2023 Winter Lecture: “Minutemen Revisited: Rethinking Concord’s Role in the Revolution. A Conversation with Robert Gross and Friends”

Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Online via Zoom
Free, registration required (see below)

The Minutemen and Their World, first published during the Bicentennial year of 1776, offered a novel view of Concord’s path to Revolution. The book, which won the Bancroft Prize, showed that the townspeople took a moderate stance on British taxes and enforcement measures until the summer of 1774; only when the royal government threatened to seize the right of local self-government did the community rise up and mobilize for war. The reasons why were deeply rooted in the social history of the town. Does this interpretation still hold up? In 2022, the author published a revised and expanded edition of Minutemen and views Concord more broadly in relation to its neighboring towns, introduces new details on the tense atmosphere in the run-up to April 19, 1775, and adds fresh material about Concord’s role as a center for incarcerating Loyalist and British prisoners of war. In this talk, he will discuss the additions and changes of The Minutemen in conversation with leading American Revolution experts including J.L. Bell, Joel Bohy, and Jim Hollister. Registration begins Feb. 1.