When the colonials massing on Punkatasset Hill saw the smoke, they mistakenly concluded that the British were on a rampage. ‘Will you let them burn the town?’ cried adjutant Joseph Hosmer of Concord. Answering with a resounding ‘No,’ the officers decided upon a defiant show of strength. One account states that the lead was offered to a Concord officer, who declined it, but historians have questioned whether a local man would have refused to march to save his own town.

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Whatever the preamble, Isaac Davis was then proffered the lead. This honor may have been offered because his men were fully equipped with bayonets, an advantage in hand-to-hand combat. In any event, Davis accepted, declaring that ‘I haven’t a man that is afraid to go.’ The colonial forces formed up, with Davis’s company in the lead, and advanced down the hill to the strains of ‘The White Cockade.’ Their orders were to hold their fire unless fired upon.

Seeing the colonials coming, the British retreated over the bridge. The last men across began to tear up planks in order to stop the advancing force in its tracks. Major John Buttrick, the British commander, called out, ordering the colonists to halt. His soldiers, meanwhile, assumed battle formation. When the colonists neared the bridge, the redcoats fired a random volley that wounded fifer Luther Blanchard and Jonas Brown of Concord.

The next British volley fell short, but served as proof that they meant to fight. As the colonists prepared to fire their muskets, the British fired again. Davis, just then raising his gun at the king’s men, fell dead, shot through the heart. A private in his company, Abner Hosmer, received a mortal bullet wound in his head.

Buttrick, seeing blood flow, shouted to the troops. ‘Fire, fellow soldiers! For God’s sake, fire!’ As the British scattered, the colonials returned fire, striking two and putting the rest to rout. The fray lasted only three minutes. But the shots fired that day would echo for all time.

The king’s troops straggled into Concord, then gathered with reinforcements for the march back to Cambridge. Along that route, they were harried every step of the way by the colonials. The British mission was a failure–the rebel leaders were safe and the colonists had salvaged most of the stores. And most important, the war was on; the American colonies’ march to independence–one that would only find its end with the Treaty of Paris eight years later–had begun.

The 1783 treaty may have ended the war, but the controversy over what happened at Concord on April 19, 1775 raged on for more than a century. One disgruntled historian wrote that Davis had usurped the lead. Another retorted that he was the heart and soul of the Concord fight and that when he died, the fight was over. A latter-day wag, mindful of the wrangling, quipped that ‘it was a Lexington battle, fought in Concord by Acton men.’ History seems finally to have settled on the matter by concluding that there is enough glory to go around.

Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer were carried home that afternoon, and Hannah remembered many years later that Isaac’s ‘countenance was little altered.’ But his courage had helped to change the course of history; as Woodbury pointed out, the highway over which his body was carried was not the king’s any longer.

Today, Davis himself is well revered in Acton. The local chapters of the Minutemen, of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and many other groups bear his name. His line of march from Acton to the bridge is now a National Historic Site, retraced each April 19 by swarms of ordinary citizens. Near the site where he fell, now within Minutemen National Historic Park, stands Daniel Chester French’s statue of the Minuteman. Since no image of Davis is known to exist, the artist fashioned the figure after studying the likenesses of some of Davis’s descendants who were said to favor him. President Ulysses S. Grant was guest of honor when the statue was dedicated at the centennial of the fight in 1875.

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