Minutemen

The Concord Minuteman

The Minutemen were militia members in the American Revolutionary War who had undertaken to turn out for service at a minute's notice. In Massachusetts the minutemen were enrolled by an act of the provincial congress of November 23, 1774, and in Boston alone they numbered 16,000 prior to the outbreak of the war. The Americans who fought in the opening action of Lexington were minutemen.

In commemoration of the centenary of the first successful armed resistance to British forces, Daniel Chester French, in his first major commission, produced one of his most well known statues (along with the Lincoln Memorial), the Concord Minuteman. Inscribed on the pediment is the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn with the immortal words, "Shot heard round the world."

See also

• The Minutemen (punk rock band)
• Minuteman missile
• The Minutemen (fictional American superheroes in Watchmen comic series)

External link

• Who Were the Minutemen? (ushistory.org) (http://www.ushistory.org/brandywine/special/art01.htm)

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.