The Revolution Before the Revolution in Concord

BY RAY RAPHAEL

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. 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.

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.

Public domain

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 impracticable, as they found it to weigh ten tons at least.”

The largest and best documented court closure came in Worcester. There, on September 6, 4,622 militiamen from 37 town militias ousted two dozen court officials with dramatic flair. Ebenezer’s son Breck, one of the participants, took an actual headcount: 156 from Uxbridge near the Rhode Island border, 45 from Winchendon near the New Hampshire border, and so on, totaling half the adult male population of sprawling Worcester County. (After listing the head count that Breck reported from each town, Ebenezer mistakenly computed the total as 4,722 rather than 4,622.) The companies lined both sides of Main Street, while deposed officials, barred from the courthouse, cowered inside Daniel Heywood’s tavern. Representatives for the militia companies forced the officials to sign a renunciation of British authority, but that alone would not suffice. One-by-one, the judges and their henchmen were released from the tavern and ushered through a gauntlet of militiamen lining Main Street. Hat in hand to signify submission, each recited his recantation over thirty times so all could hear.

Ebenezer Parkman’s Diary: Head count of Worcester County militiamen on September 6, 1774.

American Antiquarian Society. Access on "Documents" page of rayraphael.com

Nobody, of course, thought the Crown and Parliament would let an American colony slip away without a fight. To prepare for a counter-revolution they knew would come, some 300 representatives from 209 towns convened in Concord to form the Massachusetts Provincial Congress—a far greater number than the Massachusetts Assembly, under British rule, had ever mustered. The turnout was so large that the body adjourned to Cambridge, better suited to accommodate the delegates.

In Worcester on October 4, the town meeting instructed its delegate to the Provincial Congress: “You are to exert yourself in devising ways and means to raise from the dissolution of the old constitution, as from the ashes of the Phenix, a new form, wherein all officers shall be dependent on the suffrages of the people, whatever unfavorable constructions our enemies may put upon such procedure.” This was the first known public body to push for a new and independent government, a full 21 months before Congress’s Declaration of Independence.

Worcester’s declaration in favor of independence, twenty-one months before July 4, 1776.

Worcester City Hall. Access on "Documents" page of rayraphael.com

For fear of alienating other colonies, which were not yet ready for “independency,” the Provincial Congress focused on the critical task at hand: preparing for a British counterattack, expected once General Gage, in Boston, received reinforcements. Over the next several months, it procured armaments and supplies needed to field a fighting force of 15,000. To pay for all this, the Provincial Congress commandeered all taxes collected from its citizenry, originally intended for the British receiver-general.

Supplies were stored in two places: Worcester and Concord. General Gage knew this, and the patriots knew he knew. Naturally, when Gage initiated his counteroffensive, he would strike at one of these targets. It was hard to imagine he’d go after Worcester, the heart of resistance and three times as far from Boston. Concord it must be.

By early April 1775, when Gage received his reinforcements, the Provincial Congress had stockpiled sufficient supplies. Militia companies had trained through the winter. Chains of command had been determined. Last but not least, intelligence networks had been set in place so militias would receive the earliest warning. Nobody was the least bit surprised when, on the night of April 18, British Regulars set out from Boston to seize arms stored at Concord.

War was underway, but the actual revolution—the transfer of power from one body to another—had already occurred. Not in other colonies, but throughout the Massachusetts countryside, patriots had seized control in the late summer and early fall of 1774 and would never look back.

Ray Raphael is an author and historian. Among his 10 books on the Founding Era are A People’s History of the American Revolution and Founding Myths: Stories that Hide our Patriotic Past. Two books focus on the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774—The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord and Spirit of ‘74: How the American Revolution Began.