Patriots Day. Marking April 19, 1775. When Americans took up arms against their king, and bled, at the crack of terrible dawn.
— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) April 19, 2026
It's a holiday in Massachusetts and Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. Should be a national holiday.
July 4 marks the day they published a… pic.twitter.com/K39h8fwSTZ
...July 4 marks the day they published a piece of paper, telling the king to shove it. Important. Up until then it was a civil war. Americans who considered themselves Englishmen fighting British troops. After that, it was Americans fighting the British for their independence.
Patriots Day is first blood.
I took my boy to Lexington for the re-enactment when he was just six. We arrived well before dawn, to get a place right on the Green. Right by the stone that marks the place where Capt. Parker's line was. With his reported order etched in it, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
Which is where it did.
There was a light rain, and my boy pressed himself against my legs for shelter and warmth. A woolen horse blanket over our heads against the rain.
Around 5 am he said, "Daddy, my feet are cold."
I said, "Stamp your feet." So he did.
Only complaint out of him. Brave boy.
Just before dawn, we heard the fifes and drums coming up Massachusetts Avenue. The same road the British took on their 20-mile march from Boston to Concord to seize a cache of American guns and munitions.
Why we have 2A. The British could see where things were going, and were actively trying to disarm the Americans. In New England, close to Canada, they were heavily armed. Nearly every able-bodied man had a musket and was in the militia. White and black.
My boy and I heard the crash of boots. Loud. I felt him shudder against my legs.
Then the British re-enactors rushed onto the Green, shouting.
Both sides in their reports after the fact agreed, no one knows who fired the first shot. Was it an accidental discharge, a provocateur trying to get things going? No one knows.
Both sides erupted in fire. A cacophony of flints sparking powder in the pan, then the discharge. A violent discordant atonal symphony, up and down the line. Clouds of white gunsmoke, with streaks of fire cutting through. The British troops in red uniforms and black leather helmets pushing forward, bayoneting the militia in their broadcloth farmers' work clothes. Officers trying to bring it to a stop.
The British had fired without orders. Royal Marines Maj. John Pitcairn, who had been tapped to lead an Army vanguard, did not want this. He was a man respected and liked by the Americans who knew him. Killed later at Bunker Hill, buried in the Old North Church. The British troops by now hated the Jonathans, as they called the New Englanders, who never missed an opportunity to mock them.
The troops finally brought to heel, they marched the five miles on to Concord. Leaving the American dead and wounded on Lexington Green behind them. The first Americans to take up arms for their freedom.
My boy is grown. He's one of them now. An American soldier. Ranger tab, jumps out of airplanes. For you.
He told me years later, he knew what he was going to do from age 5. 9/11. We always spoke to the kids in age appropriate ways about what was happening in the world. He knew. He was the one, flipping channels from Sesame Street to Nickelodeon before kindergarten, who saw the Twin Towers spewing smoke and went to tell his mother.
When he was seven, when I was back from Iraq, tucking him in, he said, "Dad. When I grow up, if I'm not killed in battle, I want to be a major league baseball player."
So we still make them like that, those farmers who lined up at Lexington Green.
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