Patriot’s Day: Owning our History
Lexington Massachusetts has long been the site of a Patriot’s Day reenactment of the first battle of the American Revolution. This year is the 250th anniversary of that battle.
This war raged for eight years. American dead numbered 25,534. British dead is estimated at 24,000, plus 7,500 Hessian (German) soldiers working for the British. [source]
I have lived in Eastern Massachusetts since the 1980’s. Public reenactments and Patriot’s Day festivities go on every year. I haven’t really taken them seriously. One year when I lived on Winter Hill in Somerville, I went out to see the Paul Revere actor go by on horseback, flanked by police cars. I didn’t think much of it. The marathon on Monday was more interesting.
I also noticed the monuments on the streets about how this guy or the other guy fought the British. I didn’t much care. The “old men of Menotomy” were people who lived here long before my people were Americans. Lexington reenacts a historic defeat. The Arlington militia was successful on April 19, 1776.
This year feels different. I went to the Arlington reenactment. I feel like we are on the brink of something. In a nation that hasn’t seen war on our soil in my lifetime, the lives of these local folks are something I should know more about. Sometime this spring, I will use the guided tour for the Menotomy Minuteman Historical Trail, created by the Arlington Historical Society. I have walked these streets before without paying the proper attention.
Fast-forward
Four score and seven (87) years after 1776, Abraham Lincoln faced the crisis of the American Civil war.
What about today?
[250 years ago] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.