Thaddeus Blood had just turned twenty when he joined his fellow Minute Men at the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. He was, by many accounts, the last survivor of the battle, and, by all accounts, gave the testimony of the fight to Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1833, as Emerson prepared his Concord Hymn, delivered first in 1837. This was the poem in which Emerson famously recounted “the shot heard round the world.” And every year since then, on April 19, men and women from all around the state have traveled to Concord to celebrate this historical moment when a group of “embattled farmers,” to use Emerson’s words, were swept along in the American “Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free.” And the air is filled with the sound of fife and drum.
It is, however, in the pomp and circumstance, essential to distinguish between wishful mythology and the realities of politics and war. When Emerson interviewed Thaddeus, the old man’s memory of the fight was nearly gone, or at least it had shrunk to more human proportions, admitting, “It could scarcely be called a fight…there was no fife or drum that day.” In fact, Blood’s companions were reluctant freedom fighters, or more likely, just plain old scared. “Capt. Barrett,” Blood informed, “said all sorts of cheering things to his men.” But asked them an earnest, and honest question: “Do you think you can fight em’?” The question was supposed to be rhetorical and energizing, but perhaps it wasn’t. The trees........