"The war of Revolution began at Lexington, to end at Yorktown. Its first battle was on the Nineteenth of April. Hancock and Adams lodged at Lexington with the minister. In the raw morning, a little after daybreak, a tall man, with a large forehead under a three-cornered hat, drew up his company of 70 men on the Green,— farmers and mechanics like himself; only one is left now (1851), the boy who played the men to the spot. (It was Jonathan Harrington the fifer.) They wheeled into line to wait for the Regulars. The captain ordered every man to load his piece with powder and ball. 'Don't fire,' were his words, unless fired upon; but if they want a war, let it begin here.' The Regulars came on. Some Americans offered to run away from their post. Captain Parker said, 'I will order the first man shot dead that leaves his place.' The English commander cried out, Disperse, you rebels! lay down your arms and disperse!' Not a man stirred. 'Disperse, you damned rebels!' shouted he again. Not a man stirred. He ordered the vanguard to fire; they did so, but over the heads of our fathers. Then the whole main body levelled their pieces, and there was need of ten new graves in Lexington. A few Americans returned the shot. British blood stained the early grass which waved in the wind. Disperse and take care of yourselves!' was the captain's last command. There lay the dead, and there stood the soldiers; there was a battle-field between England and America-never to be forgot, never to be covered over. The 'Mother-country' of the morning was the enemy' at sunrise. Oh, what a glorious morning is this!' said Samuel Adams."

Seven men had been killed on the spot,

nine wounded,—a quarter-part of all who had stood in arms on the Green, under the eyes of Hancock and Adams.

One of the Lexington Munroes, Ensign Robert, was the first man killed by Pitcairn's volley; he was sixty-four years old, and had been color-bearer in the capture of Louisburg by assault in 1745. Two of his sons and two sons-in-law were in his company on Lexington Green, and eleven of the Munroe clan were in arms that day. Captain Parker did not long survive the battle, dying the next September; but when the Civil War came on, his grandson Theodore had bequeathed to Massachusetts, and Governer Andrew had placed in her Senate Chamber, beside the trophies sent by Stark from Bennington,

"two fire-arms, formerly the property of my honored grandfather, to wit, the large musket or King's arm, which was by him captured from the British in the battle of Lexington, and which is the first fire-arm taken from the enemy in the war for Independence; and also the smaller musket used by him in that battle."

Theodore Parker had died in May, 1860.

Pitcairn and his redcoats, delayed only half an hour by this bloody overture to Washington's grand career, marched on towards Con

cord, little knowing what would meet them there. As they climbed the hills in Lexington and Lincoln, they could surmise, however, that the country was rising, for the churchbells were ringing an alarm of fire. Pierpont,

MUSKETS OF CAPTAIN JOHN PARKER.

at Acton, overlooking the neighboring towns named by him, gave the geography of this rising in spirited couplets:

"Now Concord's bell, resounding many a mile,

Is heard by Lincoln, Lincoln's by Carlisle,

Carlisle's by Chelmsford,-and from Chelmsford's swell
Peals the loud clangor of th' alarum bell,

Till it o'er Bedford, Acton, Westford spreads,
Startling the morning dreamers from their beds."

These are the small towns lying along the Concord and Merrimac rivers, and their tributaries, which sent forth the minute-men to fight at Concord Bridge.

Prescott had done his warning work well; and as Emerson said in 1835:

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In these peaceful fields, for the first time since a hundred years (King Philip's War), the drum and alarm-gun were heard, and the farmers snatched down their rusty firelocks from the kitchen walls, to make good the resolute words of their town debates. These poor farmers acted from the simplest instincts; they did not know it was a deed of fame they were doing."

It was Emerson's grandfather, the town minister, who met them on Concord Green, before his church, and who entered that night in his almanac the events he had witnessed, as soon to be quoted.

By the 17th of June, Massachusetts had an army; but when the Concord farmers made their appeal to arms, two months earlier, it was the spontaneous uprising of an armed people to maintain their own votes and defend their threatened homes. This it is, and not their military achievement, striking as that was, which gives their town a place in martial history. The unregenerate imagination of man