The Men of Freedom: Jonathan Harrington

The "Battle" of Lexington leaves eight men dead and ten wounded, most whose names and stories have faded. From the Lexington Common I tell you why so few minutes made all the difference.

This installment picks up on the early morning of April 19th, 1775, where the Lexington Militia, led by Captain James Parker, has spent the night waiting to see if the British regular soldiers would actually arrive. What those regulars had planned to do is still a subject of debate today and how the skirmish actually started will never be known. But we do know this: A single shot rang out at about five o’clock that morning in a moment of confusion, followed by multiple shots from tired and anxious British soldiers. These few minutes of gunfire left eight militiamen dead and ten wounded, all on the colonial side.

From the grounds of the Lexington Common, I describe how it all unfolded with the intention of honoring the eight men who died, despite how little we know about them. Here I'll introduce you to the second of four "Men of Freedom," I'm focusing on in this review of the original Patriot's Day. Jonathan Harrington Jr., a man whose story is dramatically reenacted each year in Lexington but the truth of whose story is obscured by the lore surrounding him. In many ways Harrington is the perfect example of a good man who tried to do what’s right in a difficult and uncertain time. He lost his life because of it, but how he lost his life catalyzed the events of the day and ushered in the American Revolution War of Independence.

At a time when Ukrainian men are laying down their lives first by the hundreds and then by the thousands, many of them as soldiers hastily responding to the call to serve their country, it is important that we recognize that in the end, it is not the leaders, the presidents, the kings, or the dictators whose lives are so crucial to how these conflicts unfold, it is the self-sacrificing men, usually nameless, who make history what it becomes.

Coming up next: The Battle of Concord and the beginning of the deadly retreat down Battle Road back to Boston.

Resources:

I can’t recommend Nathaniel Philbrick’s Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution highly enough. It ends with Bunker Hill but covers the decade before it thoroughly. I’ve read a lot of history books in my life, Philbrick’s ability to describe what appears to have happened, who the people involved are, and what motivated them, seems so effortless that you forget how hard it is to do until you read other historical books.

A book I left off my list before but want to add is Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming. Atkinson was privileged to have access to many British records previously unavailable to historians, giving his writing a perspective on the British that is regularly omitted from most—but especially American—writers’ accounts.

A lesser-known book, The Road to Concord, is a gem, written by J.L. Bell, a local writer whose blog Boston 1775 is an indispensable resource when studying the events of revolutionary Massachusetts. In particular, I like that Bell hunts down the origins of stories that have been retold so many times their truthfulness is by now assumed. He does so with respect and respectable honesty.

The Concord Museum opened its revamped exhibit on the events of April 19, 1775 in 2021. This is reason enough to come to Boston just to see this exhibit. Follow the detailed timeline of the events of that day in this remarkable and informative interactive exhibit.