“The Fate of a Nation was Riding that Night”

This week (April 19 to be exact) marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord in which civilian militia, known as the Minute Men, routed British troops who had marched from Boston overnight in search of munitions that were being concealed by the colonists.

Paul Revere and two others rode from Boston ahead of the British troops to spread the warning that the British were coming — a feat immortalized in the poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

With the Minute Men having been forewarned, hundreds of them were prepared for the arrival of the British troops, eventually confronting the hated Redcoats in the pitched battles on Lexington Green and at the North Bridge in Concord (where the first volley by the Americans famously was referred to as “the shot heard ‘round the world” by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem, The Concord Hymn), lighting the fuse of revolutionary fervor that had been building in the American colonies, especially in Massachusetts, for a number of years.

We recall the 200th anniversary celebration in 1975 when then-President Gerald Ford gave an eloquent speech in which he said, “When all is said and done, the finest tribute that may ever be paid to this nation and people is that we provided a home for freedom.”

However, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the historic events that marked the birth of our nation, President Ford’s words are being put to the test.

Rather, it is the sentiments of another American President, Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, that seem most relevant today: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

In view of the recent events occurring throughout our country and the world, the question facing all Americans at this crucial juncture in our democracy is simply this: Will those principles for which the Minute Men put their lives on the line survive another 250 years?