Public domain
Amos Doolittle engraving showing British regulars gathering in front of the Wright Tavern, which still stands at the corner of Main Street and Lexington Road. Further up Main Street, near Keyes Road, once stood Jones’ Tavern.
The Revolution Before the Revolution in Concord
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Colonial rebels in Concord did not wait until April 1775 to reject British rule. They did so in October of 1774, a full six months earlier— and a small tax on tea was the least of their complaints. Earlier that year, as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had passed the so-called Coercive Acts. Today, closing the Port of Boston gets all the press, but two different measures actually tipped the scales and led to revolution. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked the 1691 Provincial Charter, effectively disenfranchising the citizenry: no more town meetings, no more say in choosing local and provincial officials. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Crown to transport accused citizens to Great Britain for trial. Before this, the colonial population was divided between so-called “Whigs” or “patriots,” who protested various acts of Parliament, and so-called “Tories” or “government men,” those more sympathetic to British law. But after these measures, only a handful of diehards dared argue that disenfranchisement was the way forward.
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Discover CONCORD
| Fall 2021
BY RAY RAPHAEL
Their constitution nullified and their right to a fair trial abrogated, people throughout Massachusetts, more united than ever before and possibly ever since, rose up as a body to say: “No way!” At the time, British authority was administered through the quarterly sessions of county courts—not just judicial cases, but executive minutia like road improvements. So, in each “shiretown” (county seat), when the court was first scheduled to meet under the new arrangements, local patriots showed up en masse to ensure it did not. In Concord on September 13, 1774, when ten judges and justices of the peace tried to convene the Middlesex County Court of General Sessions, “a great number of Freeholders and others” blocked their entrance into the courthouse. The officials proposed a compromise: they would call the court to order but conduct no business. The protestors replied they would take the matter under consideration. While the County Convention of Committees of Correspondence, which staged the event,
deliberated on the town common, judges and justices huddled inside Ephraim Jones’ Inn and waited for a reply—through the morning, past midday, and late into the afternoon. At last, according to a newspaper report, “after the Setting of the Sun,” the “Body of the People” gave their answer: no compromise! The court would not sit on any terms—in fact, it never would sit again. From that day on, the Crown and Parliament held no sway over the people of Middlesex County. Middlesex was not alone. Everywhere in mainland Massachusetts—excluding only Maine and Suffolk County, where Royal troops were stationed in Boston—energized patriots terminated British authority by shutting down the courts. In Springfield, the shiretown of Hampshire County, some 3,000 militiamen, parading with “staves and musick,” forced the judges, in full public view, to disavow Crown authority. In Plymouth, after 4,000 militiamen unseated court officials, a splinter group hoped to celebrate by digging up Plymouth Rock and carrying to the courthouse—but “they found it
