Concord’s Battle Monument – Emerging Revolutionary War Era

In honor of April being National Poetry Month, we share the connection of the literary icons of Concord (MA) and its American Revolution heritage. Concord historian Jayne Gordon wrote about these connections in an appendix in our recent release “A Single Blow.” Below is part of that text.

None of the eighteenth-century Concord authors lived through the American Revolution, yet reminders of that eighteenth-century war abounded in Concord in their lifetimes. Their neighbors were the grandchildren of the minutemen; veterans of the war were still among the townsfolk. Buildings, gravestones, old roads, and other landmarks evoked that part of the past, and they were surrounded by the stories of the fateful day of April 19, 1775. They each drew on their interpretations of the Revolution’s symbolic meaning, and incorporated those ideas into both their private and public writings.

J721_OldManseConcordMA — The “Old Manse” next to the North Bridge in Concord

In the case of RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882), there was a direct historical link to a grandfather who had played a significant role in the beginnings of the Revolution. Sixty years after colonial militiamen confronted the British troops at the North Bridge within sight of the Old Manse, the grandson of patriot minister Reverend William Emerson would come to his ancestral home to stay, writing in his journal, “Hail to the quiet fields of my fathers! . . . Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely & peculiarly my work.” Continue reading “THE AUTHORS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN CONCORD” →

Today, we are pleased to welcome back guest author Kate Gruber.

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

When American colonists reached for their newspapers on the morning of April 20, 1775—the day after the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord—they did not see the words “The Shot Heard Round The World!” emblazoned across the front page. Today, we use this phrase to describe the legendary first gunshot fired on Lexington Green, the gunshot that began the 8-year war for American independence from Britain. The words “the shot heard round the world” are as omnipresent in our collective memories as “one if by land, two if by sea,” and even “I have not yet begun to fight!” But did you know that this phrase did not exist during the American Revolution? In fact, the words “the shot heard round the world” were not penned until sixty years after the event, and were written not by an eyewitness to the action at Lexington and Concord, but by famed American poet (and Civil War contemporary) Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Continue reading “The Shot Heard Round the World” →