Why the March to Concord?

Abstract

PERHAPS no one day in the American calendar has attracted more attention from historians than that of Lexington and Concord, April I9, I775.1 The events of that memorable day, except for the impossible question whofired-the-first-shot, are now fairly well established. But historians, although there has been much writing and speculation upon the subject, have not been able to solve the most fundamental question regarding the outbreak of hostilities: Why did General Thomas Gage send the redcoats to Concord? It is, of course, certain that the troops were ordered to destroy the military stores gathered by the patriots at that village. Many writers (without substantial evidence) have conjectured that they had a second mission, to secure the persons of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Some have asserted that the general had received directions at an undesignated time to seize these men and that he acted upon the basis of those directions. Most authorities have guessed that Gage put the soldiers in motion upon his own responsibility.2 The writer, partly upon the basis of new evidence from the General Thomas Gage Manuscripts,3 hopes to prove that a Secret letter from the secretary of state for the colonies, the Earl of Dartmouth, written on January 27, 1775, led Gage to issue marching orders and that Dartmouth's letter was therefore the immediate occasion of the War of Independence. Additional evidence will be offered to show that instructions to apprehend the American leaders were contained in this document but that the general did not attempt to carry them out. Thomas Gage was sitting on a powder keg all through the winter of