yadotme: Today, in history, Apr 19th, the British marched to Lexington and Concord, MA, to confiscate arms and munitions of it's own citizens. The "local, regulated militia" if you will... The base reason the founding fathers included the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
That's from the 2ndA mythology bible, as well as revised rightwing history.
The british marched on concord to retrieve, in good part, their own british arms - whatever muskets were there which they had given the colonists after the french & indian wars ending 1763, or to retrieve arms & cannon stolen by the rebel colonists circa 1774.
So the british were not as much trying to confiscate rebel arms, as trying to retrieve their own property. In other words, it was the rebel colonists who confiscated in good part british arms, laundering them to their own.
In fact, British gen Gage was trying to retrieve british cannon which the rebels had stolen a year earlier:
Jim explains that rebels raided several forts and armories across Massachusetts. But their most audacious
theft was from Major Adino Paddock’s artillery arm of the Boston {tory} militia. That’s the theft.
Jim: Some rebels had broken into the gun houses and stole two brass cannons right out from the noses of the British soldier that were standing guard. And soon after when one of the British officers discovered that the guns were taken he said “by god the guns are gone, I’ll be damned if these people won’t steal the teeth out of your head while you’re watching”.
Elyse: So a brass cannon was stolen – from the {tory} militia..
Jim: It was very important both symbolically as well as strategically. A lot of the cannons that the colonists
had been stockpiling were old heavy iron guns of really not much use for an army in the field. What they
needed were lighter cannons and that’s exactly what these were.
Elyse: Losing these cannons would have infuriated the British Governor, Thomas Gage. He must have wanted
them back. But is that why he sent his troops to Concord? First I need to find out if the stolen cannons
were even there. I’m headed to the Massachussetts Historical Society which has one of the best collections
of documents and accounts from 18th century Boston.
(cont): Here are copies of some of Gage’s correspondence... They are intelligence reports and were probably written in French to hide their contents. This is from a royal spy in Worcester, MA, another place where rebels had arms. And it says here “the brass cannons which were once in Mr. Paddock’s hands never got here and are probably presently in Concord”. .. Jim told us the stolen cannons had belonged to Paddock’s group of the militia – so they really were in Concord and Gage knew it. But did he send troops there specifically for the cannons? I think I may have found our answer…This is a copy of Gage’s marching orders to seize weapons in Concord: four brass cannon and two mortars with a number of smaller arms in the cellar or outhouse of Mr. Barrett, so they were marching to Kate’s ancestor’s farm in Concord and the cannons were on the top of the list. But wait, it’s only a draft, I’ve found the orders that were actually given and they’re a bit different. He puts ammunition, and provisions before cannons. So we can’t say the stolen cannons were the only m
http://www-tc.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/static/media/transcripts/2011-04-21/206_cannon.pdf
yagotme: BTW, the "ragtag rebels" drove the British regulars back to Boston, inflicting more casualties on them than they received themselves.
Right, using unsophisticated (for then) guerrilla warfare; the british should've learned from braddock's mistake at ft duquesne (pittsburg) in french/indian war where native american indians & french using guerrilla tactics ambushed & massacred half the british coming to conquer them. British were used to fighting sophisticated'gentlemanly' warfare.
= new reply since forum marked as read
