BOSTON GLOBE (April 3, 2025) by Ted Widmer:
“O! What a glorious morning is this!”
So Sam Adams is said to have responded to the news of fighting at Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775, arguably the most consequential day in the history of New England.
That day, most agree, marked the beginning of the American Revolution. There had been other acts of violence, by both Britons and Americans, as they jostled over a host of issues relating to Britain’s imperial overreach.
It will be important not only to remember the story but to remember it well. As Milan Kundera wrote, “The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
But in the spring of 1775, low-level squabbling gave way to armies in the field shooting at each other, outside Boston. The so-called “shot heard round the world,” in Emerson’s phrase, was the first volley in a long war, followed by a struggle to establish the 13 Colonies as a coherent nation.
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These ideas were nourished by pamphlets, Election Day sermons, and newspapers — it would be difficult to overstate how important printing and literacy were to the founding generation, especially in Boston. Far from being derided, intellectuals and scientists were critical to the Revolution’s success. One Bostonian, Benjamin Franklin, translated his scientific prestige into stunning success as a diplomat to France, our essential ally. Another, Joseph Warren, was a doctor, much admired for his work inoculating patients against smallpox, before he was killed at Bunker Hill.
Ted Widmer, a consulting editor for this special issue of Globe Ideas, is the author of “Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.” He helped to create the George Washington Book Prize, awarded annually to a book about the founding era.