Mr. Dana’s Oration, 
 
 LEXINGTON, APRIL 19, 1875. 
 
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 _ RICHARD HENRY DANA, Jon. 
 
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 How mysterious is that touch of Fate which gives immortality to a spot of 
 earth,— toa name! The vital spark falls upon it, and it flashes into immortal 
 life. There were countless passes through the Locrian Mountains whose 
 names have perished. The lot fell upon one of them; and the name of Ther- 
 mopylz is as fresh after two thousand years as at the glory’s height of Greece, 
 and, the world over is, and ever will be, among all races and in all tongues, a 
 watchword for heroic self-devotion, an electric shock to create a soul of 
 patriot valor under the ribs of Death. 
 
 There were thick studded villages over the plains of Belgium unknown to 
 fame, and none less known than Waterloo, whose name on the morning of the 
 18th June, 1815, had not been heard beyond the sound of its village chimes. 
 By the setting sun of that day, it was to stand forever an appeal of pride and 
 glory to one great race, while the mere utterance of its syllables stirs to the 
 very depths the resentment and chagrin of another, so that its place in human 
 speech is a standing menace to the peace of Europe. 
 
 There were many hamlets of New England through which British troops 
 passed and repassed in 1775,— hamlets whose people were no less patriotic 
 and devoted than your own; but the lot of glory fell to Lexington. A few 
 minutes of the dawn of a spring morning, and your name was sealed with 
 the blood of martyrs ; it was to be cherished forever in the affectionate mem- 
 ories of the people of a continent, to be borne on banners above the smoke 
 of battle, inscribed upon the war-ships of a great nation, and proudly carried 
 into every sea, to be adopted in grateful remembrance by hundreds of towns 
 in all parts of this empire; a name which will ever cry, — 
 
 “ Freedom’s battle once begun, 
 Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, 
 Though baffled oft is ever won.” 
 
 But Thermopyle and Waterloo, like many other names, owed their immor- 
 tality to strangers. The three hundred Spartans marched many weary leagues 
 from the centre of Laconia to defend, against the myriads of Asiatic invaders, 
 those defiles for which the natives had no thought of contending. It was the 
 accident that the two vast war-clouds, charged full with Gallic and British 
 
A 
 
 thunders, broke just there, which gave Waterloo what its own nation could — 
 never have given it. It was foreign flint and foreign steel that struck out 
 for it the vital spark. How little have the people of Gettysburg to do with 
 the consecration of its soil! 
 
 It is the felicity of Lexington that she was consecrated to the world’s use 
 _ by the-blood of her own sons. The men who fell on this green, under the 
 shadow of the village church, willing martyrs, were men born and reared here, 
 taught at the village school and from the village pulpit, freeholders of your — 
 own lands, voters in your own town-meetings, organized into the militia of 
 your little community. When they stood in line, when they refused to 
 surrender their arms, when they fell beneath the British volley, it was in 
 sight of mothers, wives, and daughters, and —that cabalistic word to all vil- 
 lagers of New England —of neighbors. It was no chance conflict of foreign 
 or allied armies. It was no work of even friendly and neighboring hands. 
 Sixty or seventy freeholders and voters of Lexington, in their primitive 
 capacity, organized, after the manner of their fathers, into military array, by 
 authority of the town and province, bearing arms by a right they deemed their 
 inalienable birthright, they stood there in obedience to the voice of the people 
 of the town and province, their hearts, consciences, and understandings fully 
 satisfied and fully instructed, determined not to begin war ina state of legal 
 peace, but resolved, if war must come, if in the providence of God it was to 
 begin there, to meet it in their own persons, and, if it was so written, to be the 
 first to shed their blood in the common cause. 
 
 It is one of the proofs of the infinite superiority of spirit over matter, that 
 this immortality of a name is not the accidental dropping of a material force. 
 It is the conscience, the will of man, that clothes with endless life the spot 
 of earth, and forms its syllables into immortal speech. That spot is consecrate 
 to fame or infamy on which the human spirit has done some great act for good 
 or evil. And, of all the good deeds that men may do for their race, there is 
 none that speaks to the heart like voluntary sacrifice. It is not the blood of 
 warriors, but the blood of martyrs, that is the seed of the Church. It is written 
 in the very constitution of human nature, that without the shedding of blood 
 there is no remission of the bonds and penalties which the pride or the lusts 
 of men have laid upon even the most innocent. It is not so much the field of 
 ever so just a battle, as it is the block, the scaffold, the burning fagots, the ~ 
 cross, of voluntary, intelligent sacrifice, which speak most effectively to the 
 heart. Of all the voices that call to men, none so stirs the soul as the voice 
 of the blood of martyrs calling from the ground. And, of-all martyrs, so it is, 
 that, whether always justly or not, it is the first martyrs who are longest 
 known and most widely honored. In the first centuries of the new Faith, 
 there were countless heroes, saints, martyrs, and confessors ; and armies fought 
 in just and necessary self-defence. But the world turns to one name, the first 
 
fr, 
 
 5 
 
 consecrated and longest remembered ; for he was the first martyr. He was a 
 young man of whom we know nothing but that he was one of seven ordained 
 to the lowest order of the ministry in the church at Jerusalem. The chance 
 came to him first ; and, like all such chances, it gave only an opportunity. A 
 word of retraction, a hesitation to testify at the instant, and his name would 
 have died with his natural death. With a brave and willing heart he met the 
 issue; and for eighteen hundred years the until then unknown name of 
 Stephen has been honored by the dedication of thousands of churches and 
 
 chapels over Christendom to his memory ; a day in the Church’s calendar is 
 
 set apart for the study of the lesson of his death ; and at this moment his name 
 is borne as a baptismal designation by no small percentage of the human race. 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, let us never forget that the men of Lexington, on that 
 morning, were martyrs, — intentionally and intelligently martyrs. Let us con- 
 sider this aspect of martyrdom a little more closely. 
 
 That was a strange sight upon which the morning of the roth April broke. 
 Some sixty men of your militia company, minute-men, stood in line, under their 
 officers, on the open village green, equipped, and with their loaded muskets in 
 their hands. A force of British regulars which was twelve times, and was 
 reported to be twenty times, their number, was to pass by. It was a time of 
 legal peace throughout the land. The regulars and the militia were citizens of 
 one empire, and subjects of a common sovereign. Our militia had fought side 
 by side with British regulars against French regulars on many a field, joined 
 in the same cry of battle at Quebec, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Louisburg, 
 and in the West Indies. They had fallen side by side in battle, lain side by 
 side on the beds of hospitals in the malarious Sugar Islands, and been buried 
 in common graves on the frontiers and in the torrid zones. Men of Lexington 
 had so served and fought and died, in no small numbers. The same hand 
 that bore your standard that morning on the village green had borne it through 
 the smoke and din of the assault at Louisburg ; and the same drums that rolled 
 the call at break of that day had beaten their notes of assurance to the British 
 regulars, and of defiance to the French, in more than one encounter. The regu- 
 lars were not enemies yet. They were not unwelcome as transient visitors, and 
 most welcome in a common cause. There stands yet, in Westminster Abbey, 
 the monument this province erected to Lord Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga. 
 
 Were these sixty men there by accident? Were they surprised there by a 
 visit from the regulars? On the contrary, they assembled because the regulars 
 were coming. They dispersed when the alarm was thought false, and came 
 together again as soon as it was known that the troops were close at hand. 
 Were they there to obstruct or resist the march of the British? They threw up 
 no breastworks, however simple. They were not posted behind stone walls or 
 houses, or in the thick woods that flanked the highway. They stood alone, in 
 line, on the open common, a force twelve times their number marching 
 
6 
 
 upon them. They were ordered to surrender their arms and disperse by an | 
 officer who was entitled to disarm and disperse them, under the new order of | 
 things, if they were an armed band unknown to the law. The regulars came 
 out in part to do that very thing, if they met any such organization in arms. ) 
 Our men refused to surrender their arms, and refused to disperse. Must they.) 
 not have expected the result? The volley came, and one-quarter of that little 
 band fell killed or wounded. ‘They fell where they stood, their arms in their 
 hands. They were powerless to resist, but they would not obey. They fell 
 willing victims, martyrs by intention and in act. But what did it mean? 
 Was it an act of foolhardiness? Was it a wilful defying and exasperating of — 
 the soldiers acting under royal orders? Was their death something they — 
 proudly and vainly brought upon themselves? Pardon me, my friends. Par- 
 don me, American, Massachusetts, Lexington men and women, that I put 
 these questions as to men whom a whole people have honored for a full cen- 
 tury, for whom monuments stand, and to whose memory, this day, the thoughts 
 of millions are given in all lands and on all seas. 
 
 We ought not to be surprised if their act should seem to have been what I 
 suggest, to many moderate and fair-minded persons who do not know well 
 the history of those days and the spirit of our people. I would give a few 
 moments now, not to show to you, for you all know it too well, but to place 
 on record for all who may ever need the lesson, the proofs that this act of our 
 ancestors, in some lights so inexplicable, was a wise, well-considered deed of 
 self-sacrifice ; a sad but necessary part of a plan of action which the best 
 understandings and bravest hearts of this province and of the other provinces 
 had devised and recommended, and which, under the blessing of God, was 
 acted out to its letter on this field, in a way that could not have been bettered, 
 which struck right home, touched the deepest chords, gave the surest con- 
 secration to the inevitable war, and has made this day, this spot, and their 
 memory, blessed forever. | 
 
 It is a mistake common among European writers, which in time may affect 
 new generations here, to suppose that the people of Massachusetts in 1775 
 were striking out for new liberties and privileges to which they thought them- 
 selves entitled; that they bravely rose together, and broke the bonds of 
 Oppression, and set themselves free. Not at all! Nothing of the kind! Noth- 
 ing can be more unlike than the American struggle of 1775, and the social 
 and political revolutions attempted on the continent of Europe for liberties 
 the revolutionists do not recognize when they see them, and cannot keep when 
 they have got them. We broke no bonds. We were never bound. We were 
 free born. A homogeneous community, English, with trifling exceptions, 
 taking possession of a new land, the people of Massachusetts had been left 
 for five generations, by what Burke called “the wise neglect ” of Great Britain, 
 to self-government and home rule. We had grown up in home rule, not only 
 
7 
 
 as against Great Britain, but as among ourselves. We called upon Great 
 Britain for no counsel or pecuniary aids, for no assistance in our government, 
 and for no soldiers to garrison our towns or frontier forts. We had never had 
 on our soil an hereditary title or hereditary institutions. We had never had 
 the relation of baron and vassal, landlord and tenant, and no trace or shadow 
 of feudalism lay upon the land. Our small properties were equally distributed ; 
 and no law or custom tended to build up families or privileges or great accu- 
 mulated wealth, but all usages and laws worked directly the other way. We 
 were not theorizers or experimentalists on speculative notions in civil affairs. 
 We did the work in hand in the way we found most convenient at the time, 
 always keeping in view, what all assented to, the substantial political equality of 
 men. We grew up a territorial democracy of ministers, lawyers, doctors, mer- 
 chants, yeomen, traders, mechanics, and seamen, all or nearly all being small 
 proprietors of land. We were educated to the responsibilities, duties, and bur- 
 dens of self-government, and knew that there was no liberty without burdens 
 and sacrifices. The people of the towns exercised many sovereign powers, by 
 the acquiescence of the people of the province, because it was convenient, and 
 found to be safe. No scientific line of division was drawn; but a line was 
 practically settled, as the natural result of conflicting or co-operating necessi- 
 ties, reasons, principles, and conveniences. The people, in their town-meet- 
 ings, provided for public worship, built the churches, called and paid the 
 clergymen, and so exercised ecclesiastical powers. They built the school- 
 houses, appointed and paid the teachers, determined what should be taught, 
 and so exercised educational functions. They organized the town militia, 
 appointed its officers, built the stockade fort, laid out the training-field, pro- 
 vided arms and equipments, and so exercised the military functions of govern- 
 ment. The towns ordered the local police, drew the jurors for the courts, and 
 so took their part in judicial affairs. They sent representatives to the General 
 Court of the Province, and so took part in the highest legislative functions. 
 They assessed at their discretion, and collected taxes for all these purposes, 
 and so exercised sovereign powers over property. But chiefly these town- 
 meetings were parliaments for the free discussion of all questions touching 
 the interests of the people, and organs of popular communication with the 
 legislature and executive. The records of these town-meetings are the wonder 
 and admiration of students of political philosophy everywhere. They were a 
 new thing in the world’s history. It has been said that, if every other record 
 should perish, the true character and full history of the civil struggle from 
 1760 to 1775 could be written from the records of the town-meetings, includ- 
 ing the resolutions adopted, and the instructions sent to their representatives 
 in the General Court. 
 
 In the provincial government, too, we were free. We chose representatives 
 by towns, and the representatives elected the council; and the two formed 
 
8 
 
 the legislature which made all our laws. The judges were appointed and paid 
 by ourselves. We ordered our own militia system, established and regulated 
 
 our judicature ; and persons charged with crimes were tried within the prov- — 
 
 ince, by juries drawn by lot in the towns. We laid and collected our own 
 taxes, and no tax had ever been imposed upon us by imperial power. We 
 held allegiance to the crown, and were parts of the British empire; but we 
 were a self-governing, home-ruling people, loyal, content, well-educated, and 
 industrious, giving no cause of just complaint to the people of England. In 
 short, we had been for five generations the freest, most self-governing people 
 the world had ever known. 
 
 In an evil hour, the pride, jealousy, and greed of the mother country, and 
 quite as much of its trading, manufacturing, and middle classes, as of its 
 nobles and gentry, set its eye upon the Colonies for imperial ‘taxation. We 
 denied the right. Burke would not argue the abstract question of right, 
 which, he said, could only be safely discussed in the schools, but stood on the 
 practical position, that parliament had never taxed the Colonies, that it was a 
 novelty originating ina mere theory of parliamentary omnipotence, was felt 
 
 by the Colonists to be unjust and oppressive, and might be dangerous, and: 
 
 would not pay for itself ; and those, he said, were reasons enough for statesmen. 
 
 The Stamp Act was passed, resisted peacefully but pertinaciously, and repealed. — 
 
 The parliament returned to the charge; and the Tea Tax was passed, resisted 
 
 by solemn leagues and covenants not to import or use, to which nearly all: 
 
 the people became parties. Lexington resolved, in words which few but a 
 New England townsman can fully appreciate, “If any head of a family in 
 
 this town, or any person, shall from this time forward, and until the duty be 
 
 taken off, purchase any tea, or sell and consume any tea in their family, such 
 person shall be looked upon as an enemy to this town and to his country, and 
 shall, by this town, be treated with neglect and contempt.” No anathema, no 
 bull of excommunication, no interdict, could carry such terror to the inhabit- 
 ant of a New England town as these plain words. (Peaceful resistance 
 
 all this —save in the case of two cargoes at Boston, to which water, cold ~ 
 
 and salt, was prematurely and unscientifically applied.) The Boston Port 
 Bill was cruel in itself, highly tyrannical, and a mean appeal to the jealousy 
 of other towns and provinces, in which it failed, to their infinite credit, and 
 only exasperated to the last point of endurance the sensibilities of a brave 
 and generous people. The Restraining Acts restricted our commerce, and 
 sought to banish us from the fisheries. 
 
 But bad as were these well-known measures, and dangerous to peace and 
 liberty, it was not they that aimed the fatal blow at our accustomed rights and 
 liberties, — the blow that must be fatal either to our system of self-government 
 and home rule, or to parliamentary and kingly omnipotence —and placed the 
 two systems face to face in irreconcilable conflict. The acts of 1774, generically 
 
 } 
 
 | 
 
 ! 
 } 
 
2 
 
 known as the Regulation Acts, were radical and revolutionary. They went 
 to the foundations of our public system, and sought to reconstruct it from the 
 base on a theory of kingly and parliamentary omnipotence. 
 
 Let me recall to your attention what these acts were; for although the 
 Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, and Boston Port Bill, and the Restraining Acts, and 
 the Military Act had alarmed and exasperated the people, this monument on 
 this field commemorates resistance to the Reconstruction Acts of 1774. 
 
 The councillors had been chosen by the people, through their representa- 
 tives. By the new law they were to be appointed by the king, and to hold at 
 his pleasure. The superior judges were to hold at the will of the king, and to 
 be dependent upon his will for the amount and payment of their salaries ; and 
 the inferior judges to be removable by the royal governor at his discretion, 
 he himself holding at the king’s will. The sheriffs were to be appointed by 
 the royal governor, and to hold at his will. The juries had been selected by 
 the inhabitants of the towns: they were now to be selected by the new 
 sheriffs, mere creatures of the royal governor. Offenders against the peace, 
 and against the lives and persons of our people, had been tried here by our 
 courts and juries; and in the memorable case of the Soldiers’ Trial for the 
 firing in King’s Street in March, 1770, we had proved ourselves capable of doing 
 justice to our oppressors. By the new act, persons charged with capital crimes, 
 and royal officers, civil or military, charged with offences in the execution of 
 the royal laws or warrants, could be transferred for trial to England, or to some 
 other of the Colonies. But the deepest-reaching provision of the acts was that 
 aimed at the town-meetings. They were no longer to be parliaments of free- 
 men to discuss matters of public interest, to instruct their representatives, and 
 look to the redress of grievances. They were prohibited, except the two 
 annual meetings of March and May, and were then only to elect officers ; 
 and no other meetings could be held unless by the written permission of the 
 royal governor; and no matters could be considered unless specially sanctioned 
 in the permission. 
 
 Am I not right in saying that these acts sought a radical revolution, a 
 fundamental reconstruction of our ancient political system? They sought to 
 change self-government into government by the king, and for home rule to 
 substitute absolute rule at Westminster and St. James’s Palace. They gave 
 the royal governor and his council here powers which the king and his council 
 could not exercise in Great Britain, — powers from which the British nobles 
 and commons had fought out their exemption, and to which they would never 
 submit. The British Annual Register, the best authority of that day on 
 political history, says, that, by this series of acts against the Colonists, “their 
 ancient constitutions were destroyed,’ and they were “deprived of the rights 
 they had ever been taught to revere an “hold sacred.” 
 
 Nor were these acts mere declarations. They were to be enforced, and at 
 
IO 
 
 once, and absolutely. The Military Acts provided for quartering the troops 
 upon the towns. In February, 1775, a resolution of parliament declared 
 Massachusetts in rebellion, and pledged the lives and property of Englishmen 
 to its suppression. This resolution was little short of a declaration of war. 
 The instructions of Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the Colonies, to 
 Gen. Gage, the royal governor, ran thus: “The sovereignty of the king over 
 the Colonies requires a full and absolute submission.” Gage writes to Lord 
 Dartmouth, “ The time for conciliation, moderation, and reasoning is over.... 
 The forces must take the field;” “Civil government is near its end.” He 
 advised that the king send twenty thousand men to Massachusetts, and with 
 these he would undertake to enforce the new system, disarm the Colonists, 
 and arrest the chief traitors, and send them to London for trial. A force of 
 five thousand regulars was gathered at Boston, and more were coming, under 
 distinguished leaders. The Common was occupied, the Neck fortified, and 
 Boston was under martial law. Gen. Gage was authorized to order the troops to 
 fire upon the people. The people by peaceful means and moral coercion, not 
 without intimidation, but without bloodshed, prevented the new system of 
 legislature, jurors, judges, and executive officers, going into effect ; and Gen. 
 Gage attempted to seat the judges and the new officers by the troops. The 
 people refused to serve on the juries, and few, even of the royalists, dared to 
 accept the offices of judge, councillor, or sheriff. The people continued to 
 hold their town-meetings, and organized county-meetings and a Provincial Con- 
 gress, and Gage resolved to disperse them by the bayonets of the regulars. 
 Troops were sent to Salem to disperse a meeting, but they arrived too late. 
 His proclamation forbade the people attending unauthorized meetings, diso- 
 bedience “to be answered at their utmost peril.” By another proclamation, 
 he had ordered the arrest and securing for trial of all who might sign or 
 publish, or invite others to sign, the covenant of non-importation ; and the - 
 troops were to do it. He was ordered, from home, to take possession of every 
 fort, to seize all military stores, arrest and imprison all thought to have com- 
 mitted treason, to repress the rebellion by force, and, generally, to substitute 
 more coercive measures “without waiting for the aid of the civil magistrates.” 
 In short, Massachusetts was placed under martial law, to be enforced by the 
 king’s troops; and all for the purpose of changing radically, by imperial 
 power, the fundamental institutions of the people, in which they had grown 
 up, which they had wisely, safely, and justly administered, and on which their 
 liberties depended. 
 
 We were not the revolutionists. The king and parliament were the revo- 
 lutionists. They were the radical innovators. We were the conservators of 
 existing institutions. They were seeking to overthrow, and reconstruct on a 
 theory of parliamentary omnipotence. We stood upon the defence of what 
 we had founded and built up under their acquiescence, and without which we 
 
EM 
 
 could not be the free and self-governing people we had always been. We 
 
 - broke no chain. We prepared to strike down any hand that might attempt to 
 lay one upon us. There was not one institution, law, or custom, political or 
 social, from the mountain-tops to the sea-shore, that we cared to change. We 
 were then content to go on as parts of the British empire, holding that slack 
 and easy allegiance we had always held, on the old terms of self-government 
 and home rule. It was-not until more than a year after Lexington and Bunker 
 Hill, that, finding the two things hopelessly inconsistent, we declared our 
 dynastic independence, and in that sense and for that purpose only, became 
 revolutionists. 
 
 Against these subversive revolutionary measures, the Colonists prepared to 
 resist by force, for to that they knew it must come. Meetings, caucuses, and 
 congresses of towns, counties, of the province, and of all the provinces, became 
 the order of the day. They were all illegal under the new system, and we 
 held them at our peril. The Provincial Congress collected military stores, 
 called on the towns to organize the town companies, and began to organize 
 “the Army of Massachusetts.” The old militia, recognized by the royal gov- 
 ernor, had disappeared, and the people’s militia was fast forming, still inchoate ; 
 but it was illegal under the new system, and we joined it at our peril. Gage 
 determined to disarm and disperse the new militia, to destroy the military 
 stores, and, in short, as Lord Dartmouth suggested, to effect by the troops “a 
 general disarming of the Colonists.” These declarations began to be put into 
 execution. The troops marched out into the country, to show themselves to 
 the people. A force of eleven hundred visited Jamaica Plain. A body of 
 one hundred was permanently quartered at Marshfield, in the Old Colony. 
 The troops seized our powder at Charlestown, and two field-pieces at Cam- 
 bridge. A few weeks before the 19th of April, a large force was sent to Salem 
 to destroy the military stores collected there ; the militia gathered, the people 
 thronged the way, obstructions were interposed, and the force withdrew with- 
 out bloodshed. The troops cut off supplies intended for us, and we cut off 
 supplies intended for them. Still, so far, there had been no conflict. No 
 irretrievable act had been done. Tudor says, in his Life of Otis, that not- 
 withstanding the political excitement which continued for ten years with 
 hardly an interruption ; notwithstanding the hot zeal of the Sons of Liberty, 
 the bitter opposition of as zealous loyalists, the presence of the military, 
 cases of individual collision with the soldiers, and the seizure of stores, — still, 
 “throughout this whole period of ferment, not a single human life was taken 
 by the inhabitants, either by assassination, popular tumult, or public execu- 
 tion.” | 
 
 The convention of Middlesex resolved as follows: “If in support of our 
 rights we are called to encounter even death, we are yet undaunted, sensible 
 that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws 
 
£2. 
 
 and liberties of his country.” Lexington wrote to Boston, “ We trust in God, 
 that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice 
 our estates and every thing dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the 
 common cause.” Quincy wrote from England, “Our countrymen must seal 
 the cause in their blood.” : : 
 
 The whole atmosphere was charged with war. We drew it in at every 
 breath. There was a stillness of deadly preparation, and a patient awaiting of 
 the falling of the bolt. When the news of the seizure of the stores at Charles- 
 town spread, with a report that there had been firing and loss of lives, twenty 
 thousand men were on their march towards Boston, from all parts of New 
 England, thinking that war had begun. They returned to their homes, when 
 the report was contradicted by authority. The Provincial Congress ordered 
 the citizens to pay their taxes to Mr. Gardner, the agent of the people, and 
 not to the royal collector; and Lexington directed her collectors to obey this 
 order, and the town would secure them harmless. It appointed a day of Fast- 
 ing, Humiliation, and Prayer, a measure of deep significance in those days. 
 The issue was made up. But it was solemnly resolved that we must not pre- 
 cipitate the war,—we must not strike the first blow. We were to endure 
 threats, insults, and demonstrations of violence ; but the British troops must 
 fire the first shot. This was not a formal thing with our ancestors. They 
 were close reasoners, could walk straight on a line of duty, and had almost a 
 superstitious respect for the law. They felt the importance of satisfying the 
 friends of our cause in England, and in the other Colonies, some of which 
 were still uncertain, and it was feared that the people of Massachusetts would 
 outrun their sympathy and support. Accordingly, the Continental Congress 
 recommended the people of this Colony to avoid a collision with the king’s 
 troops, and in all cases to act only on the defensive. This advice was repeated 
 by the Provincial Congress, echoed by the town-meetings, enforced from the 
 pulpits and the press, and we were committed to it before the world. Men 
 of this day are sometimes amused to see, that, immediately after the battle of 
 Lexington, the Colonists took to collecting affidavits to show that the British 
 fired first. But they were better judges than we can now be of what was 
 important at that time. | 
 
 When the British troops marched out this morning, it was not merely to 
 destroy the military stores collected at Concord, but to disarm and disperse 
 any military organizations not recognized by the new laws, and to arrest and 
 commit to prison the leading patriots. If they had come across a town-meet- 
 ing or a congress, held without authority of the royal governor's warrant, they 
 would have entered, and dispersed the meeting by the bayonet; and who will 
 doubt, that, like the Roman senators in their curule chairs and stately robes, 
 our ancestors, in their homespun clothes, and on the plain wooden benches of 
 their office, senators of the town and county, would have yielded up their 
 
13 
 
 lives where they sat, rather than acknowledge the tyrannical command? It 
 mattered little, and no one could predict at all, whether the first blow would 
 fall on the town-meeting, the congress in its session, or the militia company on 
 the training-field. The troops were to destroy our military stores. If we 
 could collect men enough to defend them, we would form round them, and 
 stand our ground ; and, if the troops retired, well: if not, they must fire the 
 first shot. The troops were to disarm and disperse the new militia. If a 
 company was out in martial array for the purpose of defence, they must stand 
 their ground, and retain their arms. If the regulars withdrew, well: if not, 
 the militia must await the first volley. 
 
 Now, what was all this but a call for martyrdom? The first that fell must 
 fallas martyrs. The battle would begin with the shot which took their lives. 
 No call could be made demanding more fortitude, more nerve, than this. 
 Many a man can rush into battle, maddened by the scene, who would find it 
 hard to stand in his line, inactive, to await the volley, if it must come. But 
 our people were thoroughly instructed in their cause. They had studied it, 
 discussed it in the public meeting and through the press, carried it to the 
 Throne of Grace, and tried it by every test they knew. They had made up 
 their minds to the issue, and were prepared to accept its results. When the 
 news came, at night, that the regulars were out, and marching that way, the 
 widow awaked her only son, the young bride summoned her husband, the 
 motherless child her father. “The regulars are out, and something must be 
 done!” Yes, something must be done. That something was to stand on the 
 defensive, and meet death if it came, and then meet war with war. The militia 
 came together on this green in full ranks, with drums beating and colors flying. 
 They acted under the eye and counsel of Adams and Hancock, and of their» 
 own wise, venerated, patriotic pastor. The men separated on the doubt as to 
 the truth of the report, with orders to rally at the drum-beat and the alarm- 
 guns. The first messengers sent down the road had been captured; and the 
 great force was moving steadily on. One scout, more fortunate, escaped, and 
 spread the alarm that the regulars were close at hand. On the beat of drum, 
 some sixty came together on the green. Affecting and heroic as is the nar- 
 rative, its details are too well known for me to delay upon them. They were 
 ordered to load, and stand in line. Strictly in accordance with the command 
 of the congress, Capt. Parker ordered them not to fire unless fired upon, 
 and not to disperse but by his command. This, of course, meant war, if the. 
 king's troops initiated it. Ours was the people’s militia, organized by that body 
 politic into which the people had thrown themselves, and bearing arms in the 
 common defence against the king’s troops, by what they deemed their inalien- 
 able right, the surrender of which was the surrender of their liberty. The 
 Provincial Congress had not yet established a general system suited to 
 extended military operations. The organization had not got much beyond the 
 
. 14 
 town companies of minute-men and the alarm-lists. No one could know, on ~ 
 this sudden call and close-impending crisis, exactly what was best to be done. 
 Each band must act for itself. But had we begun the attack, however suc- 
 cessfully, we should have broken every promise, disappointed every wish, 
 counteracted every plan, shocked the public sense, alienated the doubtful; 
 and the cause would have been thrown back, if not defeated. Whatever might 
 have been wisest, if there were time for deliberation, and heads authorized 
 to plan the work for the whole day, one thing these few men felt was bravest, 
 most becoming the Massachusetts freeman, and most in accordance with the 
 policy of the people ; and that was, to stand their ground, with loaded arms in 
 their hands, as a lawful militia, on their lawful training-field, prepared for what- 
 ever might befall them ; ready, if need be, as Lexington had promised Boston, 
 “to sacrifice life itself in the common cause;” feeling, in the words of the 
 Middlesex Resolves, that “he can never die too soon who lays down his life 
 in support of the laws and liberties of his country.” 
 
 Here let me call your attention aside for one moment. The people of 
 Massachusetts have received no little commendation, in some quarters, from 
 the notion that they were simple, peaceful yeomen and mechanics, unused to 
 war and its works, facing for the first time regular troops of a warlike nation. 
 That praise is not our due, to the extent supposed. True, they had not seen 
 war on their own soil since the last Indian fights, and the younger of the 
 minute-men had not served in actual war at all. But, from the foundation of the 
 Colony to the last European peace, the Colonists had had constant experience 
 in savage and civilized warfare. The Puritans had no scruples about the use of 
 arms. Their pastors sometimes went with them to the field; and the militia, 
 when in array, had their place in the public worship. During the great French 
 war, every fifth man of Massachusetts had been in the service; and a larger 
 proportion of our able-bodied men had been mustered into service during the 
 seven years of that war, than Napoleon had led into the field from the French 
 people at the height of his power ; in fact, the people of Massachusetts had 
 been, up to that time, one of the most martial people on earth. The his- 
 torian Minot tells us, that, in 1757, one-third of the effective men of this 
 Colony were in the field,in some form or other. In the expedition to the 
 West Indies in 1740, Massachusetts sent five hundred men, of whom only 
 fifty returned alive; and, of that force sent out, at least six were men of Lex- 
 ington. Of the four thousand and seventy men at Louisburg, Massachusetts 
 sent three thousand two hundred and fifty. The military records of your 
 town are mostly lost; but Lexington proves in the service, between 1748 and 
 1762, a yearly average of from twenty to twenty-five men. Men of Lexington 
 were with the Massachusetts troops under Wolfe and Howe, Abercrombie 
 and Amherst, at Quebec, Ticonderoga, and Crown Point. Massachusetts, in 
 1775, was full of men who had been under fire, who had held respectable 
 
T5 
 
 commands in the field, and had learned something of strategy and of military 
 engineering. The training-field was as sacred to liberty as the meeting-house; 
 and the old musket hung in the chimney corner as the old family Bible lay 
 upon the table. 
 
 When the events of that day assumed their serious aspect, the British 
 sought to prove that this little band fired first. Not only is this improbable, 
 nay, absurd in itself, and contradicted by all our testimony; but no British 
 officer speaks of more than what he heard and believed at the time. As they 
 neared Lexington, the report came to them, that some five hundred men were 
 under arms; and I am not disinclined to reconcile their testimony with the 
 facts, by the consideration that they heard the roll of our drums, and perhaps 
 saw the flash or heard the report of our signal-guns, intended to call our men 
 together, and thought them a defiance; and perhaps officers in the centre or 
 rear might have thought them hostile shots. But the front knew they had not 
 been fired upon, and saw the short, thin line of sixty men with arms at rest. 
 _ Pitcairn, when he rode up to them, and ordered them to surrender their arms 
 and disperse, knew they had not fired. He was not the man to talk after 
 hostile shots. Pitcairn has had the fate which befalls many men who carry 
 out orders that afterwards prove fatally ill-judged. When he ordered our men 
 to surrender their arms and disperse, he was executing the orders of his com 
 mander-in-chief and of his king. If Britain was in the right, Pitcairn was in 
 the right. Twice they were ordered to surrender their arms and disperse ; 
 and twice they refused to obey, and stood their ground. Then came the fatal 
 fire ; and why not? Gen. Gage had been authorized to use the troops for 
 this very purpose. He was authorized to fire upon the people, if necessary 
 to enforce the new laws, without waiting for the civil magistrate. He had 
 resolved to do so. Had that volley subdued the resistance of Massachusetts, 
 Pitcairn would have been the hero of the drama. Was he to leave a military 
 array behind him, and not attempt to disarm and disband them? If they 
 refused, was he to give it up? I have never thought it just or generous to 
 throw upon the brave, rough soldier, who fell while mounting the breastworks 
 at Bunker Hill, the fault which lay on the king, the parliament, the ministry, 
 and the commander-in-chief. The truth is, the issue was inevitable. The first 
 force of that kind which the king’s troops found in martial array, was to be 
 disarmed and disbanded ; and, if they refused to obey, they were to be fired 
 upon. Both sides knew this, and were prepared for it. It is inconsistent in 
 us, and an unworthy view of this crisis, to treat it as a wanton and ruthless 
 slaughter of unoffending citizens by an armed force. It takes from the event 
 its dignity and historic significance. It was no such accidental and personal 
 matter. It was an affair of state. It was the inevitable collision between 
 organized forces representing two antagonistic systems, each a de facto body 
 politic, claiming authority and demanding obedience, on the same spot at the 
 
16 
 
 same time. If our cause was wrong, and resistance to the new laws unjustifi- 
 able, our popular militia was an unlawful band, and ought to surrender its arms 
 and disperse. If our cause was right, Capt. Parker’s company was a lawful 
 array, and their loaded guns were lawfully in their hands; they had a right to 
 stand in their line, on their training-field, before their homes, and beside their 
 church, ready to shed their blood in the cause, and to fire when fired upon. 
 They were determined neither to attack, nor to fly ; neither to surrender their — 
 arms, nor to fire first; but to fire when fired upon ; all in strict obedience to 
 the line of duty enjoined on them by the Continental Congress, by the votes 
 of the towns, and the counsels of their leaders. The issue was made up just 
 then and just there. If you mean to subjugate and disarm this people, you 
 may begin here and now. Of this issue, in the language of the common law, 
 they put themselves upon the country. The British did the like. The trial of 
 that issue, in the presence of the world, began with the first volley on Lexing- 
 ton Green, and lasted six years. The battle of the 19th April began on this 
 spot, and ended at Charlestown Neck. The war of the Revolution began at 
 Lexington, and ended at Yorktown. | 
 
 Have I not demonstrated what I undertook to show ?— that not we, but the 
 British king and parliament, were the revolutionists, the innovators, the 1adical 
 subverters of institutions ; that we were the conservators of time-honored, 
 dearly-loved institutions of self-government and home rule; and that, on that 
 morning, on this spot, your townsmen were intentionally, intelligently, the 
 first martyrs, yet martyrs in war; and that on this field war began. When- 
 ever the king’s troops, to enforce the new system, met the people’s troops, 
 organized and armed to resist its enforcement, and fired upon them, each 
 in martial array, the war began. The commencement of a war is unilateral. 
 One party can initiate it. It requires no formal announcements or ceremonies. 
 Here both parties stood ready for war. Our soldiers loaded their guns, by 
 military command, to fire if fired upon; and the war began with the volley 
 and the falling of the dead and wounded. It may not be of much account 
 in any political or strategic sense, but it is a satisfaction to our pride in our 
 ancestors, to know, that rashly it may be, uselessly perhaps, but bravely 
 beyond doubt, the moment the British fire authorized us to use the guns 
 we had loaded for the purpose, and met the condition in Capt. Parker’s order, 
 “unless fired upon,” the fire was returned by men still standing in their 
 line, in their martial array ; and that the line was not abandoned until they 
 were ordered to disperse by their captain, who saw that the regulars were 
 hastening up, on both flanks, to surround and capture them ; and that, when 
 the survivors withdrew, they took their arms with them. It is not of much 
 account, that a regular of the Tenth Regiment, and another, were wounded, 
 and that the horse of the commander was grazed by two balls ; but it is a sat- 
 isfaction to know, that here in Lexington was not only the first hostile volley 
 
17 
 
 fired by British troops at provincial troops, but the first shots fired back by 
 our troops at theirs. You recall with pride too, that, no sooner had the regu- 
 lars resumed their march, than your minute-men rallied, took six prisoners who 
 had straggled from the line ; joined in the pursuit of the British from the Lin- 
 coln and Concord line to Charlestown Neck ; and that in that pursuit three 
 more men of Lexington laid down their lives, of whom one had been wounded 
 on the green in the morning. You read with ever renewed satisfaction, that on 
 the rolls of that day Lexington stands first: ten of her townsmen killed,— 
 seven in the morning on the green, and three in the afternoon in the pursuit, 
 —and first in the list of wounded, nine; nineteen in all, from your small 
 population, who suffered death or wounds in the common cause. The pecu- 
 niary loss of Lexington that day in houses and other property destroyed, 
 nearly two thousand pounds sterling, bore a large proportion to the whole pro- 
 perty of the town. Well did she redeem her modest promise to Boston , “ We 
 trust in God. . . ., we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates, and every thing 
 dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause.” Well did she 
 prove her faith that “he can never die too soon who lays down his life in sup- 
 port of the laws and liberties of his country.” Vain was the British cheer, 
 and their volley of triumph. fired into the air! It was the soldier’s farewell 
 shot, over the buried monarchy of England! 
 
 The news of Lexington spread with a rapidity almost preternatural. At 
 noon that day, a courier rode into Worcester, his jaded horse falling exhausted 
 at the meeting-house steps, and proclaimed the tragedy at Lexington; and the 
 minute-men, after prayer from their pastor, set out on their march for Cam- 
 bridge. Lincoln, Concord, and Acton heard the news at once, an hour or 
 more before the regulars reached the centre of Concord; and when, some 
 four hours later, Major Buttrick, and Capt. Isaac Davis and his men of Acton, 
 led the column of attack upon the British outpost at the bridge over Concord 
 River, they marched under a neworder of things. The spell had been broken. 
 War was begun. There were no questions left then but of strategy, courage, 
 and prudence. 
 
 I will not lead you through the familiar details of the rest of that day, — the 
 singular insensibility of the British commander to the perils gathering about 
 him, lingering two hours in Concord after the affair at the North Bridge, think- 
 ing, because the main body was not molested, and the daring affair at the bridge 
 was not followed up, nothing more would be done; the militia pouring in from 
 all sides, showing themselves on the hills, and along the by-roads ; the British 
 fire and our reply near the Lincoln line; the intermittent attack and defence 
 of the next two hours; the hurried march, turning almost into flight, along 
 the highways; the salvation of the party by the arrival of Lord Percy; the 
 violences and outrages by the humiliated, distracted, desperate soldiery; the 
 flank attacks of the militia as they came in from more distant towns ; and, at 
 
18 
 
 last, the bare escape of the survivors of the expedition, as they crossed the 
 Neck at Charlestown, at sunset, and came under the protection of the fire of 
 their batteries and ships of war. Great, indeed, was the change between day- 
 break and sunset of that day. At daybreak, there was a state of legal peace. 
 At sunset, the siege of Boston had begun. No British soldier set foot beyond 
 the two peninsulas after that night. Patriotic citizens from New Hampshire, 
 Rhode Island, and Connecticut were on ‘their march by noon of the 2oth. 
 One force from New Hampshire marched fifty-five miles in twenty hours, and 
 mustered on Cambridge Common at sunrise of the 21st. Putnam rode one hun- 
 dred miles in eighteen hours, and reached Cambridge early on the 21st. Green 
 from Rhode Island was at Cambridge, and Stark and his force from New 
 Hampshire at Chelsea, on the 22d. As the news spread to the middle and 
 southern Colonies, they accepted it as war, and mustered in arms. But these 
 subsequent events are to have their appropriate celebrations. We will not 
 anticipate them. We are here to-day to commemorate first what was done at 
 Lexington, and the heroic conduct of her sons. This is due to her and to them. 
 But we are here, also, to remember the dead of that day, from other towns, who 
 laid down their lives in the common cause; the seven killed of Danvers, the 
 six of Cambridge, the five of Needham, the four of Lynn, the three of Acton, 
 the two each of Sudbury, Woburn, Medford, and Charlestown, and the one 
 each of Bedford, Watertown, Dedham, Brookline, Salem, and Beverly ; and the 
 wounded of all those towns, and of Concord, Framingham, Stowe, Billerica, 
 Newton, and Chelmsford. We are here to join heartily in sympathy with 
 those thousands who, at this hour, are commemorating at Concord the 
 momentous work done within her limits, the second scene in the drama of this 
 day so heroically enacted at the North Bridge. This is the dawn of seven years 
 of centennial commemorations all over the soil of the old thirteen States, to be 
 joined in by the people of this vast empire, of all kindreds and races and 
 tongues, from Canada to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,—a sight the 
 like of which the world has never seen; and scarce a tongue in any part of 
 the civilized world utters a doubt of the justice of our cause. 
 
 Men, women, children of Lexington, the curtain of the great drama rose 
 here, to be acted out to the last scene at Yorktown. It began with the first 
 fire of British troops in martial array on American troops in martial array, 
 and did not end until the last British soldier left the soil of the new Republic, 
 and our independence was recognized. At the close of the last century, you 
 erected your first monument on this spot. Lafayette, who saw the surrender 
 at Yorktown, came, in September, 1824, to see the spot where began the con- 
 test in which he took so noble and disinterested a part, and clasped hands with 
 fourteen of the surviving heroes of the day. In 1835 you re-interred your 
 heroic dead under your simple monument, consecrated by the eloquence of 
 Everett. In 1852 Louis Kossuth, an exile from the banks of the Danube, 
 
ieee , 
 | 19 
 
 (after the disastrous war for the independence of Hungary, made a pilgrimage 
 Ito this place, to pay his devotions “to the birthplace of American liberty,” 
 ‘and said of your patriot dead, in words you must never let die, as true as they — 
 ‘are eloquent: “It is their sacrificed blood in which is written the preface of 
 your nation’s history. Their death was and ever will be the first bloody reve- 
 lation of America’s destiny, and Lexington the opening scene of a revolution 
 ‘that is destined to change the character of human governments, and the con- 
 dition of the human race.” 
 
 God grant, that, if a day of peril shall come, the people of this Republic, so 
 favored, so numerous, so prosperous, so rich, so educated, so triumphant, may 
 meet it—and we can ask no more—with as much of intelligence, self- 
 control, self-devotion, and fortitude as did the men of this place, in their 
 
 fewness, simplicity, and poverty, one hundred years ago! 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
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