The "Rude Bridge" of historical note is next to Emerson's house. The Minuteman Statue is obscured in the photo by those walking over the arch. And Thoreau's Walden Pond is walking distance away, in the direction that our sons are looking as they ponder a dive into the icy waters.

July 11, 2026 / 0 comments

The Shot Heard Round the World

But Egypt will be desolate,
    Edom a desert waste,
because of violence done to the people of Judah,
    in whose land they shed innocent blood.

  • Joel 3:19

“As the British occupied Boston, General Horatio Gates took out after Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were sequestered in Pastor Clark’s farmhouse. Late on April 18, Paul Revere galloped in with news the British were coming. Adams and Hancock turned to Clark and asked if the people of Lexington would stand up to the invaders. The pastor replied, ‘I have trained them for this very hour. They will fight and, if need be, die under the very shadow of the house of God.’
“The village awoke, and the seventy or so men mustered at the church. As the sky turned from black to gray, hundreds of scarlet uniforms appeared. For a moment the two sides were frozen in silence. Then a gun fired-the shot heard round the world. After the battle seven of Pastor Clark’s members lay dead under the windows of the church. Their innocent blood drenched the ground.
“’The teachings of the pulpit of Lexington,’ it was said, ‘caused the first blow to be struck for American Independence.’
“A year later, on the first anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, Clark preached a sermon from Joel 3:19-21, a passage in which the prophet condemned the nations of Egypt and Edom because they had attacked Judah and ‘shed innocent blood’ in the land.”

  • Robert J. Morgan, 100 Bible Verses That Made America

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
    And fired the shot heard round the world.”

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn

In my recent trip to visit the grandchildren, the oldest of them went with me to Nashville, to sell used books and games.  One of the books that I purchased in return was 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan.  As we approach the 250th anniversary of the birth of the USA, I thought I would do a condensed mini-series on some of these verses, four posts per week for a few weeks – maybe not all 100 verses.

When he preached his sermon a year later, it was still a few months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, many years before the war was won.  But Pastor Jonas Clark preached that these young men were simply defending their rights and their property.  Thus it was innocent blood that was shed.

But the book speaks of this being the shot heard round the world.  The phrase may have alluded to the media around the world carrying the news that the American Revolution had begun.  But it was put on paper in the Concord Hymn a year after the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

There had been a battle in Lexington a month earlier where eight Americans were killed, and one British soldier was wounded.  And the battle at Lexington was fought as the British advance toward Concord, where the British had heard Samuel Adams and John Hancock were staying.  But details never stopped a fin poet in mixing the facts a little.

Emerson paints a picture that the Americans stood on one side of the “rude bridge”, otherwise known as the Old North Bridge.  In the photo above, you cannot see the minuteman statue.  The arch of the bridge hides the statue, as it hid the minutemen awaiting the coming British army.

As the British marched onto the bridge, they did not see the Americans until they were in range to be gunned down.  Thus, while the minutemen in Lexington provided protection for Adams and Hancock, they also slowed down the advance of the British to Concord.

To my left as I took this photo, there is the Old Manse.  Emerson’s grandfather had lived there, watching the battle from the manse window, and Ralph Waldo Emerson lived there while writing the Concord Hymn.  Further to the south and east, basically across a major highway into modern Concord, back toward Lexington, is Waldon Pond, made famous by Henry David Throeau, who was a student of sorts under Emerson.

While much of the area is built up, the place where Paul Revere was captured by the British, between Lexington and Concord, is carefully preserved.  It is just outside the security fence from an Air Force Base or was at the time we lived in the area.  Walden Pond is a park.  And the Old Manse and the rude bridge are preserved.  As for the minutemen, only one remains, standing at the ready.  The statue was erected in 1874.

So, we could argue as to which shot was the first to start the American Revolution.  There is debate as to who fired first.

But in the minds of the colonists, the British government was depriving them of their rights and the tyranny that resulted kept the colonists from worshipping God as they had intended when they sailed to the New World.

And in their minds, it was innocent blood that was shed beneath the windows of the church in Lexington and at the rude bridge at Concord.

It is odd how I was disappointed that the Army had stationed me in Watertown, MA, a little over 200 years after these events, but now I start to see how even this hardship gave life and memories to this writing.  What hardship?  Living in an apartment made from the hayloft in the stables of an old arsenal, less than 500 square feet, and all my job interviews were in the South.  Not much hardship at all, but it felt irritating at the time.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.

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