Shifting his weight from one foot to the next, Johnston was about to hurl a volley of fresh insults when their lieutenant, his face as red as the scarlet coat he wore, passed before him. Sword drawn, he pushed Johnston on the chest with his free hand and shouted. “Hold your place. Keep silent and hold your place, or it’ll be the cat-of-nine for you.” Without another word, the young officer continued down the ranks until he stopped in front of another offender and repeated his threat. With a sideward glance, Johnston looked at the officer, then over at the rebels. For a moment, the musketeer weighed the merits and risks of continuing with his taunts. Only after considerable thought and the memory of the drummer’s lash biting into his flesh did Johnston relent. The release of his pent up anger and frustrations, he concluded, was not worth the punishment. So Johnston pulled himself erect, tucked his musket into his side, and contented himself with watching the confused scene unfold before him in silence.

If it were a simple matter of numbers and demonstrated abilities with weapons, or logic and common sense, this strange confrontation would never have occurred. The armed men who eyed each other across the flat expanse of village green were, after all, Englishmen. Both were ruled by the same King. They shared a common language. The institutions and practices that governed their day to day life had sprung from the same roots. In times gone by, they had fought a common foe under the same banner.

Yet Ned Smith and many of his fellow New Englanders no longer saw themselves and the King’s men as fellow countrymen. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the English soldiers who closed Boston to all commerce had been transfigured into something else. Rather than guardians, they had become intruders, men from a foreign land sent by a distant government to deprive Ned and his fellow New Englanders of their rights and their liberties.

Of the many issues that had propelled these two armed bodies to assemble across from each other in the cold dawn light, there were but two that compelled the militiamen to stand their ground as long as they did, and the English soldiers to seek battle without a hint of hesitation. For the militia, the sight of the redcoated troops on the ground which they called their own brought home to them the harsh reality that the issues of freedom and liberty were no longer abstract thoughts bantered about by rebel rousers in Boston’s public houses. The agents who possessed the will and means to deprive them of both were there before them, but a stone’s throw from their own front doors. While each of the militiamen knew they could capitulate and escape with their lives, all understood that the price of doing so would be surrendering the freedoms and right they had come believe were God given.

There was nothing abstract at all about the forces that propelled the regulars. They represented the King. Every English law and every English institution was on their side. As the duly appointed defenders of the King and Parliament, it was their lot in life to follow his orders and enforce the laws of the land. They had been dispatched not to judge right or wrong. Nor were they there to listen to the grievances of the provincials. The soldiers had come across the Atlantic for no other purpose than to carry out their orders and put an end to all resistance, by whatever means. And the means upon which they relied was not a judge’s gavel or a lawyer’s petition, but a Tower musket, caliber .75 equipped with an eighteen inch triangular bayonet.