The Concord Minuteman
The Minutemen were militia members in the American Revolutionary War who had undertaken to turn out for service at a minute's notice.
In Massachusetts the minutemen were enrolled by an act of the provincial congress of November 23, 1774, and in Boston alone they numbered 16,000 prior to the outbreak of the war. The Americans who fought in the opening action of Lexington were minutemen.
Most minutemen were provided neither arms nor uniforms, so had to equip themselves. Many simply wore their own workmans' or farmers' clothes, while others had buckskin hunting outfits. Some added Indian-style touches to intimidate the enemy, even including war-paint. Most used hunting rifles, which did not have bayonets.
Unlike the Continental Army regulars, minutemen did not get much European-style military training. Rather than fight formal battles in the traditional dense lines and columns, they were better when used as irregulars, primarily as skirmishers and sharpshooters.
Their experience suited irregular warfare. Most were familiar with frontier hunting. The Indian Wars, and especially the recent French and Indian War, had taught both the men and officers the value of irregular warfare, while many British troops fresh from Europe were less familiar with this. The wilderness terrain that lay just beyond many colonial towns, very familiar to the local minuteman, favored this style of combat.
The rifled-musket used by most minutemen was also well suited to this role. The "rifling" (grooves inside the barrel) that gave the rifle its name gave it a much greater range than the smoothbore musket, although it took much longer to load. Because of the lower rate of fire, rifles weren't used by regular infantry, but were preferred for hunting. When performing as skirmishers, the minutemen could fire and fall back behind cover or other troops before the British could get into range. The increased range and accuracy of the rifle, along with a lifetime of hunting to develop marksmanship, earned minutemen sharpshooters a deadly reputation.
After their initial one-year enlistment, many minutemen continued to serve in the war by joining state militia rifle regiments, or the regular light infantry of the Continental Army.
The term "minutemen" has also been applied to various American military units to recall the success and patriotism of the originals.
In commemoration of the centenary of the first successful armed resistance to British forces, Daniel Chester French, in his first major commission, produced one of his most well known statues (along with the Lincoln Memorial), the Concord Minuteman. Inscribed on the pediment is the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn with the immortal words, "Shot heard round the world." Traditionally, the statue's likeness is said to be based on Isaac Davis, the Captain of the Acton Militia and first to be killed in Concord during the 1775 battle.
The caption identifying the sculpture at the right is erroneous, of course, as the photograph is of the Lexington Minuteman, not Daniel Chester French's Concord Minuteman.
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Last updated: 05-18-2005 23:15:20
