The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
http://www.wesurroundthempa.org/?p=1356

(Including a reading of the famous poem by yours truly.)

The Shot Heard Round the World
http://www.wesurroundthempa.org/?p=1388

The origins of the individual colonies is fascinating, as is the story of how they developed over time and became more and more alike, despite their various origins.

Special thanks – to Oblio and AVI; I, too, think the history is never clear-cut. Amazing amount of randomness, luck, sentiment and ideology play as important role as vector of economical and political forces. And it is never clear, “in” the historical moment, what direction is the most beneficial and just, let alone what course of actions is the right one.

check it. forgot where I first heard about this, probably american thinker.

Also, I don’t know if anyone is much into colonial williamsburg, and it is kind of hokey, but last time I went there the tour guide of the old capital building taught me more about the Rev. War than I learned in my 218 years of public school. cool stuff.

All in all, the Americans had figured out by the 1770s that they didn’t really need the British around anymore. Some people in Britain eventually realized this as well, but by then it was too late to unruffle the colonists’ feathers. Once the independence sentiment got hitched to the Locke-Rousseau philosophical wagon, it was all over for the British except for the shooting. As is often the case (see Civil War), the war itself served to galvanize popular support among those who were previously uncommitted.

I grew up a Red Sox fan, with corresponding antipathy to that team in the Bronx. Under his high school yearbook picture, one friend listed his pet peeve: “watching those Red Sox lose.” Back then, that’s what they did. Ironically, the only contact I had with a major league ballplayer was with a former Yankee, who was a student teacher at my high school.

Not only that but the actual tactics of a moving ambush, the type that was used on the British column returning from Concord, were worked out in advance by colonial military theorists.

The obsolete method the colonists used to inform each other that the British army was on the move – as well as the response that notification created in the civilian population – had been set up previously as a specific response anticipating just such a move on the part of the British army.

This denotes anticipatory planning on the part of the colonists and speaks volumes as to where their heads were at the time, as it’s clear they were already figuring they were probably going to have to fight the British army.

The Battles of Concord and Lexington were not something that came full blown out of a series of misunderstandings on that day, or even the previous weeks or months, but were rather the culmination of a series of actions and reactions between the British monarchy, British Parliament, and the American Colonists regarding the concept of liberty and self-rule.

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who noted that the American Revolution had actually begun years earlier in the hearts and minds of the people – the shots being fired were simply the culmination of that thought process in the minds of the American Colonists when push came to shove.

As for your questions Tatyana, I’m heartened you are taking such an interest in this subject – the more people who do, the better!

I would suggest a thorough reading of the Declaration of Independence, as well as researching the background information related to the individuals involved in the writing of that document.

While it was written after the first blood had been shed, it was also the single most important document at the time that clearly laid out the reasons and justifications for severing ties to Britain and it’s monarchy, and provided rational reasons for the actions undertaken.