April 19, 1775, marks the first major battles of the American Revolution remembered by America250.
On that date, British Army troops marched from Boston toward Concord, Massachusetts, intending to seize colonial military supplies. Patriot militia confronted the British at Lexington, where the opening clash took place, and fighting continued at Concord and along the retreat toward Boston.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord are widely described as the first major military actions between British forces and Patriot militias. They followed years of political tension over taxation, imperial authority, and colonial self-government. The fighting transformed the dispute into an open war.
The date is sometimes associated with the phrase “the shot heard round the world,” especially because Ralph Waldo Emerson later used that phrase in his 1837 poem “Concord Hymn.” The battles were not the end of the conflict: the Declaration came in 1776, the decisive surrender at Yorktown occurred in 1781, and the Treaty of Paris formally ended the war in 1783.