As boston became the headquarters of british military

on towns where guns and gunpowder were stockpiled, hoping to impose law and order by seizing them. As Boston
became the headquarters of British military operations, many residents fled the city.
Gage’s actions led to the formation of local rebel militias that were able to mobilize in a minute’s time. These
minutemen , many of whom were veterans of the French and Indian War, played an important role in the war for
independence. In one instance, General Gage seized munitions in Cambridge and Charlestown, but when he arrived
to do the same in Salem, his troops were met by a large crowd of minutemen and had to leave empty-handed. In
New Hampshire, minutemen took over Fort William and Mary and confiscated weapons and cannons there. New
England readied for war.

Chapter 3 | Imperial Reforms, Colonial Protests, and the War that created a Nation, 1750-1783
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Figure 3.16
THE OUTBREAK OF FIGHTING
Throughout late 1774 and into 1775, tensions in New England continued to mount. General Gage knew that a
powder magazine was stored in Concord, Massachusetts, and on April 19, 1775, he ordered troops to seize these
munitions. Instructions from London called for the arrest of rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Hoping
for secrecy, his troops left Boston under cover of darkness, but riders from Boston let the militias know of the British
plans. Minutemen met the British troops and skirmished with them, first at Lexington and then at Concord ( Figure
3.17 ). The British retreated to Boston, enduring ambushes from several other militias along the way. Over four
thousand militiamen took part in these skirmishes with British soldiers. Seventy-three British soldiers and forty nine
Patriots died during the British retreat to Boston. The famous
confrontation is the basis for Emerson’s “Concord Hymn”
(1836), which begins with the description of the “shot heard
round the world.”
Figure 3.17 Amos Doolittle was an American printmaker who
volunteered to fight against the British. His engravings of the battles
of Lexington and Concord — such as this detail from The Battle of
Lexington, April 19th 1775 — are the only contemporary American
visual records of the events there.
After the battles of Lexington and Concord, New England fully mobilized for war. Thousands of militias from towns
throughout New England marched to Boston, and soon the city was besieged by a sea of rebel forces. In May 1775,
Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold led a group of rebels against Fort Ticonderoga in New York. They succeeded
in capturing the fort, and cannons from Ticonderoga were brought to Massachusetts and used to bolster the Siege
of Boston.
In June, General Gage resolved to take Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, the high ground across the Charles River from
Boston, a strategic site that gave the rebel militias an advantage since they could train their cannons on the British.