The Minutemen And Their World

1880 Words8 Pages
The Minutemen and Their World Robert Gross's “The Minutemen and Their World” is a social history of the years before, during, and after the first shots were fired at Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775 (the shot heard ‘round the World). It explains why and how Concordians and the Minutemen joined together in support of the American Revolution and also examines the effects of the Revolutionary War and its aftermath on the town and its people. His main point is that the townspeople were motivated by local concerns and turned against British rule gradually as they began to appreciate that their local liberties and other interests were threatened by the imperial policies of the Crown. He notes how intra-town rivalries and religious fissures occupied the townspeople through the early 1770s and kept Concord largely aloof from the pre-Revolutionary activities of other communities, and then the galvanization/unification process that occurred as conflict grew nearer1. There were not just a few important figures in the Revolution, most members of the town of Concord played an important role in the action. The Minutemen themselves played perhaps the most important role: that of soldier. At the time of the Revolution, Concord was a crossroads town 20 miles northwest of Boston containing about 1,500 inhabitants. Since it was first settled in 1635, Concord had been settled by farmers of white English Protestant stock. Clearing the land, pushing back the Indians and earning a living from the rocky, sandy soil had been a difficult task. Nevertheless, a number of families had become wealthy, either from farming or trading or both. As the time of the Revolution approached, men such as Colonel John Cuming, a country squire whose bequest later started Harvard Medical School, and Ephraim Wood, 1. http://philobiblos.blogspot.com shoemaker-farmer and a selectman and
Open Document