The Day the American Revolution Began: 19 April 1775

At four in the morning on April 19, 1775, a line of British soldiers stared across the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, at a crowd of seventy—seven American militiamen. A shot rang out, and the Redcoats replied with a devastating volley.

But the day that started so well for the king's troops would end in catastrophe: seventy—three British soldiers dead, two hundred wounded, and the survivors chased back into Boston by the angry colonists. Drawing on diaries, letters, official docum...