Original subtitles

Tonight, the battle that ignited

America's Revolutionary War.

Massachusetts is on edge.

4,000 Redcoats,

15,000 citizens at each other's throats.

The British are about to move toward

these Patriot strongholds in the countryside,

but then when they get to Lexington,

there's colonial militia waiting for them,

ready to get into a fight.

250 years later,

there are still questions that have never been answered.

Number one, how did the Patriots know

the British were coming?

That tip, the most important piece of intelligence

in American history,

where did it come from?

The legendary battle also left behind

another baffling mystery.

On the Patriot side, you're face to face

with the most powerful army

in the world, but then a shot rings out

and there's complete bedlam.

We don't know who fired first at Lexington,

but with that shot,

the course of human history changes.

Now, we explore the top theories surrounding

the start of the Revolutionary War.

Who warned the Patriots that the British were coming,

and who fired the shot heard 'round the world?

It's a spring day in Boston

and the office of Dr. Joseph Warren

is buzzing, not with patients,

but a parade of visitors bringing news

of British military movements in the city.

Boston in April of 1775 is a pressure cooker.

This is a small, colonial city,

only about 15,000,

but suddenly they have 4,000 British soldiers in the city.

But it's not the soldiers who are on edge,

it's the Colonists.

For the past year,

Massachusetts suffered under what Colonists call

the Intolerable Acts,

laws passed by Britain's parliament

as punishment for the Boston Tea Party.

One of the acts requires Colonists

to house British troops.

People were sick and tired

of being harassed by men in red coats.

What the British are doing will lead the colonies

more and more down this path of defiance.

There is a feeling that the next step

could well be revolution.

Dr. Joseph Warren

doesn't just practice medicine in Boston,

he also plays a central role in the Patriot cause.

A member of the Sons of Liberty,

a secret society formed to resist British rule,

he became chairman of the Committee of Safety

following the Boston Massacre.

This is a group of people who are being watchful,

they are gathering information,

and it puts Dr. Warren in party

with people like John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

When the Sons of Liberty come to the attention

of the British Crown,

some of the leaders become wanted men.

Sam Adams and John Hancock wind up fleeing Boston

in order to avoid being captured

and possibly put on trial by the British.

When that happens, Dr. Warren becomes

the de facto leader of the Sons of Liberty in Boston.

He is the central hub, he is the nerve center.

Information is coming into him

and he's getting it from a variety of sources,

and what's interesting is he's also trusted by the British.

Dr. Warren is a supporter of the Patriot cause,

but he also has to keep those beliefs sort of under wraps

and that put him in a rare position,

dealing with leaders of the revolution,

while at the same time dealing with people

who are tried and true loyalists.

Warren has multiple sources of information

that are informing him

that not only are the British consolidating forces

in the Boston area,

but that there's some kind of a big operation in the offing.

On April 18th, 1775,

the vigilant Dr. Warren learns

a fateful piece of information.

The British are planning to leave

that very night to march first to Lexington,

where they will arrest Adams and Hancock,

and then they will continue on to Concord

where they will seize or destroy Patriot munitions.

He knows that this could spell the end

of the nascent Patriot movement.

It demands action.

That raid begins moving forward

during the pre-dawn darkness.

Dr. Warren is aware that it has been set in motion

and he is therefore able to sound an alarm.

Warren quickly calls on one of his

most trusted friends, Paul Revere.

Now, Revere is a silversmith, but he's much more than that.

He is a dispatch rider

and he is dispatched to ride to Lexington,

and then Concord to warn the Patriots.

Another rider, William Dawes,

is dispatched by a different route.

The route that Revere follows is first by boat,

and crosses the harbor,

gets off the boat, climbs onto horseback,

and then rides into the interior.

This is Revere's famous midnight ride,

sounding the alarm as he goes.

As soon as Revere and Dawes warn anyone in any town,

that individual has the responsibility to notify

the rest of the local inhabitants

and send messengers

to as many other towns or villages as possible.

Revere and Dawes are letting people know,

you've gotta stand.

Now's the time to stand,

and people are answering the call.

Sometime after midnight,

Revere is the first rider to arrive

at the house in Lexington,

where Adams and Hancock are staying.

As the story goes,

a sentry posted outside the house yells down at him

to stop making so much noise

and he responds, reportedly,

that there's going to be a hell of a lot more noise soon

because the British are coming.

It turns out that Warren's information

is absolutely correct.

There are roughly 700 British regulars

that are making their way to Lexington.

For the British, the idea is

to make it to Lexington and then Concord

without arousing the alarm.

But that didn't happen.

In Lexington, on the Green assemble about 70 militia men.

Now these are ordinary men.

They're farmers, tradesmen,

but not professional soldiers.

The colonial militia is

under the command of Captain John Parker.

When Parker assembles the company in Lexington Green,

he doesn't want this to erupt into a battle.

He wants it to be a show of force

that will discourage this column

of regular infantry from pursuing this mission.

They're certainly nervous, they're resolved,

and one thing has been made abundantly clear to them.

No matter what, do not be the first to shoot,

or we lose the moral high ground.

The idea is that because the British have

already failed to capture Hancock and Adams,

they might turn back to Boston without a shot being fired.

Around 5:00 AM on April 19th, 1775,

700 members of the greatest fighting force in the world

arrive at the Green, to find the colonial militia

standing in their way.

John Parker gives them these now famous words,

"Stand your ground.

Don't fire unless fired upon.

And if they mean to have a war, let it start here."

The British, led by Lt. Col. Francis Smith,

know that they have lost the element of surprise,

but the British surely intend to carry on

to Concord to seize the Patriot munitions.

British Redcoat Major Pitcairn

is confronting the American militia

and he orders them to disperse.

"Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels."

That is met by lots of profanity and insults.

They clearly transmit this signal of like,

"Oh, no, we're not gonna disperse."

But the Americans can count.

They know they're outnumbered 10 to one.

On the one hand, they don't really want to back down

and be seen as easily intimidated.

On the other hand, if violence breaks out,

it will go very badly for them.

Parker actually orders the militia to disperse,

but they don't throw down their weapons

and they don't exactly disperse.

Both sides are just hurling profanities at each other

because what's about to erupt at Lexington Green

has been building for years.

Suddenly...

A single gunshot rings out.

And nobody knows where it comes from,

and what happens next can best be described as a melee.

There's no doubt that first shot triggered

a massive volley from the British troops.

Eight Americans are killed in the volley.

There are bullets flying through the air

and it's mass chaos and confusion.

That first gunshot would come to be known

as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World."

No British soldiers are killed at Lexington,

and so they decide to march on to Concord,

where they meet a very different foe.

By the time the British get to Concord,

around 2,000 militia have now descended upon Concord, angry.

Now they've heard these rumors of bloodshed

that happened in Lexington, they're ready to fight.

There's a decisive and now famous engagement

at the Old North Bridge at Concord

that begins a process of driving the British back,

withdrawing toward Lexington.

As they're retreating,

the Colonists are attacking them guerilla warfare-style.

They're retreating through this strange wilderness.

They're being attacked all along the way.

On the British side, the casualties are 273 total.

On the colonial side, the casualties are less than 100.

The fights at Lexington and Concord will

become known as the first two battles

in America's war of independence.

Dr. Joseph Warren's timely warning played

a critical role in preparing the Patriot militia.

Without the tip, the British might have captured

Adams and Hancock at Lexington.

They might have destroyed the munitions cache at Concord.

They would have, in so doing, gutted,

at least temporarily, the Patriot movement.

And so the question of course is about that tip,

the most important piece of intelligence

in American history.

Where did it come from?

The identity of the informant is

a secret Warren took to his grave.

He dies at the Battle of Bunker Hill just two months later.

But it could be that this key piece of information came

from a specific group within the Patriot cause.

Within the Sons of Liberty is a group of spies

known as the Mechanics.

Chances are, Dr. Warren received

information about British movements

from several members of the Mechanics

because they were so widespread throughout the city

and they had so many day-to-day interactions

with British Redcoat personnel

that they would've picked up

tidbits of information here and there.

The Mechanics had among them one exceptional individual

who is reported to have been a leader,

and that leader was Paul Revere.

According to anecdote,

Revere overheard a British officer saying

there will be, quote, "hell to pay tomorrow"

in reference to an upcoming operation.

So it could well be that it is Paul Revere

that tells Dr. Warren about the British movement.

But many historians have looked to people

who had direct access to high ranking British officials,

and this was not something that Revere had access to.

In April 1775,

battles at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts ignite

what will become the Revolutionary War.

The Patriots' surprise victory over a British sneak attack

quickly becomes the talk of the colonies.

Rumors swirl around the potential identity

of the informant who gives Warren the information

about British troop movements that night.

Now of course, to the British,

this person would be a traitor.

To the Patriots, this person is a hero.

There is a recognition that if the Patriots

are going to prevail in this war,

they're going to have to form a proper army.

That leads to the creation of the Continental Army.

George Washington is then subsequently

chosen to command it

and he will lead it through the next seven years of conflict

that will ultimately end in a British surrender

and American independence.

In 1788,

five years after the war's end,

the first history book

about the American struggle for independence is published.

The Reverend William Gordon publishes

an exhaustive, multi-volume account

of the history of the Revolutionary War.

And in that account,

he refers to the informant who tipped off Warren.

He refers to her tellingly

as a daughter of liberty,

suggesting that Warren's man on the inside

was in fact a woman.

Gordon referred to the informant of Dr. Warren

as being unequally yoked in the point of politics.

And what that might mean is

that she might have had certain sympathies

for the rebel cause, despite holding

a position directly tied to the British.

Suspicion quickly turns

to the wives of British officers.

Wives are frequently ignored, frankly,

and yet these women would have been present

at high level conversations among British leaders,

would've been privy to the type of information

that somebody like Warren needed to alert the Patriots.

General Thomas Gage was a pretty no-nonsense commander.

He was sent into Massachusetts to bring order

that was starting to spiral outta control

with the Sons of Liberty.

And so General Gage was sent in there

to put them in their place.

Even in 1775,

the British believed that General Thomas Gage,

the man commanding all British forces in Boston,

was betrayed by somebody close to him.

When Gordon's book was published,

there was substantial speculation

as to who the informant might be,

but then a name emerged:

Margaret Kemble Gage, wife of General Gage.

Mrs. Gage was born in New Jersey

and that may have given her some kind of leaning

towards the American cause,

even though she was married to a British officer.

She absolutely would have had access,

if she heard her husband discussing

with other officers what they intended

for Lexington and Concord.

As Gage recalls,

there were only a few people in that room

who knew what he intended to do.

They didn't even tell the soldiers.

Warren is a physician.

He's treating people on both sides.

That would give him unprecedented access

to somebody like Gage and also to his wife.

The evidence supporting this is entirely circumstantial,

so we don't have a smoking gun

pointing to Margaret Kemble Gage.

But when you consider the strength

of the circumstantial case here,

that is that Dr. Warren had to be 100% sure,

he had to have actual, hard military intelligence

that he could depend on.

Dr. Warren absolutely would've trusted

the wife of General Gage.

She may have given him other valuable information

in the past that proved true.

But the other part is he would've known

that her sharing that type of information

could have been a very real risk for her.

Warren would've protected her

as the source above and beyond all other sources,

because she was his direct line to what Gage was thinking.

And Warren never betrays that.

Warren never says who it is,

and I think all that does is point us straight back

at Margaret Kemble Gage as potentially being

the source of the information.

For centuries, there have been rumors

that the good doctor was having an affair with Mrs. Gage.

Now the doctor was known to be young,

handsome, dashing, charismatic.

He was 33, she was 40,

seven year age difference,

but that is much closer in age

than the 40 to 56 age difference

between Mrs. Gage and her husband.

So there might've been some compatibility there.

If they were indeed having an affair,

they would've had regular contact.

She would've been someone not only who he trusted

but had knowledge that could be trusted.

While there's never been any hard evidence

to prove that she was an informant to Dr. Warren,

she had expressed sympathies

towards the Patriot cause multiple times.

Mrs. Gage remarks that she hopes

her husband will never be

the instrument of sacrificing the lives of her countrymen.

So this is showing this American leaning

that she still maintains

despite being married

to the most powerful British man in America at this point.

What happens when you discover that your wife is a traitor?

Well, chivalry probably prevents you from revealing this,

not only bring dishonor to your wife,

but to you as well.

Not long after the disastrous incursion

into Lexington and Concord,

Mrs. Gage and all of her belongings are

put on a ship back to England.

It would've made him look bad

to have a wife who was betraying him,

and so it would be better for him and for her

to just ship her off to England.

This was common practice,

that British officers sent their wives back to England

during the conflict.

And others note that far from being estranged,

when Gage returns to England,

they give birth to three more children.

Margaret Gage never came back to America,

nor did she ever claim credit

for any role she might have played in the revolution.

Since the end of the Revolutionary War,

historians have been trying to identify

Dr. Joseph Warren's secret source,

the person who informed him

that the British were about to attack.

Many historians still believe

that it was Margaret Kemble Gage that provided

the information to Dr. Warren,

but some have questioned this

because of the absence of truly compelling proof.

It's a circumstantial case.

There were also people who would provide

information to you if you paid them for it,

and many believed that it was cold, hard cash

that got that information.

The idea that Dr. Warren employed

a paid informant appears

in a largely overlooked historical account

of the Revolutionary War,

written in the late 1700s

by a man named Jeremy Belknap.

Jeremy Belknap is a respected clergyman and historian.

During the Revolutionary War,

he decides to follow a group of New Hampshire soldiers

to try to write the history of the war firsthand.

Jeremy Belknap begins collecting

firsthand accounts from people

who eye-witnessed what happened in Lexington and Concord

on the day of the shot heard around the world.

And in the course of one of those conversations,

an interesting figure emerges,

a Mr. Waters.

This Mr. Waters seems to know

an awful lot about the events

leading up to the battle at Lexington,

including information about the identity

of the informant, who he refers to

as an individual kept in pay,

otherwise known as a paid informant.

Belknap just tells us about Mr. Waters.

He doesn't even give us a first name,

and Mr. Waters doesn't say who the informant was.

So the question then becomes

why was Mr. Waters in such a position of knowledge

about the intelligence information being fed

to Dr. Warren right before Lexington and Concord?

In order to try to determine

who Waters referred to as the informant,

we'd have to first figure out who Waters is.

In 2024, historian J. L. Bell publishes

an analysis of Belknap's diary

in which he identifies the man he believes is Mr. Waters.

Bell contends that Belknap wouldn't record

the name of somebody that didn't seem

like they were particularly well plugged in.

And the person who probably fits the bill best

is Josiah Waters Jr.

Now what we know about Josiah Waters

is that he was indeed plugged in.

In fact, he was cousins with Dawes,

who was one of the riders with Paul Revere on April 18th.

He's someone who would've known

a lot about what was going on during this time.

Josiah Waters was

a well-known captain of the militia

in the area around Boston.

He had worked with Dr. Warren.

He was also known and respected by Sam Adams.

Josiah Waters is connected to the Sons of Liberty.

He's one of their messengers.

He would be a credible source

from the Patriot side of things.

So after Bill was able to identify Mr. Waters,

who would potentially have been the tipster,

he then set to work to try to figure out

who the informant himself would've been.

During his research,

J. L. Bell learns that Josiah Waters had been collecting

stories for his own account of the war.

In that 1853 publication,

the informant was identified as a Mr. Jasper.

As Bell dug through the records,

he found one potential match,

a knife maker in Boston named William Jasper.

In addition to making knives and surgical instruments,

Jasper apparently makes weapons for the British.

In fact, he boards a British soldier in his home.

The 1853 account states

that this officer came to trust Jasper

and then confides in him on that fateful night

about the British march towards Lexington and Concord.

This is an early example of that old adage,

"Loose lips sink ships."

You've got a chatty British officer

who's willing to drop some important information.

There's probably people out there

who want to hear that

and may be willing to pay you to pass it along.

And so Jasper is then able to inform

Mr. Waters of the impending British attack.

So it's possible that they have

identified the paid informant.

After the Revolutionary War,

Jasper stays in Boston,

and this provides a noteworthy piece of evidence

that proves he may have been supportive

of the revolutionary cause

because, why else would he stick around

after the war was over?

Other historians have disagreed

with Bell's interpretation.

Jasper and his wife were not quartering

a highly placed British officer

so much as a junior company commander,

and as such, he may not have been privy

to particularly important information.

It's believed that Gage almost single-handedly

planned British operations at Lexington and Concord,

so this was not something that was widely known.

You would've had to have been not just in the inner circle,

but very close to its center to have overheard these plans.

So how is it that this lowly British officer knows

what so many others do not?

There are other historians who believe

that the story of the paid informant

is more or less camp gossip.

There's really no heavy duty evidence

that would say one way or the other

that the informant was paid.

So we're left with a wide variety of possible informants.

It might have been a spy,

it might have been a paid informant.

It might have been the general's wife,

but we just don't know

who Warren's key source of information might be.

Who informed Warren the British were coming?

It's believed that information from a clandestine source

led to the confrontation between Patriots and British soldiers

on Lexington Green in the Spring of 1775.

But this intel alone didn't spark the war.

The standoff between the two sides might have ended

peacefully, if not for a mysterious first gunshot.

The first shot that's fired there on Lexington Green,

we still don't know who fired it.

And it could simply be that this incident

is colored by something that we've come to know quite well,

and that is the fog of war.

There were many other Colonists milling about

Lexington Green that day,

many of them armed, some of them drinking,

especially around a building known as Buckman Tavern.

Colonists had gathered at the Buckman Tavern

where they were able to hide behind it, poke their guns out.

So on both sides, they don't know what's going on.

Everything's on razor's edge right now.

So it's not just the British regulars versus the militia.

You're kind of being watched on all sides.

Is someone gonna pop up from a window and shoot at you?

Who's your friend, who's your foe?

In short, it's anarchy.

Parker actually orders his men to disperse.

He does not have them show any signs of surrender

so much as just walk away

from a potentially volatile situation.

As men are screaming across Lexington Green at one another

and in the middle of all of that,

one musket shot is fired.

And there's complete bedlam.

More shots ring out as militiamen flee.

By the end of it, eight men

are laying dead on the field, all militia.

That initial gunshot will go down

as the start of the Revolutionary War.

Both sides will claim the other actually fired it.

Americans know how important propaganda is.

They know that they've gotta control the narrative.

So the Americans take eyewitness accounts

from over 100 people who were there,

and they all say that it was the British who fired first.

To understand the mindset

of the British officers and their men that fateful day,

some look to the long, all-night march

the troops made from Boston.

The British soldiers are annoyed

at the very necessity of this movement.

It's going to be a long day anyway you look at it,

it's 12 miles each way.

They're tired, they're probably hungry,

and now they're faced with something else.

Soldiers report hearing gunfire in the distance,

but what it is,

is members of the Patriot militia sending

signals to one another.

The British are now aware

that the Colonists know they're coming.

The calculus has changed.

The few British officers who did know what the plan was

were expecting to have the element of surprise

on their side.

Despite this, they continue on,

and as they approach Lexington,

they're hearing constant gunfire

and they're hearing church bells ringing.

A British lieutenant says

that before they even get to Lexington,

an American Colonist jumps out

from behind a stone wall and tries to shoot him,

but his gun misfires.

That is an indication that

they're about to engage in a violent confrontation

with people who are willing to fight and die.

The British soldiers are deeply frustrated

and that deep frustration could lead to a mistake.

The British officers hold the Colonists' militia

in complete and utter disdain.

When Pitcairn demands that the Americans throw down

their weapons and disperse,

there's an awful lot of them that seem

to just kind of sullenly stick around.

It's almost like they're daring Pitcairn

to actually take action.

So from Pitcairn's perspective now,

you've given the orders to stand down.

They refuse, this could be seen as an act of escalation,

even an act of war,

something that you have to react to now.

Some sources even claim

that it's Pitcairn that fires that first pistol shot,

and some sources even record

that Pitcairn himself turned and said, "Fire, by God, fire."

But he profusely denies that he ever fired a shot.

He actually says he tried to restrain his men from firing.

British officers were trained for this sort of thing.

They were cool under fire.

They had command of their men.

Their men listened to them.

So going with this line of thought,

some believed that if indeed the British did fire first,

it wouldn't have been an officer.

It was someone much lower in the command

of Captain Pitcairn.

This isn't the first time that Colonists have faced

potentially hostile British troops.

The British soldiers understood what could happen.

They remember what happened at the Boston Massacre.

British forces in 1770 fire into a crowd of protestors,

wounding many and killing a number.

That the military would fire on civilians was

very real for the Colonists

and also very real for the soldiers.

Any British soldier at Lexington might

very well have fired out of panic,

out of fear, out of error,

or out of being threatened by an American Colonist.

The British regulars are

stepping into a complex and confusing situation.

Many of these soldiers had not been tested in battle.

The officers, yes, but the soldiers, no.

And what they encounter is

very unlike any of their training exercises.

The armies of Europe fight in a very orderly fashion.

With Lexington, you're in an urban environment.

There are people milling about on the periphery

who are also armed, some of them drunk.

It's an uneasy situation.

Clearly, in an environment like that,

it wouldn't take much for someone

to lose their composure.

It could be something as simple

as standing across the field from someone,

looking 'em in their eyes, and they twitch.

And the next thing you know, a shot's fired.

After the battles of Lexington and Concord

touch off the Revolutionary War,

the two sides are also fighting it out

in the court of public opinion.

The Colonists want to get word back to the British home isles

about the events at Lexington and Concord.

And in that account, they intend to paint themselves

as the helpless victims of British aggression.

The British don't want to seem like the aggressors either.

They also don't want to seem inept.

Like, how is it that you could have lost 273 men

to this army of farmers and laborers?

The Patriots quickly collect and package together

dozens of affidavits.

All of them named the British as the aggressor.

Captain Parker claims that it was

the British who fired

without any provocation whatsoever at the Patriots.

General Gage sent regular dispatches back

to London, and he didn't see any reason to rush

the next messages being sent back,

whereas the Patriots were very primed and ready

to send their messages on the fastest ship

that was headed back to London.

Unfortunately for the British,

the American news gets there first

and spreads like wildfire.

The British are the ones who are the aggressors.

The regulars fired first.

Of course, the Colonists couldn't have fired first

because Captain John Parker said they didn't fire.

The American Colonists score

an initial propaganda victory.

The initial accounts that appear in English newspapers

suggest that, effectively,

British troops marched to Lexington,

opened fire on a group of unarmed Colonists,

marched onto Concord and did the same,

and provoked an uprising in the process.

The American account includes

a statement from British Lieutenant Edward Gould,

who was held as a prisoner

after the events at Lexington and Concord.

Lieutenant Edward Gould

says that although a captive,

he's being treated with the greatest of humanity.

Gould also says that he doesn't know who shot first.

Skeptical historians point out

that the testimony of British POW Lieutenant Gould

could easily have been coerced by his Patriot captors.

An historian named Derek Beck publishes

that Gage interviewed almost everyone

that was under his command that participated

in Lexington and Concord.

And on the basis of those interviews,

it provides a very compelling case

that it wasn't the British who opened fire first,

but rather it was the Colonists.

Beck bases a lot of his conclusions

on the fact that the British testimonials were

remarkably consistent about a lot of events.

The British soldiers readily admitted

that when they got to Concord,

they fired first, against orders.

Beck questions then,

well, if they were quick to admit

how they fired first at Concord later in the day,

why would they not admit to firing first at Lexington

earlier in the day?

However, if the Patriots opened fire first,

why would they do that?

What fool would open fire

on a force that outnumbers you so powerfully?

Historians, including Beck,

suggest that first shot could easily have been

an accidental discharge.

The Patriot militia didn't have

the type of training you find in a professional army.

Their weapons were not properly maintained.

These were weapons that had been stored in men's homes.

So you've got a pistol or a musket primed and ready to fire.

So any number of things could have caused a misfire.

Just off the Green is Buckman Tavern.

The men are gathering there,

preparing for this British force to come up,

and some soldiers may have had too much to drink.

When they assemble on Lexington Green,

some of them might have been less cautious

than they normally would.

Some of them might have been more passionate.

Alcohol does that to people

and as a result of inebriation, maybe they made mistakes.

With all of these factors, inexperience,

drunkenness, anger, fear,

it's very easy to assume

that an American could have fired first.

It's also totally possible

that the militiaman with his musket pre-primed

could have accidentally fired a shot

and all hell broke loose.

Even some of the British who claimed

that the Colonists fired first

believed that the firing was accidental.

The fact that the colonial militias scattered

after that shot provided some very compelling evidence

to them that the shot may not have been intentional.

Some experts suggest

that the Patriots' weaponry itself

may also have played a role.

The unintentional discharge may have resulted from

a firearm that was not adequately cleaned,

a firearm that was not in functional condition.

Maybe somebody was monkeying around with the hammer

on their weapon and they allowed the hammer to fall.

The way that the trigger mechanism worked

is a flintlock system.

So you would've had a hammer,

and on that hammer it would have

a little, small piece of flint.

The flint would fall, striking the pan.

It creates a spark and the spark ignites the gunpowder,

which fires the bullet.

If the hammer is cocked and then accidentally dropped,

that can cause a discharge.

If you've ever heard the term "going off half-cocked,"

it's a reference to a weapon accidentally discharging.

There are others who speculate

that it wasn't an accidental discharge,

that it was a deliberate shot.

250 years after the Battle of Lexington,

Buckman Tavern still stands on the Green

in the center of town.

The place where patriot militiamen spent hours awaiting

a British attack has not changed much

in two and a half centuries.

Buckman Tavern still stands to this day.

It is now a museum,

and it's one of the only original buildings

that stood at Lexington Green

during the time of the attack in April of 1775.

But Buckman Tavern might be more than just a monument.

It could be that it holds

the key to one of the great mysteries of American history:

who fired first at Lexington.

Many of the British accounts claim

that the shot came from the American side,

but not from the militia.

Rather, it was fired from a large house next to a church,

which would only be Buckman Tavern.

It's not hard to believe that someone might have taken

a shot from Buckman Tavern towards the British.

Behind Buckman Tavern is

a stone wall that still stands today.

There may have been somebody

on the other side of that wall

not assembled with the formation under Parker

in the middle of Lexington Green,

who fired that shot from the sidelines on purpose,

because he wanted war.

By 1775, many Colonists were radicalized by decades

of what many believed to be oppressive British rule.

Just because Captain Parker gave the men

this order not to open fire,

it doesn't mean that they all obeyed it to the letter.

As historian Derek Beck puts it,

the Green was surrounded by hostile, armed,

and possibly drunk Colonists.

You've been drinking in the tavern

with lots of your friends.

You kind of have beer muscles now.

You're thinking this might be a good idea

to stick one to the British.

In that circumstance,

where you believe that war is inevitable,

maybe at least one person decides

that they're gonna start the war on their own terms.

The British story of a lieutenant being

potentially shot at by an American Colonist

during the march to Lexington

could have resulted in the first shot of the war

if it weren't for a faulty musket.

It certainly calls into question

this idea that maybe the men that were under Captain Parker

were the more rational and reasonable men,

and that the countryside was

full of other people who were ready to start this war.

In the 18th century, it would've been very popular

for someone to step forward and say,

"I was the one who took the first shot."

You'd think that the person who did this

would want to take credit for it.

People are constantly taking credit

for all sorts of deeds they never did in this war.

No one's come forth and said

that they took the first shot at the Battle of Lexington.

And so that adds more mystery to this already deep mystery.

In 1825,

in celebration of the 50th anniversary

of the start of the revolution,

new depositions are taken

from Patriot veterans of that fateful day in Lexington.

They all stick to their story that the British fired first.

Now interestingly, there is an account that says

that it was a Patriot who fired

from the side, from Buckman Tavern.

Now, whether that's true

or had been influenced by storytelling

that had built up around this mythical moment

in American history, we'll never know.

I'm stunned in 1825 somebody didn't try

to take credit for it.

On the other hand, the individual that fired

the first shot might very well have perished

in the fighting of the entire Revolutionary War.

The historian David Hackett Fisher will go on

to point out that it could be

that a number of shots were fired

almost at the exact same time.

And that the various reporters who recorded

personal accounts of the incident,

they told their truth, and that to them, it seemed

like it came from the British side,

or it came from the Colonists' side.

That is why we are now left

with this pile of personal accounts

that cannot be reconciled against one another.

To this day, the towns of Lexington and Concord

argue about who should be given credit

for the shot heard 'round the world.

Citizens of Lexington say,

"Well, of course it should be us,

because the first shot was indeed fired at Lexington."

But people in Concord say,

"No, no, no," because the famous poem,

"Shot Heard Round the World" by Ralph Waldo Emerson,

was written about Concord.

There is a big fight

at the Old North Bridge in Concord

during which Patriots push the British back.

In 1836, an obelisk is put there to memorialize the action

and a poem is written

as a part of the dedication of that obelisk.

And it includes the words

"the shot heard round the world".

But the first shot of the American Revolution

was fired at Lexington.

To this day, researchers continue to search

archives for new evidence

that might shed light on that initial gunshot in Lexington

and the other mystery of the battle,

who informed the Patriots

that the British were coming?

250 years later, they're still

some of the most intriguing unanswered questions

from America's origin story.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.