Lexington and Concord

General Huge Percy saved the King’s forces from a greater disaster, and later inherited one of his country’s greatest fortunes.

Introduction: Revisiting Concord and Lexington

Edwin S. Grosvenor |

This special issue looks at the dramatic and momentous events that transpired 250 years ago this month

America's 250th Anniversary starts in earnest this month.

The Shots Heard Round the World

John Ferling |

What began as a civil war within the British Empire continued until it became a wider conflict affecting peoples and countries across Europe and North America.

Editor’s Note: One of the leading historians of the American Revolution and founding era, John Ferling is a professor emeritus at the University of West Georgia and the author of two dozen books.

Discovered: First Map of the American Revolution

Edwin S. Grosvenor |

Previously unknown, a map drawn by Lord Percy, the British general in command at Lexington, sheds new light on the perilous retreat to Boston 250 years ago this month.

The Percy map is the first record of the first battle of the American Revolution.

Rediscovering Hand-Drawn Maps from the American Revolution and the Duke Who Collected Them

Edwin S. Grosvenor | Summer 2019

A team from American Heritage helped document some of the most important maps of the Revolution — still stored in the medieval English castle where scenes from Harry Potter were later filmed.

With Little Less Than Savage Fury

Thomas B. Allen | Fall 2010

America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.

On April 22, 1775, three days after a British column marched out of Boston and clashed with militiamen at Lexington and Concord, the news—and the cry of Revolution!—reached Danbury, Connecticut, where 18-year-old Stephen Maples Jarvis was working on the family farm.

1775, Two Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

Frederic D. O'Brien | May/June 2000

The Battle of Bunker Hill

Early on the morning of June 17, Gen. Thomas Gage, governor of Massachusetts and commander in chief of British forces in North America, awoke in his Boston home to learn of a serious new threat.

Lexington And Concord

Don Troiani | April 1974

Sixth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE

The first and most unusual battle of the American Revution began in earnest when the seven hundred British regulars under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith left Concord and started back for Boston on the afternoon of April 19, 1775.

‘Twas The Nineteenth Of April In (18)75 — And The Centennial Was Coming Unstuck

David B. Little | April 1972

On a new bridge that arched the flood Their toes by April freezes curled, There the embattled committee stood, Beset, it seemed, by half the world.

Captain John Parker’s company of minutemen stood in formation, some seventy strong, waiting on Lexington Green in the dim light of early dawn. They had gathered during the night in response to Paul Revere’s warning that the British were coming.

Voices Of Lexington And Concord

Richard Wheeler | April 1971

What was it like to actually be there in April, 1775?
This is how the participants, American and British, remembered it

The Treasure of Alnwick Castle

Elizabeth C. Cumming, William P. Cumming | August 1969

Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington

The Treasure of Alnwick Castle

Elizabeth C. Cumming, William P. Cumming | August 1969

Behind the ancient towers of the Duke of Northumberland's home are the unique Revolutionary War battle maps of the general who saved the British from disaster at Lexington

Rebels And Redcoats

George F. Scheer, Hugh F. Rankin | February 1957

Participants describe the opening of the American Revolution

Rebels And Redcoats

George F. Scheer, Hugh F. Rankin | February 1957

Participants describe the opening of the American Revolution

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Featured Authors

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brands, H. W.

H. W. Brands is a best-selling author, historian, and the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written thirty books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator, a dual biography of the abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln, as well as The First American and Traitor to His Class, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.