The narration of Revere's adventures was eagerly listened to by the patriots assembled at the parsonage. Hancock and Adams were urged to flee by their friends. Hancock was loth to do so, but Adams persuaded him that their duties were executive rather than military, so they prepared for a hasty retreat. Their flight commenced in a chaise driven by Jonas Clarke, son of the minister.[57]
Mr. Lowell, Hancock's secretary, and Paul Revere accompanied them for two miles into Burlington, where they stopped, first at the house of Mr. Reed for a little time, and then continued farther on to the home of Madame Jones, widow of Rev. Thomas Jones and of Rev. Mr. Marrett. Then they sent back to the parsonage for Hancock's betrothed, Dorothy Quincy, his aunt, Mrs. Hancock, and lastly, a "fine salmon," which had been presented to them for dinner, and naturally forgotten as they started on their flight. All of these arrived in due time, and then Revere and Lowell returned to Lexington Common, with the intention of rescuing a trunk and its contents which belonged to Hancock, and which he had left at the Buckman Tavern.
The fugitives were about to sit down to the salmon dinner when a Lexington farmer, in great excitement, rushed in exclaiming, that the British were coming and that his wife was even then in "eternity." The salmon dinner was abandoned, and the flight continued under the guidance of Mr. Marrett, to Amos Wyman's, where they finally sat down to a dinner, not of salmon, but of cold salt pork and potatoes served on a wooden tray. The last stopping place was just over the boundary line of Woburn into Billerica, easterly from the present Lowell Turnpike, and northerly from the Lexington parsonage about four miles.
Samuel Adams had left behind him somewhere on the road his immortal saying:--
"What a glorious morning for America is this."[58]
Revere and Lowell reached Buckman Tavern, and there learned from a man who had just come up the road that the troops were within two miles. They proceeded to a chamber for the trunk, which they secured, and looking out of the window towards Boston, saw the King's soldiers but a little way off. They quickly made their exit from the Tavern, passed along the Common through Captain Parker's Company, or rather a small part of it, and heard his words:--
"Let the troops pass by and don't molest them without they begin first."[59]
When a little farther along, "_not half gunshot off_," as Revere expresses it, he heard a single gun, turned and saw the smoke of it rising just in front of the troops, heard them give a great shout, saw them run a few paces, heard irregular firing as of an advance guard, and then firing by platoons.
The American Revolution had indeed commenced.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Holland.
[58] It has sometimes been written that Hancock and Adams first went to a little wooded hill southeasterly from the parsonage overlooking Lexington Common, and perhaps half a mile away, and where they remained concealed until after the British had passed, and that Adams, looking down upon that first scene of bloodshed expressed himself as above quoted. But I cannot reconcile that statement with Revere's own version of the flight wherein he speaks of going with them two miles and then returning for Hancock's trunk at the Buckman Tavern, and which he succeeded in getting just before the British arrived there at five o'clock. Thus Adams could not have witnessed the opening scene on Lexington Common.
[59] Revere's Narrative. Otherwise quoted as "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want war, let it begin here." Lexington Hist. Soc. I, 46.
