Patriot Rebellion

On the night of April 18, 1775, a Boston silversmith named Paul Revere and two other riders, having been informed that 800 English soldiers were on the move that night from Boston, alerted Massachusetts colonists of an imminent attack. General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, had been instructed to seize and destroy weapons and ammunition hidden by the colonial militia in Concord— a rural town 20 miles northwest of Boston. They also sought to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two colonial leaders and delegates to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress (and future signers of the Declaration), who were staying in Lexington, a village 7 miles east of Concord. At Lexington, the British met a small group of colonial militia that had mustered on the town green.