Roy Exum: Why The British Attacked

  • Tuesday, April 21, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

This was a pretty big week exactly 240 years ago and what happened then is really important now. The British Army, after arriving in increasing numbers seven years before, decided to launch a sneak attack on Concord, Mass., and several other towns in mid-April of 1775. Their purpose was simple: take away every gun you can find. Confiscate every weapon of any kind.

It was believed there was a cache of muskets in Concord so, on April 14, 1775, a British general, Thomas Cage, assembled 500 British Regulars, called “Redcoats” by the locals, to deal properly with the upstart colonists.

About the same time, Paul Revere, who was a member of a gang called the “Sons of Liberty,” got word the sneak attack was coming.

So Paul Revere got Robert Newman, the sexton at North Church, to signal by lantern – one if by land, two if by sea – when the Brits began to move and, on the night of April 18, 1775, two signals gave the alert the sneak attackers had boarded boats in Boston bound for Cambridge, where they’d take the road to Lexington and Concord.

Revere, a silversmith and part-time dentist since the “Stamp Act” was choking Boston to death after the “Tea Party,” jumped on a horse and, at a mad gallop, dashed through the villages that are today Somerville, Medford and Arlington. He never shouted the Hollywood line, “The British are coming!” No, this was on the hush-hush. Instead he whispered, “The Regulars are coming out” and as many as 40 other horsemen, in a well-planned method, spread the word in every direction.

As Revere rode, he was joined by William Dawes and, a little later, by Dr. Samuel Prescott, a physician who, as history has it, was returning home from a lady friend’s house at the awkward time of 1 a.m. that morning. The British caught the three at a roadblock but Doc Prescott spurred his horse, leaping a wall, and escaping to make it all the way to Concord. Dawes also tried to escape but fell off his horse.

The British Army marched in formation and, as the Redcoats neared Lexington, a shot rang out. Under gunpoint, the General asked Revere what that was about. Revere answered that a large militia was gathered and that the shot, later called “The Shot That Was Heard Around the World, was “to alarm the country.”

Why the world? It was said “the sun never set on the British Empire.” That gunshot signaled the twilight of said empire but that’s a story for another day. (I am still amazed that of nearly 200 countries in the world, only 22 were never controlled or invaded by Britain.)

As the British got closer, a church bell in Lexington began to ring and one of the prisoners, who would later be released, told his captors, "The bell's a'ringing! The town's alarmed, and you're all dead men!" The British pondered the moment, soon let the prisoners loose, and turned back. Imagine that.

At sunrise on April 19, about 50 militiamen walked out onto the green in Lexington to greet the British Regulars. Capt. John Parker, who had gotten tuberculosis after the French-Indian War, told his boys, "Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

A British officer on horseback told the militia, “Disperse! Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!”

And while the militia were under orders not to fire first, somebody in the bushes pulled a trigger and the fight was on. It didn’t last long, the out-numbered colonists running rather than reloading, but the fight was on. Eight years later, America was free and that is what enabled the United States to play football on Saturdays in the fall instead of soccer, drink coffee instead of hot tea, and become the greatest country that civilization has ever known.

Remember what the British really wanted? Our guns. So allow me to share thought on guns, this after my liberal colleagues in the media have just credited the sudden 20 percent decline of murders in Chicago to social reform rather than the fact it came after the state of Illinois created a concealed carry law:

JAMES MADISON, our fourth President: "The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...forms a barrier against the enterprise of ambition... Kingdoms of Europe...are afraid to trust the people with arms."

PATRICK HENRY, “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” -- "Let him candidly tell me, where and when did freedom exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle in human affairs interposed, no nation ever retained its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse... The great object is, that every man be armed... Everyone who is able may have a gun."

ARISTOTLE, Greek Philosopher (384-322 BC) -- "Animals have just one method of defense and cannot change it for another... For man, on the other hand, many means of defense are available, and he can change them at any time... Take the hand: this is as good as a talon, or a claw, or a horn, or again, a spear, or a sword, or any other weapon or tool it can be all of these."

MACHIAVELLI, Writer during Florentine Renaissance, (1469 – 1527) -- "Among evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible... It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willing one who is unarmed."

THOMAS PAINE, Author “Common Sense” (1737-1809) -- "The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order."

NOAH WEBSTER, “The Father of American Education,” (1758 – 1843) -- "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed."

EARL WARREN, 14TH Chief Justice of the United States (1891 – 1974) -- “Our War of the Revolution was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies... Thus we find in the Bill of Rights, Amendment 2...specifically authorizing a decentralized militia, guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

TEXAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, March 2, 1836 -- “The late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez Santa Ana, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as the cruel alternative, either abandon our homes acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny... It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defense - the rightful property of freemen-and formidable only to tyrannical governments."

MAHATMA GANDHI, who lead India’s Independence from Great Britain (1869-1948) -- "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."

ADOLPH HITLER, Leader of Nazi Party, Germany (1889 – 1945) --"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall."

GERMAN FIREARM ACT OF 1937 -- "Firearm licenses will not be granted to Jews."

RICHARD MUNDAY, Author, “The Monopoly of Power” in a paper to the American Society of Criminology, 1991 – “Nazi Order: "SA (Storm Troopers), SS (para-military adjunct of the Gestapo), and Stahlhelm... Anyone who does not belong to one of the above-named organizations and who unjustifiably keeps his weapon...must be regarded as an enemy of the national government and will be brought to account without compunction and with the utmost severity."

HUBERT HUMPHREY, (D-Minnesota) 38th Vice President of the United States (1911 – 1978) – “The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

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Quotes provided by “American Minute” by Bill Federer, from the book by the same name. Copies can be obtained at www.AmericanMinute.com and readers may subscribe to his fascinating day-by-day newsletter on “who we are.”

royexum@aol.com

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