Five (Or More) Facts About the Battle of Lexington

What should people know about the historic battle of Lexington and its context?

 As a significant part of American history, we think it's important for people to learn about the past and how it fits into our modern American culture.

 Here's some of what you get from a fact sheet on this notable historic moment.

 Setting the Scene

 The battle of Lexington took place in 1775 in New England, along with other skirmishes where American colonists took on the occupying British Army. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do (of course!) and it led to a big outcome – freedom for the people!

 Casualties

 A total of 49 Americans and 73 British soldiers died at the Battle of Lexington. Other contemporary battles also flared up between the same parties at that time.

 Context

 The battle of Lexington was, in some historians’ minds, the first real military interaction and engagement in a series of actions that contributed to the American revolution.

 Why did the battle happen?

 The battle of Lexington and other conflicts around it happened mainly because of onerous British rules for the colonists, British laws that they just couldn’t put up with. 

 Historians identify items like the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Tea Act and the Quartering Act, as well as a series of “intolerable acts” that called patriots to action. These were a matter of record at the time, and now they represent some of what we think about when we reflect on the history of our country. 

 What is the Quartering Act?

 For those who might fear that the British were drawing and quartering American colonists, it wasn't anything like that, but it did inflame tensions, because the quartering act demanded that British soldiers be ‘billeted’ (housed) and fed on the colonist’s dime – a demand that occupiers have placed on the occupied throughout centuries of military history, often times with the same kinds of negative results. 

 All of this is part of the context of the uprising that resulted around those battles.

 Anyway, that’s some of the history that we talk about when we think, for example, about Washington and his men crossing the Delaware to take on the empire of the day. Use our Battle of Lexington package to commemorate Lexington and the path toward freedom that is now “one for the history books.” And don’t forget to take a look at all of our other packages and products, for a legacy of a big boom that resounded, as it were, around the world.