Lexington Battle Green

At dawn on April nineteenth, seventeen seventy-five, seventy-seven Lexington militiamen under Captain John Parker stood on this triangular common facing several hundred British regulars. Someone fired, historians still debate from which side, and when the smoke cleared, eight colonial men were dead and ten wounded. The Redcoats marched on to Concord, but the day turned against them and the American Revolution had begun.

Parker's order, whether or not he delivered those exact words, entered American memory: stand your ground and do not fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. The granite Minuteman statue by Henry Hudson Kitson, dedicated in nineteen hundred, marks where those men stood.