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, helped arrange the signal lanterns in Old North Church and rode with other express riders to warn that British soldiers were marching, leading militia to assemble in Lexington and Concord for the Revolution’s first military encounters. The city’s revolutionary spirit had been shaped over more than a century by a Puritan heritage of community, local self-government, militia service, and resistance to outside interference, a transformation that John Adams said had already taken place in people’s minds and hearts 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, pushed Bostonians toward collective resistance through town meetings, 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 fought the war’s bloodiest battle to that point, repelling two British assaults before falling to a third, and although the British won, their heavy losses encouraged continued resistance. By 1783 the United States had won independence, and the later service of U.S.S. Constitution reflected the continuing defense of the young nation’s liberties.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States