Who fired "the shot heard round the world"?

A bloody retreat

Major Pitcairn and his men were just the vanguard of a 1,500-strong force under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith. The colonel had a clear mission that day: to seize Patriot-held cannon and munitions in nearby Concord, the main town in Middlesex County and the centre for mobilising the county militia regiments of 6,000 men. And so, shortly after the clash at Lexington, Smith’s Redcoats pushed on to Concord.

Hostilities were resumed at Concord’s North Bridge at around 9am, shortly after the British had undertaken a largely fruitless search for weaponry to the west of the town. The intensity of the engagement now increased: colonist numbers had grown to around 400, with the local men now joined from surrounding areas by militia that included the elite Minutemen, whose name reflected their timely readiness for action.

The two sides traded fire and at the end of this brief exchange, eight Patriots lay dead

After both sides temporarily disengaged, Smith’s force reassembled in Concord itself and, at noon, continued along the road back to Boston. The retreat would last until after 7pm, with the regulars harried in a series of defensive engagements with an ever-increasing and finally vastly greater number of colonists. Among the Patriots were the Minutemen of the Danvers Company, who arrived from a full 30 miles away. They were in the thick of the action, as witnessed by the fact that seven of them were killed. That so many had come so far, and in such numbers, can be credited to Paul Revere’s pre-planned organisation of dozens of other riders to spread the alert when the alarm was raised, which had begun the previous evening.

Redcoat casualties continued to mount during the day. In fact it wasn’t until mid-afternoon – when artillery under the command of Brigadier Earl Percy arrived from Boston – that they were given some protection. But for the organisational ability and cannon of Lord Percy, supported over the last few miles by the firepower of British ships anchored in the bay opposite Charlestown, the army’s casualty figures would have been far greater.

As it was, according to the American Battlefield Trust, casualties amounted to a full fifth of Smith’s Redcoats, with an estimated 73 killed, 174 wounded and a further 53 missing or captured. In contrast, the casualties of the Patriots – 49 killed, 39 wounded and only five missing or captured – were far lower. From now on, the British army based at Boston would be contained in the town itself and to that proportion of the surrounding area that could be protected by its military and naval firepower. There could be no doubt as to who had won the battle.

Furious propaganda war

But there remained a question of immense importance. Quite simply, which of the two sides had been the aggressor? Who had fired the first shot?

In an era in which the influence of newspapers was growing exponentially, the answer would sway opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.

For the Patriots, there was no doubt that the British had been the aggressors. Pitcairn, they said, had shouted: “Disperse you rebels – damn you, throw down your arms and disperse.” Upon which, “The troops huzzaed and immediately one or two officers discharged their pistols, which were instantaneously followed by the firing of four or five of the soldiers, then there seemed to be a general discharge from the whole body. Eight of our men were killed and nine wounded.”

In 1837, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Concord Hymn’ would capture the American Patriots’ spirit of resistance with the phrase “the shot heard round the world”. In 1775, the concerns of the Patriot leadership were more prosaic. They needed the Redcoats to be blamed for events at Lexington and Concord, and for Patriots to be seen as victims rather than aggressors.

On both sides of the Atlantic there was growing disapproval of Britain’s military leaders

On the British side, Governor Gage needed the opposite to be believed. And so, within days of the battle, the governor’s office produced a one-page broadside entitled A Circumstantial Account of an Attack that Happened on the 19th April, on his Majesty’s Troops. Essentially a compilation of reports given to Gage by Smith, Pitcairn and Percy, it stressed how, in Smith’s words, “the troops [had been told they] should not fire unless fired upon” at Lexington. Furthermore, as the troops moved forward, Pitcairn had reinforced this with the message “on no account to fire, not even to attempt it without orders”. Finally, when faced by 200 men on Lexington Green, Pitcairn gave the instruction “not to fire”.

Partly due to the turmoil in the town and partly because of the opposition of the majority of its newspapers to the British account, Gage was not able to publish his Circumstantial Account in the Boston press. Even the loyal Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Newsletter declared, albeit on the very next day after the running battle, “that we are not able to collect anything consistent or regular, and cannot therefore with certainty give our readers any further account of this shocking introduction to all the miseries of a Civil War”. But Gage hardly did much better with the papers outside Boston and beyond.

Whereas the vast majority of the Thirteen Colonies’ 37 newspapers would support the colonists’ report, only five ran Gage’s Circumstantial Account, with some also including critical comment. That said, Gage’s primary audience lay across the Atlantic. Indeed, so keen was Gage to ensure that his account reached London before the colonists’ version of events that he ordered all mail-carrying ships be searched for Patriot propaganda. None was found.

In contrast, Dr Joseph Warren, president of the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress, proceeded more slowly but also more surely, and took the time to assemble a full range of eyewitness reports. The vast majority of these were of course by dedicated Patriots, but there were also some from captured British soldiers.

By far the most important of these was from the wounded Lieutenant Edward Gould, an officer of the King’s Own Regiment, whose account would have been widely seen as unimpeachable. Gould had been present at both Lexington and Concord and testified that the Redcoats opened fire at Concord. As for Lexington, he said he could not be certain that his own side had fired the first shot. However, his description of the Redcoats’ aggressive posture and the way they had “rushed on shouting and huzzaing, previous to the firing, which was continued by our troops so long as any of the provincials were to be seen” exactly matched other witness statements – and, incidentally, contradicted Pitcairn’s account.

Gould’s words were presented as corroborative of other damning evidence that was first published as a condensed narrative report in the Essex Gazette of Salem on 25 April. The opening words of the report sum up its tone: “Last Wednesday, the 19th of April, the troops of his Britannic majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province, attended with circumstances of cruelty.”

Race across the Atlantic

On 25 April, a brig named the Sukey, with Gage’s full report on board, sailed for England.

Yet Warren was not ready to follow suit, as local justices of the peace were still taking witness statements. These were to be added to the bundle of documents that would include the Essex Gazette account and a letter from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress addressed to “The inhabitants of Great Britain”. All were delivered on 27 April to Captain John Derby of Salem, who was commissioned to take the information across the Atlantic. Warren also included a personal note of instructions to Derby which contained a PS that was anything but an afterthought: “You are to keep this order a profound secret from every person on Earth.”

On the night of 28–29 April, with the conditions suitable for avoiding detection by the patrolling Royal Navy, Derby sailed the Quero, his family’s fast trading yacht, out into the open sea.

The brig Sukey was a common type of maritime vessel used both by the navy and commercially for coastal trading as well as oceanic navigation. It took the standard six weeks to cross the Atlantic. In contrast, Derby’s Quero was built for speed and completed the crossing and continued along the Channel as far as the Isle of Wight in less than a month. Surreptitiously landed ashore close to Southampton on the morning of Sunday 28 May, Derby hired the fastest (and most expensive) transport to London, the post chaise, and was in the capital by evening. There he reported to the Virginian Arthur Lee, who had recently succeeded Benjamin Franklin as Massachusetts’ official London representative.

Warren’s instructions were clear. They commanded that the sensational material “be immediately printed and dispersed through every town in England, and especially communicated to the lord mayor, aldermen and council of the City of London, that they make such order thereon as they may think proper”.

Lee was ideally placed to do this. He had extremely good newspaper contacts and knew exactly how to maximise press coverage, both in the capital and regions. As for the highly influential City of London, Lee was himself a sheriff and deputy to Lord Mayor John Wilkes, the radical who had joined the establishment and who was one of Lee’s closest friends.

Knowing that Gage’s official version had not arrived, Lee set about establishing the ‘truth’ of the matter with a two-part publishing coup. The very next day, Monday 29 May, Lee’s favoured London Evening Post published a special ‘extraordinary’ edition. This gave full rein to most, but not all, of the Patriots’ account. However, knowing that the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, would use the government’s official London Gazette to attack the status and truth of the Patriots’ published statements, Lee deliberately set out to negate him by designing a piece to run alongside Dartmouth’s own in the following editions of the non-official newspapers.

As Dartmouth became increasingly angry at the perception of a “false impression upon people’s minds”, the Sukey – carrying Gage’s report – still failed to arrive and the Patriot record of events went unchallenged. By the time Gage’s Circumstantial Account finally reached Dartmouth’s desk on 10 June, it was far too late. As early as Tuesday 30 May, Lord Germain, the very man who was soon to take over from Dartmouth as secretary of state for the colonies, acknowledged the immediate impact of the Patriots’ press campaign: “The news from America occasioned a great stir among us yesterday… the Bostonians are in the right to make the king’s troops the aggressors and claim a victory.”

Lexington and Concord gave the Patriots a crucial advantage for the war that followed. In particular, initial perceptions created on 19 April 1775 formed the basis for a growing contempt for the British military leadership, centred on disapproval – on both sides of the argument and on both sides of the Atlantic – at the Redcoats’ perceived initial aggression and brutality in a losing cause.

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That perception of British military failure continued for a year. Though Redcoats forced the evolving American army from the field at Bunker Hill in June 1775 (where both Pitcairn and Warren were killed), it was at the cost of disproportionately large casualties on the British side. This was followed, in March 1776, by the British evacuation of Boston – an event that the Americans could claim as a victory. The sense of military ineptitude among Britain’s leadership was etched all the deeper by the Americans having a counterpoint in the upright and gentlemanly General George Washington. From the moment he took command in July 1775 to the end of the conflict, the British press applauded the American leader, and were quick to compare him favourably to their own generals.

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If the British Army was to win in America, it had needed to achieve victory swiftly and conclusively. By failing to do so, it not only entrenched the American Patriots’ belief but gave them time to organise and recover from defeats in 1776 and 1777 and to gain foreign support. For there was another group with an eye on events in America and with an acute awareness of public opinion in Britain: French and Spanish diplomats.

After British military incompetence gifted the Americans victory in the defeat at Saratoga in late 1777, first France and then Spain would formally enter the war. The path towards American victory would then be firmly set.

Historical record

As to who actually fired first, so important a consideration in the battle’s aftermath, it is worth returning to Lieutenant Gould, the most senior of the captured British servicemen on 19 April. Though his signed statement had proved incredibly useful to the Patriots, Gould had said something altogether different to Brigadier Lord Percy during the battle itself. Percy noted that: “Between 1 and 2 o’clock in the afternoon I met with Lt Gould of the King’s Own Regiment, who was wounded and who informed me that the Grenadiers and Light Infantry had been attacked by the rebels about daybreak.”

This information was in the draft version of Percy’s account to Gage, written the following day and thus dating from some days before Gould signed his affidavit to Patriot justices. Percy had then thought it not worth including Gould’s words to him in his finished letter, and the draft was just one of a number of documents that lay for many decades in a dust-encrusted box in the Duke of Northumberland’s Library at Alnwick Castle.

On the draft’s eventual publication in 1902, the difference between it and the final letter was noticed and noted, yet the significance of the omission was not. This potentially critical piece of evidence was no longer considered of consequence. The obscuring dust of time had done its work.

This article was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine