April 19 thoughts

So far as I know, nobody has blabbed in Skidmore, Missouri.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy

It might not be obvious to those who were there who actually fired first, at least to the majority of people there.

Remember that you have two groups of soldiers facing each other, pretty much on a hair trigger waiting for something to happen. When someone fires, pretty much everyone else fires as a reflex. Unless you happened to be looking at the actual shooter, that initial cloud of smoke would be obscured by the great mass of smoke from the other shooters.

Then, too, even if it was obvious who shot first, there are reasons to blame it on the other guy. So the Patriot side would blame the British, and the British would blame the Patriots. Even if we do find a contemporary source that says who shot first, we should be aware that there might have been political reasons to assess blame.

As for diaries, the only real account we have by an actual enlisted soldier is the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin. Most of the soldiers present, on both sides, would have been illiterate, or just barely literate by our current standards. Even today, a mere fraction of the population, which is 95%+ literate, keeps a diary. The officers would have been literate, of course, but they were few in number with a proportionally low chance of keeping a diary or writing a memoir.

It is even conceivable that the first shot was fired in mistake, by a nervous private or militiaman with finger on the trigger. In fact, that seems the most likely case to me. There would in that case be ample reasons to cover up who fired the first shot, at least for the side harboring Mr. Boogerhook Ondabangswitch.

Knowing who actually fired that first shot is probably unknowable simply because there was a fairly small number of witnesses, not all of whom could see who fired first because the subsequent volleys would obscure who did it, those who did happen to see it could quite likely have motivation to lie about it, and in any case it just wasn't written down by anyone actually present.

I agree that knowing who fired the first shot is unknowable. I've read a lot of the materials associated with this, and I can't even find any unsubstantiated rumors as to who fired the first shot.

Also, at least in Massachusetts, literacy at that point in history was quite high. I would expect that only a small fraction of the population was illiterate.

Clayton is correct that there was extensive literacy in colonial Massachusetts. One of the reasons for this was that the ability to read the bible was considered important.

As for who fired first at Lexington, that question diverts attention away from a most important consideration. The fact that the King's officers fully intended to disarm the men at Lexington, who were merely standing at attention and not attacking anyone, has been lost in the argument.

Major Pitcairn, who was in charge of the advance force of six companies of troops, told American contemporaries in Boston not long after the event about what occurred on April 19th. The British troops started firing because there was a flash in the pan among the Americans, but not the ones standing in order on the green. This occurred after he ordered the Americans to throw down their weapons more than once. Pitcairn specifically indicated that it was his intention to disarm the Americans when describing his activities later.

If they had been bloggers and not diaryists, we would have had the video up by now on Youtube.

Having read de Tocqueville, yeah I should have known better than to assert that most of the militia men present would have been illiterate, though I still say that most of the common British soldiery were.

As for Major Pitcairn (subsequently killed at Bunker Hill), he may not necessarily be the most objective of observers.

A flash in the pan is *VERY* distinguishable from a shot fired. I should know, I had a couple just this last February*. Major Pitcairn's story may well be accurate, but if it is it doesn't speak well for the discipline of the British troops.

On the other hand, it might well be a way to cover up that the British fired first: Blame it on a flash in the pan on the American side, but not the ones directly facing the British. That way you can claim the Americans fired first, or at least attempted to.

To understand how this is possible, you have to have an understanding about how mild a flash in the pan really is.

A flash in the pan sounds like a click about as loud as snapping your fingers, combined with a very muted "foosh" sound that isn't audible beyond a few feet. The amount of smoke from a FITP is much smaller than an actual shot, and it dissipates almost immediately. There is a flash, also, but again it isn't very noticeable from any appreciable distance.

Given that, Major Pitcairn could claim that there was a flash in the pan among the militia, but not the ones arrayed in front of him where other officers and men might have noticed.

I'm not saying that *IS* what happened, just that it's a distinct possibility, and that it is not likely that we will know who fired the first shot. I also don't think that it really matters.

*While competing at the Southern Vermont Primitive Biathlon, someone managed to distract me with conversation at the last set of targets while I was loading my long rifle and I managed to ram a ball home without putting a charge of powder down the bore first. That cost me 2 misfires, counted as missed shots. I had to spend 10 minutes picking powder through the touch hole to get enough behind the ball to shoot it out.

“The Shot Heard Round the World” in the poem “Concord Hymn” is about the fighting at the North Bridge later that morning, not to what happened in Lexington. It was written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Concord resident, and was written as part of the rivalry between those two towns over where the Revolution "really" began. It refers to the point where American officers ordered a return volley at the regulars who had just fired at them, something that did not happened earlier in Lexington.

The mystery shot in Lexington was somewhere around 5:30AM, so it was still pretty dark, and the smoke was probably not visible wherever it was fired (although the flash would be, if it was out in the open). Even ignoring that, it was probably blocked by the many houses and foliage around the common (and so probably would not have been visible for hundreds of yards, even at noon). Most of the theories are that the shot was from behind a house or wall; the one thing both most provincial and redcoat witnesses seemed to agree on (Pitcairn a notable exception) was that the first shot was not by anyone on the Lexington green.