693. Why Was Lexington and Concord So Important? The Shot Heard Around the World

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. This is a really big year.

We are now in 2026. We've been in 2026 for a little bit now, but this is a really big year for American history buffs, for people who love constitutional history, love the Revolutionary War history, which I'm sure is a lot of our Total Twins listeners and readers. But this is a big year because this is America 250.

You're going to hear that phrase a lot. And what that means, of course, is that come July 4th, we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of America, of the Declaration of Independence, which actually technically was signed July 3rd. But July 4th is when we celebrate.

That's when the the masses, the public got to hear about it in 1776. So it's a big year. This is a big year.

And even though I love to always focus on fun parts of American history, and I think we've done that throughout the years we've had the podcast this year, I'm just going to kind of kind of ham on it because one, I am a nerd when it comes to American history. And it's like it's my year, right? It's our year. It's all of our history buffs and Revolutionary War buffs.

It's our time to shine. So with that, I want to talk about a really important anniversary that's coming up in April, and that is the anniversary of Lexington and Concord. Now Lexington and Concord, you might have heard as they summed the event up as the shot heard around the world.

And we've touched on this briefly in several episodes in the past, but we've never done a specific episode on Lexington and Concord and why this was such a big deal, what it meant to the Revolutionary War, to the beginning of American independence, and also what it meant to to our ability to win the war and what it meant and how it defined the kind of people we were that the American character, because it really it really did. One of the main things I think we can take away from this is how it's not always a bad thing when people underestimate you. None of us like to feel underestimated, right? Underestimated meaning nobody wants.

Sometimes people will say like, they'll discount you. Like, let's say you play soccer and your team, maybe your team's new and your team isn't the best team, right? And so people think like, oh, there's no way they can win. Like they're the underdogs.

There's no way they don't have the skill. They don't have this. But what they don't know is that you've been trading like extra hard, right? You've been doing all these extra practices that you have something else.

You have grit. You know, you're not letting your guard down because you have to work that much harder. And so they go into a game, your opponents go into a game thinking like, this is going to be easy.

We're going to beat them. And they underestimated you. They discounted how powerful you can be.

And then you win, right? So they're caught off guard because they don't think they have to try as hard. And then you're like, oh, well, we've been we've been working extra hard and we are going to win. So it's really that's honestly the theme of so much of the Revolutionary War.

You remember, we talked about when Washington crossed the Delaware and how they did that in the middle of the night on Christmas while the British did like they were like drinking and celebrating Christmas and sleeping some of them. And so they weren't prepared. And so there's things like that where it's like the underdog really comes up and proves themselves and that's exactly what's going to happen with Lexington and Concord.

So interesting thing about Lexington and Concord. This is April 1775, right? So you'll notice that the declaration has not been signed yet. But as our listeners know, that doesn't mean that the wheels of liberty were not in motion.

They were absolutely in motion. Because remember, at this point, you have Massachusetts being which is where Lexington and Concord are. You have Massachusetts is kind of ground zero for the Revolutionary War.

That is where the British crown is really putting the most restrictions. Obviously, it's impacting the all the colonies, but you have to remember Boston Tea Party. You have the Boston Massacre.

There's a lot of stuff going on in Massachusetts. It is seen as a rebellious state. There are things like the Intolerable Acts or things like, you know, all these all these really bad measures by the crown were kind of targeted at Massachusetts.

So it's no wonder then that this is where you're going to see a really big presence of British soldiers. This is where you're going to see the conflict really start to erupt. So at this point, it is no surprise that the rebels, the Sons of Liberty, the the, you know, American revolutionaries, that they are getting ready to rebel.

The British crown knows this. The British soldiers know this. So Thomas Gage, and he is going to be a one of the leaders in the British army.

He's like, you know what? Let's we're going to squash this before it starts like I'm going to restore order. We are going to scare the Americans into compliance. They're going to do they're going to obey us.

They're going to do what they're supposed. They're supposed to do. So their plan is is to march on Lexington and to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, because they are like they are the rebel rousers there who like they are the Sons of Liberty that people know.

Right. They are like, I mean, there's a lot of them are now, but they're the ones that are like really being the loudest. So they're like, all right, we're going to arrest those two.

That's going to send a message to the Americans or the colonists, you know, that we're coming for you, that you better get in line or else. And then they're going to go about six to seven miles on Concord. Concord is where the weapons, the arms were being stored, because, again, this was really scaring the British soldiers because they are also hearing rumors that these the colonists, the townsmen were going to get into what they're called in a minute.

They're called minute men or militias, that they are stockpiling weapons. They're stockpiling arms in Concord. And so according to the logic of, you know, Thomas Gage and the soldiers, they're thinking, OK, well, this is easy.

We arrest their leaders and then we go and we confiscate their weapons. Who's going to try to take us on then? Right. There's no way we're going to do this.

It's going to be so quick and so easy because the these Americans are weak. They think they can rebel against us, like get out of town. This is like a bully thinking that that they're just going to steal your lunch money and nothing's going to happen because you're weaker than them.

But they, again, underestimated the cause, first of all, of the American colonists. This this need to be free. This need to live under a rule of law.

So that is going to be sparking and igniting this this ambition and this perseverance and this willingness to risk their lives in their heart. But there's something else they underestimated, and that is their organization. But it's funny because it's like it's spontaneous order in a lot of ways.

There was organization without official organization. We're going to get into what I mean about that in just one second. So one of the main things that set the colonists apart from Britain was the way that they fought.

Now, later, obviously, there's going to be a Continental Army. We know that because George Washington is going to lead it. But there was another really big part of the Revolutionary War, and that was these militias, these minutemen, these townsmen.

I mean, that's the best way to put it. These are just townsmen. These are husbands, fathers, older brothers, you know, uncles.

These are just people who live in your town, who who were skilled because back then you have to remember everybody really knew how to shoot a gun because your life depended on it, either for security because there's no like police forces back then. That's a lot of what the militia did. What do they say? An armed society is a polite society because everybody knew they were armed.

So you're if somebody was going to rob your house, they knew that there was going to be a gun inside and somebody who knew how to use it. And probably everyone, the men, the women, you had to know how to do that. Also, that's where you're getting your food if you're a hunter.

So everyone just kind of knew how to do that, which is going to come in handy. Right. And so the the British Army is an army.

They are powerful, of course. And so they assumed that since there was no American Army, there was no way that they would be overpowered. Honestly, they thought this was going to be over before it even began.

And so they didn't count or they didn't count on these militias being ready to go, being ready to fight at a minute's notice because they were they had been trained. They were already ready to go and look professional soldiers. Obviously, they are paid.

They are they go through extreme training. So there there is an edge there. Right.

And we know money is an incentive. We know that being trained and prepared is also very important. But there's there's something so cool about these militias, because, again, these are tradesmen.

These are pretty much men over 16. They trained maybe seasonally. They're not getting paid for this, but they're defending their people.

They're defending not just their people. They're defending their their wives and their daughters and their families. You know, the the British crown, their their families are across the pond, you know, so they're not really fighting to protect themselves or their own or their kin, I guess you could call them.

But but these these militiamen, they are. So they're really about to show that, you know, the British army, what can happen when you mess when you mess with their own, when you tread on them, that's where, you know, don't tread on me comes from. And here is, again, one of my favorite parts about the underestimation on the part of the British soldiers is they also thought of the American colonists as like these backcountry rednecks.

We've talked about this before. Like they were just like backcountry yokels who didn't didn't really know much. They were uneducated, which was actually completely the opposite.

The American colonies actually had some of the highest literacy rates of the time. So that's a really interesting thing to note also. But they also had these big information networks.

All right. They had a system of messengers. They had a system of alerting the neighbors to when when they saw people come, like when they saw the British army coming.

We all know the story of Paul Revere. The British are coming. The British are coming.

That wasn't just some dude who happened to see them and was running through town. That was in place. That was a information sharing system that had been in place specifically for this kind of thing.

Fun fact, though, Paul Revere did not actually shout the British are coming. The British are coming. Nor did he write alone, because like I said, there were actually there were these networks of information sharing.

So it wasn't it wasn't just him shouting, you know, the British are coming. What's actually going to happen is so he the American colonists, they knew something was up because they they knew that the British armies were planning something, but they didn't know when. So as soon as the colonels start leaving Boston, Paul Revere is like, all right, it's coming.

So they didn't know when until they saw them leave. And Paul Revere is like, all right, let's go. So his first stop is actually going to be Lexington to tell John Hancock and Sam Adams like, yo, bro, they're coming for you.

You got to get out. And then actually, briefly, he was, I think, captured for a hot second. And then two other people had to continue his his journey and go alert the people that they were that they were coming.

So it's not just one man who was doing this alone. Paul Revere was the guy who first alerted, but he didn't do the job alone. I always wonder how the other people feel.

I mean, you have to think about it like Paul Revere gets all this glory and then the other the other people are just kind of left out of history. But that's why I think it's really interesting to find these stories of people who aren't always talked about, which it's sometimes harder to get those records. But just just a side note, just some thoughts.

All right. So soldiers are making their way to Lexington. And there's the Lexington Green is where the the British soldiers ride up and they see this like wall of militia, right? American colonists just defending their homes.

And they say, you know, put down, put down your weapons. Let's end this now. And they're assuming that that's going to happen.

But they didn't. The militiamen did not. But they didn't fire either.

They didn't start attacking. They just stood their ground. And how powerful is that? They just stood their ground.

And tensions are really mounting here. You have to imagine. Oh, my goodness.

I mean, they're just like staring at each other, right? You've got the most powerful army in the world or one of them. And then you have these ragtag colonists. They're not in uniforms.

They're just in their regular clothes holding their guns. And so there's this standoff. And then all of a sudden there is a shot heard.

And that kicks off the fighting. But the interesting thing about that is nobody actually knows who shot first. That's one of these mysteries that we'll never actually know.

So the fighting begins. And the reason we call this the shot heard around the world is because this is this is kicking off the revolution. Like this was that moment where even though the declaration was not signed yet, even though we're not technically independent at this point, this was the beginning.

This is when it went from the the it's the boiling point, right? Everything was everything had been stewing. It had been boiling for a while. And this was just that moment of all right, it's it's time.

And so this is this is probably one of the most important moments of American history, because this is when the ideals were put to the test as far as will we take up arms and defend our homes against the British soldiers? And the answer was, yes, they would. And here's, I think, another really big distinction, because we see this as a really big moment for the militia. And it absolutely was.

But the militia did not win at Lexington. All right. So they're actually going to end up retreat.

Eight of them died. Only one British soldier died. So it was a moment of all right.

We are going to put our money where our mouth is. We are going to stand up what we believe in. But that does not mean they were necessarily victorious.

But that doesn't mean that doesn't mean they lost either. So we're going to get into Concord. Remember, that was just Lexington.

So now the British army moves to Concord. Now, Concord was a big deal for them, because that's where they believe all these weapons and ammunition and all their you know, their artillery is is being kept. But because of these intelligence, these information sharing networks, remember that the colonists knew that the soldiers were coming.

So they removed it all. They hid it all. They were able to get to it before.

So the main mission for the British army in Concord was to was to take all these weapons to make sure that the colonists could not rebel even if they wanted to. Well, they get there. And guess what? There is no ammunition.

There are no guns. It's been moved. Maybe there's like a like a few guns here and there, but there's not enough to even come close to what they were hoping to achieve.

And in the meantime, as they're walking through the militia, they're regrouping, they're coming. And so they are able to stand their ground. They exchange fire.

And this time the they don't scatter. So in Lexington, the militia did get a little nervous and retreat. They do not do this at Concord.

So in Concord, the British soldiers, they end up retreating. They end up being like, OK, this was not what we thought it was going to be. They're going back.

And then this is funny, too. So as they're going back to Boston, they're actually being like harassed by other by other local people because, you know, they're they're like, get off, get out of our homes. And they're feeling very victorious.

So Lexington and Concord is a really interesting, a really interesting part in history. One shot heard on the real world, too. I think I know I always grew up thinking like, oh, we won Lexington because I think we put them as one thing.

So Lexington was a big moment because that's the first shot. And that's where you're really going to have the militia say, no, we're standing our ground. First shot goes off.

We don't know who shot it. The militia does end up retreating. But then they regroup and they they winning Concord and the the the soldiers retreat.

And again, this is so interesting to me because of that underdog element, because of that underestimation on the part of the British soldiers where they thought these Americans, they can't do anything. We're going to take their weapons. We're going to arrest, you know, their leaders.

And like this is going to be over, like we'll be home for dinner. This is going to be so quick. And it wasn't.

And they didn't win. And so this is a really big moment. Now, it did not decide the course of the war.

This was not a moment where like everything changed, but it was a moment where everything changed as far as the soldiers and probably the crown, obviously figuring out like, OK, maybe this isn't going to be as easy as we thought it was. And this is also this, you know, small little victory is going to really encourage the colonists to like, we can do this again. We did this once.

All right, let's go. Like, bring it on. So this is such an important moment for American history.

It really is one of the defining moments of American history. And it's something to remember in April as we celebrate this anniversary. And again, to remember timeline wise that this is coming before the declaration is signed.

So it's just important to remember what everything that is leading up to that signing. I know when I was in school, we were taught to just memorize dates, but we weren't taught to memorize like why these dates are important. And everything in all of history is cause and effect, right? This happened because this happened.

This happened because that happened. So the declaration is happening because of all these these coercive laws, the the tyranny that the British crown is placing on the American colonists. Right.

And then you're going to have these these final like violent skirmishes, these these battles erupting. And then finally, you have the declaration and then more war, obviously. But nothing is in isolation.

These things are all building on each other. And so that's a really important thing I want you to remember as we talk about American history. So we will leave it there.

As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, guys, I will talk to you later.