Year: 1875

Last night hundred years ago the sexton
of the Old North Church, Boston, hung out
from the steeple of the two signal lanterns
which told Paul Revere that the British had
marched ''by sea-" He, waiting ''on the
opposite Shore" sprang to the saddle, and
started upon his midnight ride, with the ''cry
of alarm through every Middlesex village and
farm" A hundred years ago to-day, the
minute-men of Concord and the raw militia of
Lexington, Acton, Lincoln and Bedford, stood
at Concord Bridge face to face with ''British
regulars" They had assembled at the alarm,
and with such organization of force as could
be extemporized in the short time allowed
them had prepared for solemn and serious re-
sistance to tyranny. 1t was a British sharp
shooter who fired the first gun, wounding
of Concord. 1t was followed by volley
from the regulars, by which Captain Isaac
David and Private Abner Hosmer were in
stantly killed. Then for the first time the
minute-men of Concord and the militia of Ac-
ton, Lexington, Bedford and Lincoln, looked
along their musket-sights at the soldiers of
their King; then was the rattle of musketry
and the fall of dying men; shouting, confu-
sion, the retreat of trained and disciplined
soldiers, and the advance upon them of the
Revolution was begun. Then Noah Park
hurst said, ''The war has begun, and no one
knows when it will end.''


1t was at Concord Bridge hundred years
ago to-day that the birth throes of the new
nation began. They did not end for seven
long weary years. Those Concord minute
men, with their dead beside them, and in
front the enemy's dead who had fallen with
the quick answering volley, knew only that
this was war; that it had begun right here at
Concord Bridge; when or where it might end no
one could tell. Noah Parkhurst looking along
his musket saw something more than the
puff of smoke from the muzzle, more than the
fall of a man or two. more than a bloody me-
lee in defense Of bridge, more than the upri-
sing of few hundred people in defense of
their property; but he saw only that it was
war, downright, earnest, bloedy war, whose
end and whose results no man could tell
Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, the
hearts of those men of Concord Bridge burn
ed within them, but they knew not in what
grand company they stood, or how large
place in history they had that day made them
selves. The story of therepulse of the troops,
of their hurried and disastrous retreat, of the
vigorous pursuit, the harassing continuous
fire upon the retreating foe by the colonists,
who delivered the contents of their muskets
upon them from behind fences, hedges and
walls, has been told thousand times already
in this anniversary week, and will be over and
over again repeated to-day at Concord and
at Lexington.


What Noah Parkhurst said no man could
tell, when with the first blood that fell in the
Concord fight he said the war had begun, was
answered later, but not until the Colonies had
been baptized seven years in war and had
marched patiently and grandly through soc
rifices and discouragements, through reverses
and disasters, through tears and agony and
bloody sweat To-day men and women, who
have seen what the Concord minute-men could
not see and dared not dream, are celebrating
with appropriate exercises and ceremonies the
anniversary-the one hundredth turning of
the year since new nation entered into histo-
ry over Concord bridge. 1t is the privilege of
all of us to do honor to the memory of the
men who one hundred years ago this blessed
morning answered Paul Reveres alarm. The
fruits of that days work we all are witnesses
and partakers of; and whether we be at Con-
cord Or at Lexington, or anywhere between
the seas that wash the continent which the
men Of the Concord figt made free and pros
porous and great, we may look backward over
all these hundred years and bless their memo
ries, while we thank God for the lesson of
liberty they left U.s. st