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The unanimous vote establishing the Boston Committee of Correspondence [on 3 November 1772] was a victory for the Boston Whigs. The governor's friends had tried to discourage interest in the meeting, and had themselves deliberately stayed away. Thus they left the field free to their opponents, a move which had significant results. Had the administration's supporters been present, division would have replaced unanimity in the town votes, and even more important, the membership of the committee might not have been so homogeneous in its opposition to the administration. In that event the work of the committee and indeed its entire career might have been very different. As it was, the committee would become a major vehicle of opposition to the royal administration and all it signified.

We most often define the Revolution as the War of Independence from rule by Great Britain. We also suppose that the Revolution began with the British efforts to seize gunpowder and cannon from the stores at Concord, Massachusetts. We also define the beginning of the Revolution as a battle that ensued when the British were resisted in their attempt to secure those guns and powder.

From a political standpoint, we look at the Stamp Act, Tea Tax, and the Massachusetts Port Act as the elements that provoked the actions at Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775.There were, however, a number of events, both political and rebellious, that predate the battle on Lexington Green. These events fall well within the period that John Adams defines as the Revolution — that period in which the public was "enlightened and informed concerning the authority of parliament over the colonies".

"Nothing could have afforded me so much satisfaction; as to have been able to inform you, at the opening of this session, that the troubles which have so long distracted my colonies in North America were at an end; and that my unhappy people, recovered from their delusion; had delivered themselves from the oppression of their leaders, and returned to their duty. But so daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown,

Neither Paul Revere nor William Dawes received news of the Regulars' advance by signal lanterns. In his classic "Paul Revere's Ride," published in 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow exercised considerable poetic license with his legendary "One if by land, two if by sea" drama. Revere, "impatient to mount and ride," pats his horse, gazes across the landscape, and stamps the earth, fretfully passing the time for sixteen lines until he finally spots two lanterns in the steeple of Old North Church. Twenty years ago David Hackett Fischer laid this tale to rest, but the take-away from Fischer's meticulous deconstruction of the legend, in popular accounts and several modern textbooks, is merely that Revere did not ride alone: Dawes rode as well, they say, and some even mention Samuel Prescott.

What could Massachusetts’ military governor, Thomas Gage, do about the uprising? Nothing. In Salem, the temporary provincial capital, patriots held a town meeting one block from the governor’s office, in direct violation of the Massachusetts Government Act. Then, when Gage arrested seven so-called ring-leaders for calling the meeting, three thousand farmers formed in an instant and marched on the jail, forcing the prisoners’ release. In neighboring Danvers, a town meeting continued “three howers longer than was necessary, to see if he [Gage] would interrupt them.” He did not. “Damn ’em,” he was said to blurt out. “I won’t do anything about it unless his Majesty send me more troops.”

Those troops finally arrived the following April, and it was then that Gage, under extreme pressure, moved to recapture the province that had been lost the previous year. Before sending out his troops, Gage dispatched spies to determine where to attack. They reported that a march on Worcester, a patriot stronghold and the largest storehouse of weaponry and powder, would be disastrous. Gage decided to go after Concord instead.