'We trust in God': 77 Lexington Minutemen, clinging to guns and religion, confronted 750 Brits 250 years ago
Revolution 250th: Lexington militia, united by credo of faith, stood up against overwhelming force at 'American Thermopylae'
The American Revolution exploded 250 years ago this month with the Battles of Lexington & Concord on April 19, 1775.
It proved a cataclysmic event in global history - the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” as Oliver Wendell Holmes later called it.
The story is even more heroic than most realize. Faith in God made it possible.
Most Americans should know the basics. Massachusetts militia, stirred by warning riders, met British troops as they marched west from Boston in search of weapons and leaders of a simmering rebellion. The heroic Minutemen overwhelmed the redcoats and chased them all the way back to Boston in a revolutionary display of resolve by armed civilians.
The real story of the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” begins with an unfathomable display of bravery by an outnumbered civilian militia.
More than 750 British regulars marched west out of Boston early that morning. They were well armed, highly trained professional killers. Lethal enforcers of the most powerful empire in the world.
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When they emerged out of the wooded road onto the open field of Lexington Common, the 750 King’s killers were confronted by a band of 77 American civilians.
Yes, just 77 Minutemen stood against 750 British redcoats. It’s the American Thermopylae - the passage where 300 Spartans in ancient times stood in the way of an overwhelming force of Persian warriors.
The men of the Lexington Training Band, as the militia called itself, were civilians. Farmers, blacksmiths, wagon makers. Most were related. Jonas Parker, shot and put to death by British bayonet as he lay on the ground, was a cousin of militia leader Captain John Parker.
Most were devout Christians. Most American were. Brits ridiculed colonial troops as “Yankee psalm-singers,” historian David McCullough wrote in his epic history “1776.”
Kinda like presidential candidate Barack Obama ridiculed Americans who “cling to guns or religion” on the campaign trail in 2008.
They picked the wrong people to mock.
Americans were also the most literate people in the world in the late 1700s. "Principally because we were great Bible readers,” Bill Poole, former president of the Lexington Historical Society, told Thug Adams in an interview for another publication last year.
They had faith, which gave them knowledge. And that faith and that knowledge gave them balls bigger than hot-air balloons.
The scope of faith had a direct impact on the giganticness of gonads on display that day.
"Throw down your arms! Ye villains, ye rebels," a British officer ahead of the 750 redcoats reportedly ordered the 77 American civilians.
Captain Parker, leading the group on the short end of the 10 to 1 odds, didn’t f’in waver for a second.
"Stand your ground, do not fire unless fired upon," Parker told his men. "If they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
It was and remains an act if unbelievable defiance. Unbelievable bravery. It was made possible by a force no threat of any size can defeat: faith.
‘If they mean to have a war, let it begin here’ - Capt. John Parker to the Lexington 77
The Lexington Minutemen were bound to each other in that moment of truth only by faith in God and duty to their friends, family and community.
They were bound by the Lexington Training Band credo. It read:
"We trust in God that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea and life itself, in support of the common cause."
“Trust in God” gave them the spirit to risk their lives for the greater good.
They were, of course, routed by the superior force. The redcoats marched further west toward Concord. But the Lexington 77 held up the Brits just long enough.
By the time they reached Concord, a force of 2,000 Minutemen from towns around the region had gathered to meet them.
Captain Parker, in the meantime, rallied his survivors, calmed their nerves and set up an ambush to meet the Brits on their march back to Boston.
"Some wore bandages stiffened from the blood of wounds they had suffered in the morning, and they were anxious to revenge themselves and their dead neighbors," American Battlefield Trust wrote of the Lexington militia.T
The British were turned back by the superior force of Minutemen in Concord. They walked right into Parker’s shooting gallery, with the remaining Lexington 77 camouflaged in hidden spots on the side of the road.
The Minutemen chased the shell-shocked redcoats all the way back to Boston, attacking them entire time.
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Nearly 100 Americans were killed or wounded that day. The British suffered 300 casualties - about 40% of the force that marched menacingly onto Lexington Common.
The Brits ran into a force too powerful to overcome: The Lexington 77.
Americans who refused to yield against overwhelming odds, who clung to their guns and religion and made the world a better place on that “Glorious Morning for America.”
