-I have now nothing to trouble your Lordship with, but an affair that happened on the 19th instant . . .-

General Thomas Gage penned the above line to his superiors in London, casually summing up the shots fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

The history of the Battles of Lexington and Concord were the culmination of years of unrest between those loyal to the British monarchy and those advocating for more autonomy and dreaming of independence from Great Britain in the futre. On the morning of April 19th, Gage sent out a force of British soldiers under the...