The Minutemen and Their World

The Minutemen and their World is a history of 18th-century Concord, a Massachusetts town located approximately twenty miles west of Boston. The town is famous for the Transcendentalist writers who produced their works there, but it is perhaps even more famous as the site of the first battle of the American Revolution, when the famed “shot heard round the world” was fired at the town’s North Bridge (xvi). The book’s author, Robert A. Gross, describes his book as part of the “new social history,” a trend in historical scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s that investigated the lives of everyday citizens rather than important political figures, often using methods developed in other social sciences. With the Battle of Lexington and Concord as focal points, the author sets out to explain how those events fit into town life in Lexington and Concord.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Concord was a relatively prosperous town whose population was increasing. The fact that “concord” is another word for harmony or agreement was not lost on the people of the town, who strove to create a harmonious, unified community and shied away from divisive issues and regional politics alike. However, the town faced two major challenges in the decades before the American Revolution that created social tensions. The first of these was a chronic shortage of farmland. Concordians had large families, and as the fathers of Concord divided up their property to give to their sons as inheritance, plots grew smaller and smaller. Sons, once forced to work for their fathers well into adulthood, were being pushed toward an uncertain future on the frontier. The second source of conflict was religion. The Great Awakening, a Protestant revival movement, took place in the mid-1700s, and Concord was swept up in the fervor. When two ministers who embodied the movement’s values of inspiration, enthusiasm, and a personal relationship the divine were chosen as spiritual leaders in Concord, many members of the community were outraged at what they saw as an abandonment of tradition and respect for authority.

Concord’s desire for social harmony meant that at least at first, it was a reluctant participant in resistance to British rule. However, as time passed and more deeply unpopular laws were passed, Concordians came to dedicate themselves to the struggle with an enthusiasm strengthened by this same value. When, on April 19, 1775, British troops arrived in town on a mission to destroy the colonists’ weapons stockpiles, the unity and dedication of the Minutemen and their superior knowledge of the terrain gave them the upper hand in the first skirmish of what would be a long, exhausting war.

The war was hard on Concord: fresh troops and provisions were constantly being requested, and the lack of a usable, standardized currency exacerbated the economic burden of the war itself. Concord emerged from the war newly suspicious of elected officials and other authority figures, and the town was the first in America to suggest that elected officials be directly involved in writing the new Constitution. The town prospered with the rest of America as trends in global trade became more favorable, and it entered the 19th century as an important regional center, if not the rival to Boston it hoped it might become.