USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Concord > Historic Concord, a handbook of its story and its memorials > Part 5
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Hosmer put the companies in line, the minute-men on the right, the militia on the left. Barrett, who had been very busy all the morning on horseback, was now on the ground, with Buttrick and the selectmen. It used to be said that the men were ordered to discard all doubtful gunflints,' to make sure of an effective fire. This tale was proved true only a few years ago,
I A gunflint (the flint of a flintlock, used to strike fire, the only method of those days) was square, entirely different from an Indian arrowhead. Flint of this quality is not native stone.
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when nearly a hundred gunflints were found in the field, an unusual number that can only have come from the one cause.
As the men looked in the direction of the town, they saw smoke rising from it in new and greater quanti- ties. It looked as if the town were on fire. And Hos- mer, alarmed and indignant, went at once to the group of older men. Breaking into their consultation, he pointed to the smoke and asked the question, now historic,
'Will you let them burn the town down?'
The decision was immediate: to march into the town, or die in its defense. Colonel Barrett gave the order for the troops to march. But on no account were they to fire first.
The two British companies on the hillsides below saw that the provincials were too strong for them, and marched back to join the third one at the bridge. Lieutenant Sutherland, whom we have seen near Lexington, had come with the British as a volunteer. Impatient for something to happen, he was just start- ing for the Barrett farm; but thinking that 'it would be disgracefull to be taken by such Rascals,' he too went to the bridge. Here Laurie waited long enough to perceive that his own position was not safe. There- fore he marched his three companies across the bridge; then strangely, quite forgetful of Parsons two miles away, he ordered men out upon the bridge to take up the planks. Sutherland, eager to be of use, undertook to supervise the work.
On roads since gone the Americans marched down the hill, then, turning a corner, marched directly at the bridge. Buttrick was leading, and by his side, as aide, marched Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson of West- ford. First in line behind them came the Acton com-
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pany, whose captain, Isaac Davis, had said as he ac- cepted the post, 'I haven't a man that's afraid to go.' The Concord minute-man companies followed, and then the remaining minute-men and militia, even down to the Concord alarm company of old men and half-grown boys. They marched two-and-two, per- haps four hundred in all, and their fifes played the stirring tune of the 'White Cockade.'
As they approached the bridge, Buttrick shouted to the soldiers taking up the planks, ordering them to 'desist.' They quitted the spot just as Laurie, to make his fire more effective, ordered men into the fields to right and left of the bridge, ready to fire on the advancing Americans. Only one officer obeyed the order: Sutherland, who took two men with him into the Manse field.
Above and behind him, the minister, Emerson, stood at the height of his own land, anxiously watching everything that happened.
In warning, next, the British fired a few shots into the river, and then another directly at the Americans. The ball passed under Robinson's arm and wounded an Acton and a Concord man. The Americans marched steadily on. Buttrick cannot have been far from the bridge, with the Acton men close behind, when the front ranks of the regulars fired their volley. It killed the Acton captain and one of his men, and wounded others in the ranks. One man, cut by a bul- let, cried out that the British were firing jackknives.
Buttrick, leaping into the air as he turned to his men, shouted, 'Fire, fellow-soldiers, for God's sake, fire!' The word was passed; the front ranks fired; and men behind them broke from the ranks to fire at the British. Then all surged forward to take the bridge.
Colonel Barrett's
The Americans
North Bridge
British
Merian's Corner
Grenadiers-
Mill Brook
Lee's Hill .[Nashawtuc]
Modern Road
Mill fail Jones' Tavern#~ 8
出金
3
- To South Bridge
Mill Pond
多 5
2
EXPLANATION
I Meeting House 2 Court House
3 Dr. Minot
4 Wright Tavern 5 Reuben Brown
6 Burying Ground
To Sudbury
To Waltham->
Mill Brook
Route of the Grenadiers
To Meriam's Corner One quarter mile and Lexington Five miles.
Map of Concord Fight
Minute Men from the Bridge
Meriam
Light Infantry
Emerson [The Manse]
Elisha Jones
To Lexington->
F Ciberty Pote
Route of the Light Infantry
MCIL from Reading
ern Road
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Historic Concord
A few more British shots may have been fired, but in haste, and harmless. And the regulars broke. Four of their officers, out of eight, were wounded, among them Sutherland in the field. A sergeant was hit; two men were killed; another was mortally wounded, and several were hurt. The remainder (there were but a hundred and twenty men at most) saw Buttrick and the Acton men already on the bridge. And so they ran, carrying with them their officers and the few veterans who would have held them. In that minute or two Concord Fight was over.
This was Concord's share in beginning the Revo- lution - attack, no longer defense. It was heroic. These men knew the law: no people could have studied the situation better. They knew the penalty of re- bellion, of failure. They had every reason to fear trained soldiers better armed than themselves. But protecting their homes, and at last defying their king, they struck to make themselves free.
There was one further incident. As the straggling British passed the house of Elisha Jones, its owner rashly showed himself in the doorway of the ell, his gun in his hand. Some regular with gun still loaded, angry and glad of the mark, fired at him. The shot went wide - its hole is still to be seen, about three feet to the left of where Jones stood. The soldiers passed on, and Jones wisely put himself out of sight. But the bullet hole remains to tell the story.
Like most militia, the Americans were disorganized by their success. Some took up their dead and wounded; others, rallied and marching forward, saw a reinforcement of grenadiers approaching from the village, and took post behind walls. Forgetful of Par- sons, still beyond the bridge, Smith, who led the gren- adiers, halted and marched them back. The provin-
1-
ʻ
.
----
-
The Old Elisha Jones House- The House with the Bullet Hole
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cials also forgot, and Parsons led his men in safety to the village. The Fight had happened a little before ten o'clock. It was not until about noon that Smith, wasting valuable time as he tended his wounded, marched for Boston. Equally wasteful of their time, the Americans watched and waited for any movement that Smith might make. They did not block the roads, but were merely ready to fight again. Sudbury and Framingham men came to the ground, and all were prepared to strike the British.
Smith made a good disposition as he left the town. His wounded were in commandeered chaises on the road, guarded by the grenadiers. To right and left, on the meadows and the ridge, the light infantry flanked the little column. (On the ridge, readers of Hawthorne may recall, the writer set the scene of the duel between the British officer and Septimius Felton.) A mile from town the British reached Meriam's Corner again [page 39]. And there began the famous running fight. All the way to Lexington the militia, fighting without order, every man for himself, took post behind any shelter (sometimes, forgetting the British flankers, too close) and fired at the retreating regulars, giving them no time to form, and no object at which to charge. As the British approached Lex- ington, the men of that town were ready for them, and took their revenge.
Yet there the regulars, tired and with empty guns, met safety. Smith's one wise action of the day was in the early morning, when he sent to Gage to ask sup- port. And now in Lexington Lord Percy's brigade came to save him, having with it two fieldpieces which awed the militia more than all the muskets. Under this protection the fugitives rested awhile; then the two detachments marched back to Boston.
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They were harried all the way by more and more pro- vincials; they lost both men and pride; but they gave as well as took, for many Americans, venturing too close, learned that the redcoats still could strike. And the regulars made good their retreat. Late in the day the wearied remainder reached Charlestown in safety, and were ferried across the Charles (which Revere had crossed by the light of the moon) to the rest and comfort of their barracks. But that very night the Americans closed in around Boston, and began the siege which after eleven months, under Washington, drove the British from the town.
Only four Concord men (three of them captains) were wounded on that day. Concord soldiers took part in the siege of Boston. Since Cambridge was occupied by the American troops, Harvard College removed to Concord, and remained through an aca- demic year. Classes were held in the meetinghouse, and in private houses. College Lane, a little-used highway at the western end of the town, is today the only reminder of that episode. Yet three members of the class which graduated here returned to stay: Jonathan Fay, lawyer in the town for thirty-three years; Dr. Hurd, who practiced here for fifty-five years; and Ezra Ripley, for sixty-three years minister [page II].
In the disturbed period after the Revolution, Con- cord was once more the scene of rebellious activity, this time largely by old soldiers against the very Government which they had defended. Great public burdens, high taxes, business depression, bad money, and imprisonment for debt of men who had served the country, were the grievances. In September, 1786, Job Shattuck and two to three hundred men, as a part of the now almost forgotten 'rebellion' of Daniel Shays, took possession of Concord Square, closed the
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courthouse, forbade the courts to sit, and petitioned for redress. The little uprising, which ended in dis- persion of the shabby muster, nevertheless had a good influence in hastening Massachusetts' acceptance of the new Federal Constitution.
Concord Fight was the town's one direct experience of war, yet Concord men have always been ready to serve. As the Fight occurred just eighty-six years to a day after the town's militia marched out against Andros, so after another eighty-six years, on another Nineteenth of April, Concord's company marched to the Civil War. They have fought in all wars since. The three monuments on the Square, and the beauti- ful Melvin Memorial in Sleepy Hollow, testify to the devotion of Concord men.
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The North Bridge
CONCORD IN LITERATURE
BY A CURIOUS chance, Concord's literary story is linked with its earlier fame. William Emerson, the fiery minister, acted as chaplain in the Revolution, and died of camp fever. His son, also William, lived as minister in Boston, but died almost equally young. Meanwhile Ezra Ripley, successor to the first William, married the widow, and lived in the Manse. He was helpful to his step-grandchildren, sometimes housed the family, and said once to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'I wish you and your brothers to come to this house as you have always done. You will not like to be ex- cluded; I shall not like to be neglected.' It was this influence which made Emerson so much of a Con- cordian. In the town where his ancestors had lived (for he was a descendant of three of Concord's minis- ters) he himself came to dwell. And it was Emerson's influence which brought the Alcotts here, to some ex- tent Hawthorne as well, and helped to develop the genius of Thoreau, a native of the town. Others, such as Margaret Fuller, Channing the poet, George Wil- liam Curtis, came and went; but these - living, writ- ing, dying, and buried in Concord - were Concord's literary group.
EMERSON
Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston in 1803, was often in Concord in his youth, but did not come here to live until 1834. Meanwhile he had been a minister, but resigned his work because he could no longer follow the old forms. He had struggled with ill- health; he had married, but was a widower. He and his mother first boarded at the Manse. His brother Charles was also in the town, where lived likewise his
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eccentric aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, she who, born in 1774, used to boast that she was 'in arms' at Con- cord Fight, and whose oddities did much to conceal her strong good sense and high ambition for her nephews. Emerson wrote for her tombstone, 'She gave high counsels.' And he lived up to them. Com- ing to Concord to live, he wrote: 'Hail to the quiet fields of my fathers .... Henceforth I design not to ut- ter any speech, poem or book that is not entirely and peculiarly my work.' He never swerved from that plan. Writing in the field of religion, morals, and so- cial ethics, where thousands had worked before him, he struck out a new line of thought which helped to mold his generation and which influences America to this day.
In 1835 Emerson married Miss Lydia Jackson of Plymouth (whose name he changed to Lidian for the sake of euphony), and bought for his residence the house at the beginning of the Cambridge Turnpike. Here his children were born; and here he lived for nearly fifty years, until his death in 1882. His habits were simple. Daily when at home he walked in the fields or woods, and returned to write down in his study his thoughts or observations. These he would work over until they suited him, and then, following the custom of that day when so much of America's thinking was expressed from the lecture platform, he would set forth on his tours, delivering in towns and cities the lectures which he later published as his essays.
Emerson's one systematic book is 'Nature,' his earliest. It has structural form; the thought can be outlined from beginning to end. It was written at the Manse, most of it while sitting in Parson Ripley's crude chair with the writing arm, in which Ripley himself had written most of his innumerable sermons.
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The book was published in 1836. But no other was so written according to plan. The remainder of his many volumes contain his essays, each written to a title and around a central subject which it illumines rather than dissects. The reader does not finish one and rise with the complete knowledge of Emerson's thought upon it, whether it be History, Self-Reliance, Spiritual Laws, Prudence, Heroism, or Friendship (to take some of the titles in the First Series of his Essays). Instead the reader rises inspired with thoughts aroused by the essay, and with his own con- duct attuned to following them. Few essays did more to strengthen the young men of the day than the second of these, Self-Reliance, with the ancient in- junction, Know Thyself, fortified by the advice, Trust Thyself.
The lecture system of those days was aided by the innumerable Lyceums which, originating in New Eng- land, spread all over the country to towns of any size. In the Lyceums, forerunners of the Chautauqua, Emerson lectured for many years, meeting the hard- ships naturally inherent in the stagecoaches, the crude sleeping cars, the badly heated hotels of mid-nine- teenth-century America. Famous from his beginning, yet under suspicion because of his almost revolutionary thought, he made his way to complete acceptance, until his words were household in all forward-looking families in a period of controversy when new ideas were resisted by the old, welcomed by the young. Emerson was the prophet of youth when in the spirit- ual war against slavery the nation was coming to take sides, when the radicalism of intellectual Europe was assuming its own form on American shores, and when the old theology was crumbling, partly under his blows.
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He first shocked the Puritan world, long entrenched, self-satisfied, and crystallized into a dead formalism, by his Harvard Divinity-School Address in 1838. Men of the old school at once protested at thoughts disturbingly new; it was many years before that cen- ter of conservatism invited him again. Yet invited again he was, after a long battle in which the odds turned to his side. Emerson welcomed the new science, so disturbing to the old theology. He advocated new social ideas, now fundamental and instinctive with all America. His method was not to attack the old, but to state the new, and to let his ideas stand or fall by themselves, without defense or rejoinder by him. And so sure was he of his ground, so telling in the sim- ple force of his principles, that opponents were si- lenced, and support grew. Long before his death he was the venerated prophet of the new America.
One does not dissect and explain Emerson's philo- sophy as one can explain the structure of some other system of thought. For Emerson's ideas can never be so formulated: they are rather a way of life, never dry, always inspiring thought and action.
Some of his most memorable writing is in his poems, which cover a wide range of technical performance, more usually a vehicle for the bare simplicity of his thought than for beauty of phrase. Therefore they are sometimes more rugged than easy, more difficult than comprehensible. Yet Emerson occupies a secure place as an American poet; and his range is wide, from the childlike humor of 'The Mountain and the Squir- rel,' through the pure beauty of 'Rhodora,' to the cryptic obscurity of his 'Brahma.' In the latter ap- pears a nugget of what is called Emerson's transcen- dentalism, the uplifting thought that over us all is a spirit which will strengthen and lead us. This is
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given more concisely still in the two lines upon his tombstone, which express the spiritual aim of Emer- son's whole life and achievement:
'The passive master lent his hand
To the vast soul which o'er him planned.'
A proof of the depth of Emerson's wisdom was that he allied himself with but one of the new movements of his day. America was full of enthusiasts and pro- phets, mystics, founders of experiments in social living. They flocked to Emerson's door; he saw the weak- nesses of their ideas, yet he was very patient with them. He would not join with them, however. He did not go to Brook Farm, as Hawthorne did; nor would he take part in Alcott's Fruitlands. He went his way alone, except that upon due deliberation he supported the growing abolitionism. Yet he would not share its extremes nor its violence. He gave to it his ideas, and they gradually made their way.
Conservative Concord, though from the first it respected Emerson, was slow in following him. Said one prominent citizen to him, early in the slavery controversy, 'There are only three persons, as far as I know, whose opinions are obnoxious to the members of our community: they are, Theodore Parker, Wen- dell Phillips, and - if I may be so candid - yourself, Sir.' But Concord eventually followed and supported him. And personally he was always respected and be- loved. The town knew him in all his transparent ways, whether working in his garden; or walking in the streets and fields and woods; or sitting in silence at town meetings, where he admired the rugged elo- quence of the speakers; or beating down with his cane a sign insulting the town doctor, advocate of temper- ance, which drinkers had hung upon the Milldam.
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Emerson had no concealments, no politics, no hesita- tion to speak his mind, no superiority to the simpler people around him. He was no crank, no unbalanced reformer. Gentle in manner, plain in dress, unaf- fected in all his ways, a true neighbor, he was yet known to be inflexible in principle and fearless of all entrenched conservatism that opposed (but so vainly) the innovations of his thought.
Emerson's life in Concord was that of a plain citi- zen, claiming nothing from his acknowledged emi- nence. He was never aloof, as was Hawthorne in his way, or Thoreau in his. Emerson served on commit- tees. He had a strange regret for the scholarliness which he could not put off, and which barred him from the impromptu forum of the blacksmith shop or the street corner. His townsmen he always re- spected, and he envied practical ability wherever he saw it. Wrote he: 'I like people who can do things. When Edward and I struggled in vain to drag our big calf into the barn, the Irish girl put her finger in the calf's mouth and led her in directly.' By the same token Emerson was a poor gardener and clumsy with tools. His little boy said to him, 'Papa, I'm afraid you'll dig your leg.' A committee of the Horticultural Society called upon him to see the soil which produced such poor specimens of such fine varieties. Emerson was amused at his own limitations, admitted them, and perceived their warning. 'I stoop to pull up a weed that is choking the corn, and find there are two; close behind is a third; behind that there are four thousand and one. I am heated and untuned.' He concluded, 'The scholar shall not dig.'
But if gardening tired him and unfitted him for the study, walking did not. Though slender and appar- ently frail, he was a tireless walker, and found in the
₹ -
Emerson's Study, now in the Antiquarian House
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woods and fields stimulus for thought. The farmers knew that he respected them; on their ground he was a learner.
On the other hand, when he spoke to them from the Lyceum platform he gave them his best, never speak- ing down to them. One farmer claimed to have heard all of Mr. Emerson's lectures, and added, 'And under- stood 'em too.' A Concord workwoman, helping at Madam Hoar's, went home early one afternoon: she was going to Mr. Emerson's lecture. Asked if she understood him, she answered, 'Not a word, but I like to go and see him stand up there and look as if he thought everyone was as good as he was.'
The only unkind action toward Emerson in his town was effectually checked. A neighbor sought to blackmail him by moving an ugly old shed into the lot before his house. In the night a number of young men, provided with ropes, hooks, and a ladder, came and pulled the old thing down. They were never named; but Emerson's son, writing of this many years afterward, implied that it was perfectly known who they were.
And when his house caught fire, never was neigh- borly help more complete in saving books, papers, and furniture, and in putting out the fire. The excitement and exposure of the incident threatened Emerson's health; but his neighbors and friends combined to send him abroad and repair the building. He went to Europe and Egypt with his daughter, recruited his strength, and when he returned was welcomed by his townspeople, who led him, under a triumphal arch, to the restored house. At first believing that the wel- come was to his daughter, at last he perceived its meaning, and going back to the gate, said to them all, 'My friends, I know that this is not a tribute to an old
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man and his daughter returned to their house, but to the common blood of us all - one family - in Con- cord !' -
Emerson died, enfeebled by age, in 1882, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where others of his name lie around him.
ALCOTT
It was in 1840 that Amos Bronson Alcott, drawn by his friendship with Emerson, came to Concord and lived in the Hosmer 'Cottage' far out on Main Street. Here soon afterward was born the last of his four daughters. Alcott, born in Connecticut in 1799, once a peddler and tutor in the South, and but lately the owner of the unsuccessful Temple School in Boston, was a reformer in education, a writer whose first book remained largely unsold, and a philosopher whose 'Conversations' had brought him something of fame but little in money. So poor was he and un- pretentious in his ways that he began in Concord, be- sides tilling his own garden, as a day laborer in the fields. In the winter that followed he chopped wood in Concord wood lots for a dollar a day. As he grew poorer, he did much of the housework; and from clothes handed down to his daughters he designed and cut dresses for them. But in 1842, on Emerson's money, he went to England to see unknown friends who admired him through his writings, and returned bringing the Englishman Charles Lane, and the idea of setting up a new venture in living, philosophical, vegetarian - and sadly impractical. It was begun at 'Fruitlands' in the town of Harvard in 1843, and after but a single season came to complete failure. Alcott's disappointment and disillusion were so great that he
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wished to die; but Nature was too strong. In 1844, again with Emerson's help, he returned to Concord, and the next year moved into the house on Lexington Road which he called 'Hillside,' later to become Haw- thorne's 'Wayside.' By planting and hard labor he improved the place within and without, and lived there several years.
Emerson wrote of Alcott, 'He is a great man .... His conversation is sublime. ... Yet when I see how he is underestimated by cultivated people, I fancy none but I have heard him talk.' But perhaps Emerson gave Alcott an inspiration that no one else could sup- ply. At any rate, Concord, and the wider world of his day, never understood Alcott - and he took a deal of understanding. He never learned the value of money, and his wife and children carried many cares of which he seemed unaware. Unpractical, though a hard worker with his hands, according to all worldly standards he was improvident, depending as he did up- on the guidance of one higher than himself. His books brought him little money; his lecture tours brought him almost less, for from one he returned with but a dollar in cash. The help of Emerson tided him through his worst period. Yet the 'Sage of Concord' was serene and untroubled among difficulties which he hardly perceived. His trust in Providence was sub- lime: once it all but confounded his loving but doubt- ing family. On a snowy winter's night, when charac- teristically the supply of wood was very low, a neigh- bor's child came and begged fuel, for there was a baby in the house, and no money. Mrs. Alcott hesitated: she also had a baby. But Alcott said, 'Give half our stock. The weather will moderate, or wood will come.' The wood was given, but the weather grew worse, and at bedtime the Alcotts were about to cover their fire
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