Captain John Parker and 77 armed Americans stood on Lexington Common on what revolutionary Samuel Adams proclaimed “a glorious morning for America.”
It was April 19, 1775.
The “shot heard ‘round the world,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson later called it, was about to ignite the American Revolution and change world history forever.
Parker was 45 years old and riddled with tuberculosis. He roused his weakened body just after midnight, when the cry reached Lexington and echoed by a network of alarm riders through the Massachusetts countryside.
“The regulars are out!” Paul Revere himself warned the people of Lexington.
Now, at dawn, Parker’s small volunteer militia faced a terrifying sight: A force of 700 British regulars, highly trained soldiers, professional killers, well-armed agents of the most powerful empire on Earth.
The Redcoats were determined to squash a colonial rebellion that had been percolating in nearby Boston for nearly a decade.
The British hoped to seize a cache of colonial weapons and rebel leaders John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were in Lexington that very morning.
Parker had been elected captain of the local militia — the Lexington Training Band, as they called themselves — known as minutemen in popular lore.
They were farmers, blacksmiths, cordwainers and wagon makers. Many of the men were closely related — no more distant than cousins.
Most were devout Christians and extraordinarily well-read for common people.
“We were probably the most literate country in the world at the time,” Parker biographer Bill Poole, former president of the Lexington Historical Society, told Fox News Digital.
His statement is supported by many colonial scholars.
“Principally,” he added, “because we were great Bible readers.” . . . . (read more on Fox News)
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