f the home Parliament. Up to this moment the
controversy over colonial rights and privileges had been confined,
from the days of the Stamp Act, to argument, protest, petition, and
legislative proceedings; but these failing to convince or conciliate
either party, it only remained for Great Britain to exercise her
authority in the case with force.

The expedition in question had been organized for the purpose of
seizing the military stores belonging to the Massachusetts Colony,
then collected at Concord, and which the king's authorities regarded
as too dangerous material to be in the hands of the people at that
stage of the crisis. The provincials, on the other hand, watched them
jealously. King and Parliament might question their rights, block up
their port, ruin their trade, proscribe their leaders, and they could
bear all without offering open resistance. But the attempt to deprive
them of the means of self-defence at a time when the current of
affairs clearly indicated that, sooner or later, they would be
compelled to defend themselves, was an act to which they would not
submit, as already they had shown on more than one occasion. To no
other right did the colonist cling more tenaciously at this juncture
than to his right to his powder. The men at Lexington, therefore, drew
up on their village grounds, not defiantly, but in obedience to the
most natural impulse. Their position was a logical one. To have
remained quietly in their homes would have been a stultification of
their whole record from the beginning of the troubles; stand they
must, some time and somewhere. Under the circumstances, a collision
between the king's troops and the provincials that morning was
inevitable. The commander of the former, charged with orders to
disperse all "rebels," made the sharp demand upon the Lexington
company instantly to lay down their arms. A moment's confusion and
delay--then scattering shots--then a full volley from the
regulars--and ten men fell dead and wounded upon the green. Here was a
shock, the ultimate consequences of which few of the participants in
the scene could have forecast; but it was the alarm-gun of the
Revolution.

Events followed rapidly. The march of the British to Concord, the
destruction of the stores, the skirmish at the bridge, and, later in
the day, the famous road-fight kept up by the farmers down to
Charlestown, ending in the signal demoralization and defeat of the
expedition, combined with the Lex