On April 19, 1775, seventy-eight-year-old Captain Samuel Whittemore crouched behind a stone wall next to his home. Whittemore’s old fingers tightly gripped his musket and his pistol. A sword hung from his belt. A phalanx of Redcoats looted homes as they retreated back to Boston. The senior Patriot, who had resisted tyranny and the rule of the Crown for years, planned to fight to the death to defend his home.
When the British troops approached, he blasted away, slaying two Redcoats and wounding or killing a third with his sword. The Redcoats then unleashed their fury on Whittemore, shooting him in the face with a .69 caliber ball, taking off part of his cheekbone, and bayoneting him six times. To finish the job, they bludgeoned him with the butts of their muskets, shouting, “We have killed the old rebel!” Whittemore lay in a pool of his own blood. His hat and clothes “were shot through in many places.”
Miraculously, the old Patriot stubbornly refused to die. Brushing off the flesh wounds, he would live to the ripe old age of ninety-six. This week marks the anniversary of Whittemore’s epic stand and the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Two hundred and forty-nine years ago, farmers, tradesmen, laborers, and mariners–Americans of all stripes–came together to defend themselves against the most professional army in the world. April 19, 1775, marked the beginning of an epic journey for a band of brothers who risked EVERYTHING for a nation yet to be born. Over the course of nearly eight years, many of these Americans marched thousands of miles, often shoeless, unpaid, and starving, to fight for freedom and liberties most Americans today take for granted. Their resolute stand matters in light of multiple current events and relentless threats to American liberty.