Historian Dr. Glenn F. Williams addresses the events that led to, and the outbreak of, the armed conflict known as the Revolutionary War. Starting with resistance to British colonial policies that Americans perceived as arbitrary and violations of their liberty, and efforts to seek a redress of grievances, the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was declared to be in a state of rebellion by the British government. As a provisional shadow government prepared for a potential war against the British military occupation, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, commander in chief of his Majesty’s forces in North America and royal governor of Massachusetts, sent an expedition to destroy or confiscate arms, ammunition and military stores, and possibly capture patriot leaders, at Concord. On the morning of April 19, 1775, an encounter between American militia and British regulars on the village green in Lexington ignited what became the War for American Independence and led to the creation of the U.S. Army.

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