The Freedom Trail

In Boston, years of unrest culminated on April 18 and 19, 1775, when Paul Revere, a North End artisan active in his community and in groups such as the Masons, the Sons of Liberty, and the North End Caucus, arranged for two lanterns to be hung in the steeple of Old North Church and joined other express riders in warning fellow patriots that British soldiers were marching, helping bring colonial militia together at Lexington and Concord for the Revolution’s first military clashes. The conflict had grown from a long Boston tradition of community self-government, local militia service, church independence, and a strong culture of freedom, which John Adams later said had prepared the Revolution in the minds and hearts of the people before the war began. Between 1761 and 1775, disputes over colonial rights under British rule, intensified by measures such as the Sugar, Stamp, and Townshend Acts, the military occupation of Boston, and the Boston Massacre, stirred Boston men and women to organize in town meetings and answer with boycotts, protests, and the Tea Party under leaders including James Otis, Sam Adams, and Joseph Warren. Less than two months after Lexington and Concord, patriots on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, at a mound mistakenly called Bunker’s Hill, repelled two British assaults before falling to the third in the bloodiest battle of the war to that point, and although the British won, their heavy losses encouraged continued resistance. By 1783, the United States had won independence, and the U.S.S. Constitution, known as Old Ironsides, became one of the new navy frigates built to defend the young nation against future threats.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States