PATRIOTS DAY — AMERICA’S REAL BIRTHDAY?

By Edwin Cooney

You’re right: America’s official birthday is July 4th, 1776, which wouldn’t make her 235 years old until July 4th, 2011 -- but there are millions who consider today, April 19th, 2010 -- Patriots Day – to be America’s real birthday. Nevertheless, like every other red-blooded American lady, Miss America thinks it’s just fine if you’re not really sure how old she is!

Patriots Day begins in Massachusetts, with a 6 a.m. reenactment of the Battle of Lexington. It was in Lexington that British troops landed after having taken the Charles River from Boston where they had landed on the way to their ultimate target in Concord, Massachusetts. Three hours later, at 9 a.m. every Patriots Day, there’s also a reenactment of the Battle of Concord.

The Boston Marathon begins around 10 a.m. and the Red Sox will play at 11:05 a.m this year at Fenway Park so that the rest of the day may be taken up with the conclusion of the marathon as well as with parades, speeches, and picnics.

As you’ll recall from your school days, things had been pretty tense in New England for a long time. It was clear to those in the know that the new Governor of Massachusetts,
Thomas Gage, was anxious to nip a possible rebellion in the bud before it got started. He was sure he needed to do two things to accomplish this.

First, he needed to arrest two agitators—Sam Adams and John Hancock—who were holed up in Concord. Second, he needed to capture the stores of guns and ammunition the “patriots” had stored there.

Therefore, fully aware of what might be about to happen, Paul Revere arranged with the sexton of Boston’s “Old North Church…on the night of April 18, 1775,” as Longfellow described it (it was actually Christ Church) that a signal be sent from the belfry of that church which could be observed in Lexington. One lantern meant that the British were coming by land and two lanterns meant that the British Army was coming by water.

As the British landed at Lexington, two things happened. Paul Revere, Billy Dawes (whose great great grandson Charles Dawes would be Calvin Coolidge’s Vice President), and Samuel Prescott started out of Lexington toward Concord to warn of the advancing British army. What Henry Wadsworth Longfellow doesn’t tell you in his poem is that Paul Revere never made it to Concord—and neither did Dawes. The trio were stopped just outside of Lexington and briefly jailed. Sam Prescott either talked his way out of arrest or escaped capture and completed the mission to Concord.

Meanwhile, the British marched through Lexington trying to ignore the farmers and merchants who were awaiting them. Suddenly, one of the Minutemen fired and the British troops broke ranks and fired back. Within an instant, eight patriots lay dead. However, as they moved inland, British troops found themselves continuously harassed by Minutemen from behind barns, stonewalls and trees. By the time they reached Concord, things had worsened for the British. Concord was successfully defended and the British retreated through Lexington back to Boston. By the end of the day, April 19, 1775, seventy-three British soldiers were dead and an additional 174 were wounded.

Some commentators, such as the late Paul Harvey in one of his last “Rest of the Story” broadcasts, insist that the British really didn’t want a war with the colonists. The only reason they appointed General Thomas Gage the Governor of Massachusetts and beefed up the army was to demonstrate to the American patriots how powerful they were and how fruitless it would be to rebel. (It was like an eighteenth century version of George W. Bush’s “shock and awe”). Alas, Americans would be neither shocked nor awed.

Further, Mr. Harvey asserted, Lord North, Britain’s Prime Minister who had authored the Tea Tax and other revenue raising schemes, had successfully run a proposal through the British Parliament to end the taxation of all British colonies provided they agreed to make a “fair contribution to the defense of the empire”. Of course, the British Parliament would decide what was exactly fair, but this “Conciliatory Act” was Frederick North’s genuine effort to thwart a revolution. The act was submitted to Nova Scotia and to each of the thirteen American colonies separately. As luck would have it, it landed in North America on April 20, 1775 — one day too late.

So, here’s the question: was America already in sufficient unity in the wake of Lexington and Concord to be considered a nation? After all, had some of the American colonies accepted North’s proposal, it might have been pretty hard to reunite the colonies to oppose Britain. As it was, none of the colonial legislatures adopted Lord North’s Conciliatory Act. Perhaps “the shot heard all around the world,” was America’s “big bang.”

Oh, one more thing! Who said Miss America, even at 235 years young, doesn’t look good in a swimsuit?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY