Boston’s Revolutionary War

April 19, 1775, was a horrendous day to be a redcoat. What was supposed to be rather straightforward orders–to march 20 miles from Boston to Concord to seize colonial military supplies–turned out instead to be a run for your life. As you fled back to Boston, tired, hungry, and shocked that the day had exploded in gunfire and death, colonial militiamen waited in ambush, shooting from behind trees, boulders, and houses. Your red coat painted you like a target. Little did you suspect that Boston’s revolutionary war was just a precursor to eight grueling years of bloodshed.

Although America is celebrating 250 years of independence from England in 2026, Independence was much more complicated than simply putting pen to paper. Long before 1776, colonists resented “taxation without representation” and British orders restricting expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains. But for many, England was the mother country. Rebellion was unthinkable.

“Everything was more complex than we think,” says Shannon Keller, a Boston native and tour guide. “For example, the British were our own government at the time, not an occupying force.”

It may not have felt that way for many Bostonians, long on the forefront of protest and opposition. In retaliation for boycotts and protests like the Boston Tea Party, British forces occupied Boston for years.

In 1775, tensions in and around Boston erupted in a series of events that launched the Revolutionary War, including “the shot heard round the world” in Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

For that reason, while the rest of the country celebrates 250 years of independence in 2026, Massachusetts went all out in 2025. A pamphlet published by Visit Concord carried this message from Governor Maura Healey, dated April 19, 2025:

“Then and now, we will stand our ground. Together we will protect the freedom we won here in Massachusetts.”

As we contemplate 250 years of independence, how we got here, and what happens next, it might be useful to recall the rumblings in Massachusetts that turned into a roar and launched Boston’s revolutionary war.

Why Boston was a center of resistence

While colonial New York had a diverse ethnic population, Boston in the early 1700s was decidedly British, with residents primarily of English descent, architecture and fashion that copied British trends, and main thoroughfares like Queen Street and King Street.

Yet it also had strong Puritan roots, a strong tradition of self-governance, and ports that made it an economic powerhouse. When the British imposed import taxes, sent in more troops, massacred citizens, closed Boston Harbor, and ended self-government in Massachusetts–all before 1775–Bostonians responded with more protest and spirited town meetings. Adding fuel to the flame were radical Massachusetts thinkers like John Hancock, James Otis, John Adams, and Samuel Adams, whose grievances were broadly read throughout the colonies. “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced,” observed John Adams. “The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”

Boston in the 1760s

The future looked rosy with the end of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), which had embroiled Great Britain and France and their respective Indigenous allies in an exhaustive conflict to gain territory in North America. Though the British won, it did not benefit America’s 13 colonies. Instead, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 declared land west of the Appalachian Mountains off limits for settlers. By reserving the vast lands for Native Americans, Britain hoped to appease the Indigenous people who had fought for them, avoid confrontation between tribes and newcomers, and make the colonists easier to control.

This did not sit well in the colonies (even George Washington secured land west of Appalachia). But then it got worse. Not only had the French and Indian War been expensive, but who was going to support the 10,000 British soldiers stationed in North America? To those sitting in England, the American colonies seemed the obvious answer.

The 1765 Stamp Act

When the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise revenue, it was the first direct tax on American colonists. It required a stamp to be affixed to all paper goods, that is, almost anything you can think of: newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, marriage and birth certificates, diplomas, legal documents from deeds to wills, and even playing cards. It would affect everyone.

Colonists decried Parliament for taxing them without their consent. When news of the Stamp Act reached Boston, activists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty took to the streets to protest that their rights as Englishmen were under attack. An effigy of Andrew Oliver, the colony’s Stamp Master, was hanged from the “Liberty Tree” and burned. Mobs leveled Oliver’s office and looted his home.

When a group of Bostonians demanded that Oliver publicly resign his post at the Liberty Tree, 2,000 townspeople turned out to see him do it. By 1766, the Stamp Act was costing more to enforce than it was producing revenue and was repealed.

The Townshend Act and boycott of British goods

Declaring its right to nevertheless tax the colonies and collect revenue, Parliament next issued the Townshend Act of 1767, which placed duties on paper, paint, glass, lead, and tea imported from England.

When news of these new taxes reached Boston, the Massachusetts legislature lost no time circulating a letter opposing taxation without representation to the other colonies. With the Sons of Liberty calling for boycotts of taxed British goods, Boston’s merchants boycotted sugar, rope, anchors, coaches, mustard, clocks, watches, glue, hats, shoes, and snuff.

To enforce law and order, 14 British warships and four regiments of troops arrived in Boston on October 1, 1768. For the next 17 months, Boston was an occupied city, its people subject to searches and drunken soldiers, resulting in brawls and other abuses.

Women were at the forefront of the protest by boycotting British goods, producing their own cloth and other items, and drinking coffee instead of tea. Outside Boston in nearby Lexington, 29-year-old Anna Munroe Harrington hosted a peaceful protest when 45 women took their spinning wheels outside to demonstrate that making cloth was a way to resist King George’s taxation on imported goods.

The 1770 Boston Massacre

By 1770, Boston’s population of just 16,000 residents was patrolled by 4,000 British troops. Relations were so strained that when a crowd gathered on February 22 to pelt the house and shop of a Tory customs agent with snowballs, the agent shot into the crowd, hitting and killing a 12-year-old boy. Samuel Adams arranged the teenager’s funeral procession to the Granary Burying Ground; Black poetess and enslaved Bostonian Phillis Wheatley wrote an elegy.

On March 5, another angry crowd harassed nine redcoats, who opened fire and killed five Bostonians. This time, as many as 10,000 people gathered to watch the funeral march to the Granary Burying Ground. Son of Liberty Paul Revere seized the opportunity to spread anti-British public opinion with his engraving, “The Bloody Massacre in King Street,” which depicted smiling redcoats as they shot into the crowd.

Ironically, on the same day as the Boston Massacre, the British Parliament repealed most of the Townshend duties, except for the tax on tea. But Boston’s revolutionary war was already in full swing.

The 1773 Tea Act and Boston Tea Party

Bostonians decried the Tea Act as unfair, too. To keep the East India Company from bankruptcy and financial ruin, the British Parliament allowed the company to export its surplus tea to the American colonies without the usual tariffs, thereby achieving a monopoly by underselling American merchants, who still had to pay tax. The tax would be used to pay officials and judges loyal to King George. Boston, as you might imagine, was not happy.

Taverns and meeting halls across the city were scenes of fiery debate. Samuel Adams’ eloquent oratories and writings accusing the British Parliament of tyranny were discussed throughout the colonies, keeping burning issues front and center.

On December 16, 1773, on the eve of a 20-day deadline to unload East India Company tea, some 5,000 people rushed to the Old South Meeting House, clamoring to send the tea back to England.

Meanwhile, on that very same night, 60 Bostonians boarded ships to relieve the East India Company of its bothersome tea. The Sons of Liberty were skilled tradesmen and their apprentices, including merchants, coopers, rope makers, hat makers, tailors, distillers, and blacksmiths. They destroyed 46 tons of tea by dumping it into the harbor and, where necessary due to low tide, stomping it into the mud.  

The 1774 Intolerables

British response to the Boston Tea Party was severe. Parliament closed Boston Harbor and its ports to stifle the economy, flooded soldiers back into town, demanded payment for the tea (about $1.5 million in today’s money), ended self-government in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and made British General Thomas Gage the governor. These actions were called the Coercive Laws of 1774. But colonists called them the Intolerable Acts. Instead of succumbing, Bostonians rallied to the cause.

Until 1774, Massachusetts Bay Colony had part-time citizen militia for defense, which required all free men between the ages of 16 and 60 to serve and attend meetings. They were mostly farmers but also included artisans, merchants, and laborer.

But after the Intolerables, Massachusetts organized an illegal provincial congress and called for towns to create “minute men,” volunteers from the militia who could drop everything and fight at a moment’s notice. The provincial congress also began stockpiling supplies and weapons, with 20,000 pounds of musket balls and cartridges, 206 tents, 80 barrels of beef, 35 half-barrels of powder, and 35,000 pounds of rice stored in Concord alone.

The penalty for treason, by the way, was death by hanging.

In the fall of 1774, 12 colonies voiced support for Massachusetts by sending delegates to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. A petition was sent to King George, demanding that he address colonists’ concerns. Patrick Henry, one of the Revolution’s most renowned orators, declared, “I am not a Virginian but an American.”

When King George ignored the petition, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in May 1775 and sent another petition. The king’s response? He declared America to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.” With that, Congress created the Continental Army and appointed George Washington commander-in-chief.

Boston’s Revolutionary War leads the way

The events of April 19, 1775, read like scenes from a war horror movie. The prologue is the night before, when more than 700 redcoats under orders of General Gage leave Boston in the secrecy of darkness. Their mission is to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington and seize rebel military supplies in Concord. For the British soldiers, however, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

In hindsight–or even at the time–it seems folly to think 700 people on the move wouldn’t be noticed. Naturally, the Sons of Liberty were keeping watch. Naturally, they had a plan: to broadcast the British route with a preordained lantern signal: One lantern if by land, two if by sea, hung from the steeple of Old North Church, the highest point in Boston. When two lanterns flashed, signaling that the soldiers were being ferried across Boston Harbor to Charlestown, Paul Revere knew he could avoid troops by taking the road to Lexington. The lantern was also the sign for a network of messengers to spread the alarm outside Boston.

Battle of Lexington

Because the British got bogged down on their river crossing, Revere and compatriot William Dawes got to Lexington ahead of time to warn Hancock and Adams and to alert Lexington’s townspeople of the approaching British. Militiamen began gathering anxiously at Buckman Tavern, across from Lexington Common (now Lexington Green), under the command of Captain John Parker.

Meanwhile, British soldiers discovered their cover was blown as they marched and heard bells and drums racing from house to house, commanding militia and Minutemen to jump out of bed and join their companies. Fearing their mission was compromised, 300 British Regulars were sent ahead to Lexington.

Around 5 am, teenage drummer William Diamond was given the command to beat his drum as Parker and 70 nervous men gathered on Lexington Common. They included fathers, sons, uncles, and brothers; a quarter of them were related to Parker. Most had never fought in battle. And they didn’t know what to expect.

Dawn arrived with British troops. Realizing his militia was outnumbered, Parker ordered his men to disperse. Many were leaving with their backs turned when a shot rang out–no one will ever know by whom–quickly followed by more shots, chaos, shouts, and screams. The Battle of Lexington lasted only a few minutes, and when the smoke cleared, eight militia were dead and 10 wounded. Among the dead was the father of Anna Munroe Harrington, the woman who had organized the spinning protest.

Suffering just one wounded and no fatalities, the British marched onward to Concord.

Concord and the shot heard round the world

British soldiers discovered that most of the colonialists’ military supplies had been ferreted away but began burning what they found. When 400 militia, waiting outside Concord on nearby hills, saw spirals of smoke, they believed homes were ablaze and advanced to the North Bridge over the Concord River. Guarding the bridge were fewer than 100 British Regulars, who fired at the Colonists, killing two of them. It was an act of treason to return fire, but soon the cry rang out, “Fire! For God’s sake, fire!” For the first time, colonists were ordered to fire on their king’s army.

Three British died before soldiers broke into a run, shocked at how quickly they had been repelled by what they thought were ill-trained rebels.

It only got worse from there.  As they fled toward Boston along Bay Road (now Battle Road Trail as part of Minute Man National Historical Park), militiamen waited in ambush to pick them off, a style they had learned from Indigenous Americans and using the landscape of trees, glacial boulders, and streams to their advantage.

The British regulars, fired on from all sides, had not slept for two days and were hungry, thirsty, low on ammunition, and tired. They were thousands of miles from home. Few had ever been in battle.

Along the way, they were ambushed by Captain Parker, who lead a surprise attack to avenge the men who had fallen that morning in Lexington.

At Menotomy, it was house-to-house combat, with militia men shooting from deserted houses and British soldiers charging with bayonets. More men die here than anywhere else.

By late afternoon, 4,000 armed colonialists from 27 Massachusetts towns were in hot pursuit of the redcoats all the way to Boston.

By day’s end, 73 British soldiers were dead and 174 wounded. The colonialists lost 49 men and counted 41 wounded.

By week’s end, the British were trapped in Boston, surrounded by 20,000 militia. The siege lasted 11 months. The whole country was in uproar.

Boston’s Revolutionary War culminates in the Battle of Bunker Hill

Less than two months after the battles in Lexington and Concord, they were eclipsed by the first major military confrontation during Boston’s revolutionary war. Because it commanded a good view of Boston, 1,200 militiamen quickly constructed a redoubt on Breed’s Hill (dubbed Bunker Hill) in Charlestown. But the British could see it, too, and soon sent some 2,200 soldiers across the Charles River to take the hill.

Colonel William Prescott, who had fought in the Seven Years’ War, lead the colonialists with the order “Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes!” a tactical move meant to conserve gunpowder until the enemy was point-blank. Although the militia repelled two bloody assaults, British troops overran them on the third attempt.

A sign on Bunker Hill attributed to John Waller, First Lieutenant in the British Army, relates the horror of war: “Nothing could be more shocking than the carnage that followed the storming of this work. We tumbled over the dead to get at the living…”.

Although the British won, their loss was staggering, costing them almost half their men (about 1,000).  The colonialists lost between 400 and 600 men.

1776

To break the stalemate holding Boston hostage during its long siege, George Washington gathered troops and cannon on Dorchester Heights overlooking the city in his first campaign as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. From here, patriot forces could shell the city and the British fleet in the harbor.

Realizing their position was indefensible, the British peacefully evacuated Boston in March 1776, including 11,000 troops and 1,100 Loyalists (those loyal to King George). But it was too late. Boston’s revolutionary war had turned into a fight that would grip the colonies.

Just a few months later, on July 4, 1776, members of the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. But the declaration didn’t seal the deal.

The effects of the Revolutionary War

It would be eight grueling years before the war was over. It was violent. It was bloody. It was brutal, with atrocities committed on all sides. It was also a civil war, patriots fighting Tory loyalists, neighbors fighting neighbors, even families fighting each other.

And though the rallying cry among patriots was freedom, it needs repeating that the Revolutionary War did not bring freedom for all. It did not bring freedom for slaves living in the new United States, even for the 5,000 Blacks who had fought alongside the patriots. Of the 55 delegates who helped draft the U.S. Constitution, nearly half of them owned slaves.

And it certainly did not bring freedom to Native Americans who had supported the patriot cause or who lived west of the Appalachian Mountains. In a very real sense, the Revolutionary War was fought to gain land that belonged to Native Americans all the way to the Mississippi River. And it didn’t stop there.

In St. Louis, Gateway Arch National Park commemorates westward expansion in the 1800s, but its museum doesn’t shy away from what that meant for American Indians. Displays tell visitors that despite numerous negotiations with the United States Government to protect their land, fighting to defend their homelands, and seeking to protect their cultures, tribes were overwhelmed by the U.S. military, disease, and the near extermination of the buffalo before being moved to reservations.

“More than 500 treaties were made between the United States Government and American Indians,” the Museum at Gateway Arch informs us. “All of them were broken.”

Yet the effect of the American fight for independence was profound, inspiring revolutions from Europe and the Caribbean to South America and Asia. The three branches of government established by the Constitution to provide checks and balances–Legislative (Congress), Executive (the president), and Judicial (federal court system)–were genius.

The founding fathers believed no one should be above the law. They believed democracy depended on it.

For more on related U.S. history, see my blogs George Washington’s Mount Vernon, What the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Tell us about Immigration, and Learning about Slavery in Charleston.