The first armed conflict of the Revolutionary War was provoked by

Though it is uncertain who actually fired the first shot that day, it reverberated throughout history.

Minute Men and militias rushed to confront them early on April 19. Patriot spies got wind of Gage’s plan. On the evening of April 18, Paul Revere and other riders raised the alarm that British regulars were on their way to Concord. But he underestimated the courage and determination of the colonists. He hoped to prevent violence by ordering the seizure of weapons and powder being stored in Concord, Massachusetts, twenty miles northwest of Boston. He drafted the Coercive Acts, a series of laws intended to punish colonists for deeds of defiance against the King, such as the Boston Tea Party.īy April 1775, Gage was facing the threat of outright rebellion. Gage inflamed tensions between the colonies and the mother country and practiced harsh enforcement of British law. Thomas Gage was appointed Royal Governor of Massachusetts in 1774 and tasked by the British Parliament with stamping out rising unrest caused by restrictive British policies. The colonists’ intricate alarm system summoned local militia companies, enabling them to successfully counter the British threat. Instead, their actions sparked the first battle of the Revolutionary War. The British marched into Lexington and Concord intending to suppress the possibility of rebellion by seizing weapons from the colonists. In this first battle of the American Revolution, Massachusetts colonists defied British authority, outnumbered and outfought the Redcoats, and embarked on a lengthy war to earn their independence.Īmerican victory.

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The first armed conflict of the Revolutionary War was provoked by