Since today is the anniversary of the so-called Battle of Lexington (personally, I think it’s a stretch to call it a battle) and the beginning of the Revolutionary War, I’ll take a minute to discuss one of the questions that has caused a lot of “inkshed” in the two and a half centuries since then: who fired the first shot?
The great majority of contemporary American accounts that I’ve read, whether from eyewitnesses or hearsayers, stated that the British fired first, without any provocation from the Americans. This, if true, would mean that the Americans were innocent, and that the king’s troops had started a war by slaughtering civilians. Most of the British accounts, on the other hand, claimed that the Americans fired first, and that the British fired in response. This, if true, would mean that the Americans provoked the whole thing, while the British were justifiably acting in self-defense.
I would probably have more confidence in the eyewitness accounts if more of the people were blaming their own side (“A guy I know named Bill fired his gun without orders, and that started the whole thing…”). But when it seems like most people were (so to speak) voting along party lines, it’s hard to tell which candidate was the real villain.
At the time, the question of who fired first was considered greatly important by both sides, because they wanted to prove the justice of their actions. But does it really matter? Not much. Even if we knew exactly who fired the first shot, where they were standing, what kind of gun they had, and what they had eaten for breakfast, would it make a difference? No (except for trivia games). The situation in Massachusetts in 1775 was such that the war was pretty much bound to start — at least, it seems that way to me — and who pulled the trigger first is pretty insignificant. Neither side was entirely innocent, and it’s not as if that one person, whoever they were, can be held responsible for starting the war. Personally, I don’t think that historians will ever be able to figure out who fired first, yet somehow it seems that we can’t stop wondering about it.
And speaking of historical trivia, here’s some for you: The first shot fired on Lexington Green was not “the shot heard ’round the world.” That phrase refers instead to the shots fired later that day by the Americans at Concord’s North Bridge — where, incidentally, it was the British who fired first.
