Thursday on my way to other business, I stopped for a short walk at the Minute Man National Historical Park in Lexington, Massachusetts. For all the years we lived in an around Boston and Cambridge, I’d never actually set foot on this protected portion of the “Battle Road” where American militia clashed with British soldiers on April 19, 1775. I didn’t have enough time to walk the five-mile Battle Road Trail, but I did take a quick stroll around Hartwell Tavern, the 18th-century home of Ephraim and Elizabeth Hartwell. The Hartwells’ home and tavern are surrounded by rolling pastureland snaked with stone walls and wide-spreading maples: quintessential New England countryside that makes for good sun-dappled walking.
In high school, I was never interested in history: in fact, I think I slept through most of my American history classes. But walking the dusty road leading to Hartwell Tavern gave me a different perspective on the events that preserved its place in history. This, as I mentioned, is quintessential New England country, just about the prettiest and most peaceful place you’d ever imagine. Walking this road in 2004, you can clearly imagine what it might have been like to drive cattle along this same road in 1775; the pastured sheep I saw as I drove down Route 2A could just as well been grazing there centuries ago. This sun-dappled path with its fringe of trees and rock walls seems to exist outside of time: it’s a place where you’d feel content to live the rest of your days and then ultimately, in the fullness of time, come to lie down beneath a different sort of stone.
Realizing how peaceful and literally pastoral this landscape is, I began to realize what it was that those early militia, the so-called Minute Men, must have been fighting for. The Revolution surely wasn’t about abstractions such as taxes and tea; instead, the Revolution was about this lovely land that those long-dead fighters had come to call their own. Walking down that quiet sun-dappled path, I couldn’t imagine it beaten by the tramp of British soldiers’ boots; for an army to despoil this quiet would have been an abomination. The men who raised their hand from the plow to take up arms were fighting for “country” in its most primitive sense: they were fighting so the tramp of British boots would no longer haunt the dreams of their sleeping babies or startle the cows who lay chewing their mid-summer cud in tree-fringed pastures.
It took great courage, I suspect, for farmers, merchants, and common laborers to take up arms against an organized army of their native countrymen. And yet strolling these paths among towering trees and snaking stone walls, I realize where they found such courage: they found it in these rocks, these trees, and these rolling hills which had stood for so long, even then, in mute testimony to nature’s all-enduring power. Like a mountain that can’t be moved, those Minute Men stood firm, rooted in their adopted country, defending their right to home and hearth with a persistence that could not be denied. Some things (and some places) are worth fighting for: a peaceful home, a humble hearth, and one’s own quiet corner of God’s green earth being among them.
- This entry is my contribution to the Ecotone biweekly topic Courage and Place.
Jul 2, 2004 at 12:38 pm
This is a bit off-track, if not off-color, but your post reminded me of a card I gave a girlfriend that had an image of a Minute Man on the front and on the inside it said something like, “Back in 1776, a Minute Man was supposedly considered to be a good thing.”
This morning on NPR (or maybe the local station), there was a report on someone who recently wrote a book on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing during the time he lived in The Old Manse in Concord. I’ve been there a number of times when I’ve been bicycling or canoeing nearby. It embarrassed me to realize I had no idea about the historical/ literary significance of the Old Manse since I only ever went in to use the bathroom!
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Jul 2, 2004 at 2:29 pm
Leslee’s loss! because elsewhere in The Old Manse is Sophia’s Window, where Sophia Hawthorne cut her name (and, if I remember right, the year) into the glass with the diamond in her wedding ring. I never saw the Tavern, though, Lorianne–where is it, exactly? How did I miss it, I wonder.
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Jul 2, 2004 at 5:51 pm
That park is, yes, a weird experience because it’s such a very peaceful pretty place. I’ve been to battlefields — Little Big Horn, especially — that feel like battlefields. But Lexington feels like the nicest kind of Sunday picnic park, and despite the exhibits and what not I just couldn’t grasp that people ever shot at each other there.
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Jul 2, 2004 at 8:17 pm
Leslee, although I didn’t mention it in this post, I *do* usually chuckle with a knowing grin whenever I hear the term “Minute Man.” The fact that *every* quaint New England town has a monument to local Minute Men (each wielding a mighty gun, no less) makes the bawdy association all but unavoidable.
I’ve actually never set foot in the Old Manse, so you’ve experienced it more than I have by simply using the restroom there. I’ve been to Author’s Ridge in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, though, and I’ve visited the North Bridge in Concord (site of the “shot heard ’round the world”), so I’m not completely out-of-the-historical loop, just mostly! 😉
Doc Rock, I’ve heard of the famous window etching, but I’ve never been into the Old Manse (nor Emerson’s house, which I believe you can tour). If I’m remembering correctly, Thoreau helped design the vegetable garden at the Old Manse: it was his practical, down & dirty wedding present to the newlywed Hawthornes when they moved in!
Whereas the Old Manse is in Concord, the Hartwell Tavern is on Route 2A in Lexington, near the Lexington/Lincoln border. It’s one of several parking areas along Route 2A just down from the Minute Man visitor center: you could conceivably walk from site to site, or you can drive along 2A to see each of the “Battle Road” sites individually (in true National Park fashion, there’s plenty of parking!)
Dale, I’ve never visited other battlegrounds, but even pictures of places like Gettysburg *look* serious & impressive: the site of epic struggle. But Lexington feels a little like the Shire from Lord of the Rings: you half expect to see hobbits walking around (especially around that tavern!) You can certainly see where “Concord” got its name at least.
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Jul 2, 2004 at 9:52 pm
The grounds of the Old Manse are gorgeous – terraced and landscaped. I’ve picnicked there. And you can see the Old North Bridge from the grounds. Next time you’re in Concord check it out. They also have a good restroom. 😉
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Jul 5, 2004 at 6:56 pm
It is so different to hear the British portrayed as oppressors. We Canadians can barely contain our smugness when we say that we achieved independence without violence (unless you count parliamentary debates…)
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Jul 6, 2004 at 7:07 pm
Leslee, I (like you) always seemed to end up in Concord while doing something else: going to/from Walden, visiting Great Meadows, stopping by Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, etc. I passed by the Old Manse, though, the one time I stopped (years ago) at the North Bridge, but I’ll definitely have to go back. Now that we live in NH and my trips to Concord are more rare, I’ll have to make a point of taking a day trip to see *all* the highlights (restrooms included!) 😉
Sylvia, how interesting that Canadians are proud of their non-violent revolution whereas we Yanks are proud of our quickness to take up arms: a deep cultural difference, I’m sure. As I wrote this post I was mindful that Native Americans would see this site in yet another entirely different way: *all* the Euro-Americans on *both* sides of the conflict were “oppressors” from a Native American perspective. That land didn’t belong to the Minute Men, after all: they’d foisted it off the Native Americans not many years before.
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