemorate on Memorial Day.
For all the brilliance and courage of the Founding Fathers, declaring independence was the easy part. Obtaining it was another matter entirely.
The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4. John Adams prophesied that the occasion would be commemorated annually thereafter “as the great anniversary Festival . . . with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.” Although slightly mistaken as to the date (he thought we’d celebrate the Second of July, rather than the Fourth), Adams proved prescient regarding the rest, from America’s terrestrial expanse to our affinity for fireworks.
Next summer we’ll celebrate America’s semiquincentennial—the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Of course that merits celebration. But declaring independence took elected representatives a few weeks of debate (and Thomas Jefferson’s fluent pen). Obtaining independence required the long-suffering soldiers of the militias and the Continental Army to put their lives on the line for the eight long, arduous years of the Revolutionary War. In fact, their sacrifices both preceded and followed the Declaration, prompting it as well as effectuating it.
On April 14, 1775, General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America and military governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, received orders from the British Secretary of State, the Earl of Dartmouth, to destroy the colonists’ military supplies. (Thanks to intelligence sources in London and Boston, the patriots knew of Dartmouth’s directive before Gage did.) On April 18, Gage ordered Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to lead a force to Concord to destroy all military stores there.
Joseph Warren told Paul Revere and William Dawes that British troops would leave Boston that night by boat, land in Cambridge, march to Lexington and Concord, and arrest John Adams and John Hancock, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Dawes went south by horseback across Boston Neck; Revere went north, rowing across the Charles River. Both reached and warned Hancock and Adams; both alerted townspeople along the way. Revere was captured before reaching Concord, but Samuel Prescott completed the ride.
On April 19, at 2:00am, British soldiers, having crossed the water, began their 17-mile march. At sunrise, they reached Lexington, where 80 militia, expecting them, had assembled on the village green. Militia Captain John Parker wasn’t picking a fight; his outnumbered men stood in parade formation, not on the road blocking the march, not in hiding where they could take potshots. Who fired the first shot remains unknown; neither commander ordered it. A brief but savage melee left eight American militiamen killed, one redcoat wounded.
The column continued to Concord, where it divided into several groups to search for supplies. At Concord’s North Bridge, 400 militia blocked 100 redcoats. The redcoats requested, and received, reinforcements. As in Lexington, who fired the first shot remains unknown.
Shortly after the shooting began, so did the British retreat. Ultimately 4,000 colonial militiamen from the Massachusetts countryside—defending their homes, their freedoms, and their own elected government—routed 1,700 British regulars, forcing them to flee from Concord to Charlestown in ignominious retreat. Loosely organized farmers and tradesmen, who supplied their own weapons and elected their own officers, defeated the professional soldiers of the King’s well-equipped army. By the next morning, 15,000 militia surrounded the British, and the siege of Boston had begun. Less than a year later, the British abandoned Boston, never to occupy it again.
The battles of Lexington and Concord marked the start of the Revolutionary War. Through all the battles that followed – Bunker Hill, Long Island, Harlem Heights, Fort Washington, Fort Lee, Trenton, Princeton, Ticonderoga, Stanwix, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, Monmouth, Savannah, Charleston, Camden, Yorktown—through defeat and retreat, ordeal and ultimate triumph, that spirit persisted. It has persisted over the generations since, in wars at home and abroad. It persists even now.
This Memorial Day, may we demonstrate gratitude for those who, in bearing the battles on our behalf, foreclosed their futures and left loved ones behind; who protected our land, our fellow citizens, our interests, and our ideals; who defended the defenseless and liberated the oppressed; who not only defeated our adversaries, but more often than not converted them into allies. Their illustrious legacy is the liberty, security, and prosperity of the United States of America, and of the entire free world.
As heirs of the American experiment, may we prove faithful stewards of the freedoms they gave their all to preserve and defend.
