Lightheartedly I have proffered an oral quiz to a dozen or so of my fellow Washingtonians.
Volunteers came randomly and comprised graduating high school seniors as well as college educated adults. Regrettably, no one came close to the right answer.
Here’s the question and the three clues I provided:
What significant anniversary associated with Massachusetts occurs this April?
Clue #1: Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Clue #2: Poet/essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Clue #3: Paul Revere.
The answer … the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution!
It was at Lexington and Concord, villages not far from Boston, that on 19 September 1775 American militia and British army regulars exchanged gunfire, resulting in deaths on both sides.
The momentous events were immortalized from the pens of Ralph Waldo Emerson and, later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Emerson’s Concord Hymn was read aloud at the 1837 dedication of the obelisk commemorating these historic events. The poem begins with these words:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Minuteman Monument, Concord, MA
Indeed, it was a “shot heard round the world.” It was not merely a blow against the empire but rather a revolution, a battle cry of freedom, a call for self-government. The colonised rising up against the coloniser.
In 1824 the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who was principal aide to General George Washington, visited the sacred ground to say that the Minutemen’s resistance transformed the world.
“It was the alarm gun to all Europe, or as I may say, the whole world. For it was the signal gun, which summoned all the world to assert their rights and become free.”
At age 19, Lafayette had come to America to join the fight. Later he was a leading figure in the French revolution, but he was imprisoned when things went awry.
But nothing did more to canonise Lexington and Concord into the pantheon of America than “Paul Revere’s Ride.”
Generations of school children, including yours truly, memorised the opening stanza of Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Boston silversmith Revere volunteered to ride the 12 miles from the city to Lexington to alert citizens that the British were coming to seize weapons stockpiled in the village. His starting signal would come from lanterns hung in the tower of Boston’s Old North Church, “One if by sea, two if by land.”
The struggle, as some readers know, went on for six years until a British army under Lord Cornwallis surrendered to a combined French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia.
Should it be of concern that relatively few Americans today profess the patriotism characteristic of previous generations? Perhaps.
But I would offer a simple explanation as to why the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution has thus far garnered little attention. It is simply too remote. The images of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and others fail to come across as people we can relate to. With their powdered wigs and archaic language, they resemble the kings and queens they rebelled against. Americans have yet to come to terms with the global importance of their revolution. It was an early triumph of self-rule and independence, the beginning of a process that continues to this day.
It should be noted that in 1875, President Ulysses Grant came to Lexington and Concord for the 100th anniversary. Similarly in 1975 President arrived to mark the 200th anniversary.
It is unclear but doubtful whether President Trump was invited to the 250th.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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