 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this forum focused on two of the most consequential yet often understated years in our nation's history, 1774 and 1775. Before we get to our program, I'd like to tell you about two other upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Wednesday, November 18th at 3 p.m. we will partner with the Capitol Jewish Museum to present a panel discussion on Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Social Justice. And on Thursday, November 19th at noon, author Barnes Carr will discuss his recent book, The Linen Plot, the untold story of America's midnight war against Russia. To keep informed about events throughout the year, please check our website, archives.gov. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. Another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports the work of the agency, especially its education and outreach programs. Check out their website, archivesfoundation.org to learn more about them and join online. As we know, revolutions do not spring from a vacuum, but out of years of foment, debate and skirmish. Too often we study signature turning points in history, the storming of the Bastille, the fall of Dien Ben Phu, the battle of Lexington and Concord to the detriment of the events leading up to them. We are pleased this evening to join with the Concord Museum to celebrate the opening of its new April 19, 1775 permanent exhibit and the launch of its new shot heard around the world website. Our primary speaker tonight is Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlan Alger Professor, Emerita of American History at Cornell University. Professor Norton's new book, 1774, The Long Year of Revolution, is born out of her dissertation and first book, The British Americans, The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774 to 1789, which was published in 1972. And she thus encouraged all of us to finally write the book that has been ruminating in our minds since the early days of our professional lives. In that interim, Professor Norton enjoyed a legendary career at Cornell University, where she was the first woman ever to teach in the Cornell History Department. She founded the university's women's studies program and has written a number of award-winning books about women's history across the 17th century, including Founding Mothers and Fathers, Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society. In the Devil's Snare, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, and Liberty's Daughters, The Revolutionary Experience of American Women. Her newest book looks at the critical months between the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 to the days just before the first battles of April 1775 and demonstrates that the founding era is not one in which everyone agreed. It's a pleasure to welcome tonight's moderator back to the National Archives. Tom Putnam is the former director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and served as the acting director of the Office of Presidential Libraries before he chose to abandon the 20th century, having been wooed by the siren song of Congress reformers, transcendentalists and revolutionaries. He's a good friend and his contributions to the nation's presidential library system remain manifold. Let me conclude by expressing our appreciation to our other co-sponsors, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the America 250 Foundation, and the United States Semi-Quincentennial Commission. After the hour-long forum to discuss Professor Norton's new book, representatives from those institutions will speak as part of the launch of the Concord Museum's new shot heard around the world website. Now that's here for Mary Beth Norton and Tom Putnam. Thank you for joining us today. Good evening, everyone. Thank you. I'm coming to you from Concord, Massachusetts, and Mary Beth Norton from Cornell or from Ithaca in New York. And we are very pleased to be here. I want to first of all thank David Ferriero and my former colleagues at the National Archives for hosting tonight's event and helping us with the national launch of our new microsite in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Humanities, America 250 and the U.S. Semi-Quincentennial Commission. But before we do that, I am honored to have this conversation with Professor Mary Beth Norton. There really could be no better setup for our new online account of the Battle of Lexington and Concord than her new book, 1774, The Long Year of Revolution. And when I was a federal employee, I was trained by NARA's in-house legal counsel that I couldn't endorse commercial enterprises. But since I now work for a nonprofit, I can urge you all to go out to your bookstore and truly nothing would say Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanzaa better to your loved ones than a copy of this book. Professor Norton, as the archivist just said, the book stems from your dissertation, which you and your first book that you wrote in 1972. Tell us what brought you back to this theme and what is it that you hope that readers will get out of the book. Well, what brought me back to it was the fact that no one had done it. I got this idea for a book that about 1774, because of my dissertation on the loyalists, I realized that 1774 was critical in the development of the loyalist identity. And so I really thought this was going to be my second book. But then I got interested in women's history and went highing off for a long time. And since at the end of that period when I was doing all these books on women's history, no one had done this book. So I thought, OK, now I'll do it. Now you write that much of our understanding of the revolution is teleological. So perhaps you can describe, define what that term means and how you try to avoid that pitfall in this book. Yes. One of the things I realized in all the years that I've taught the American Revolution and read about the American Revolution is that the authors who write about the revolution do so knowing how the story came out. That is, and that's teleological. You write a story from the standpoint of knowing what the end of it is. And what you're trying to do is to explain that end. You're not trying to really reproduce what was going on at the time. And what I wanted to do or what I want my readers to do is to forget that they know how this story came out. What I want to do is to put them in the middle of the political discourse of 1774, not knowing what's going to happen. Being in a time of great uncertainty and turmoil and trying to understand and come to terms with this, what seems to be changes in their relationships to the British Empire, which they had always been loyal to. Yes. So that was my next question. So describe how they were feeling in 1773. And then what happens by the end of 1774, the beginning of 1773. I think it's very hard to find someone, not even someone as we know as radical as Samuel Adams, who would not say that they were a loyal member or a loyal subject of the British Empire. But by the end of 1774 and the first month of 1775, that had changed completely. There were all kinds of people who were beginning to think about independence. And I argue in the book that people, ordinary people were in effect voting with their feet. And by that, I mean they were not obeying the British Empire anymore. They were not obeying the Royal Governors. They were instead obeying the decrees of the Continental Congress. And it frustrated the Royal Governors tremendously. Now, the book is full of action and drama. There's shipwrecks and powder alarms. But you talk about what your main focus is on political discourse and the debates that we're raging. Tell us more about that. Yeah. I really wanted to recapture what people were arguing about. I think too often we think that the American Revolution was begun by a large number of people. Certainly the majority of the population. And there were a few sort of nasty loyalists hanging out there, maybe opposing what was going on. But there was a major consensus. And I wanted to show that there was no particular consensus that people in 1774 were arguing about politics the same way we argue about politics today. And I wanted to get my readers in the middle of those arguments and to understand all facets of them, not just what the radicals thought, which is what most people write about in this period. But rather what the moderates thought, what the conservatives thought, and without an eye to how those people ended up in the loyalist versus revolutionary divide. Because I discovered that some people who supported the British early on ended up in the revolutionary camp and some people who opposed the British early on ended up in the loyalist camp. And describe to us how you do your research. So a book like this doesn't just write itself. How did you come upon your discovery? I went to libraries in England and America all over the United States to historical societies to the Huntington Library in San Reno, California. I spent a lot of time at the old public record office now known as the National Archives in London. I went to the British Library. And I went to lots of university libraries and local historical societies that have ended up with correspondence, unpublished correspondence from the period. I also spent a month at the Huntington Library reading every political pamphlet published in the future United States between the fall of 1773 and April of 1775, which was an extremely interesting thing to do. And there's geographic diversity in your account. Tell us a little more about that. Well, I wanted not to just to focus on Massachusetts, even though I know I'm talking for the Concord Museum tonight. That's all right. We'll forgive you. I wanted to tell the story of all the colonies. And so every colony from Maine South to Georgia is in the book. And even though, yes, Massachusetts is there, of course, but much of the book is about arguments in Philadelphia and New York and partly Virginia and a great deal about Georgia. Georgia turns out to be extremely interesting. Well, tell us a little bit. Don't leave us there. Georgia is politically interesting in today's world too. Yes, that's true. What was particularly interesting back then? What was particularly interesting is that there was one printer in other colonies. There were more. There was more than one printer in Georgia. There was one printer. He was based in Savannah and he was the only printer. And so he basically printed both sides. He printed pamphlets and broad sides, both for and against resistance to the British. And in the end, Georgia actually was the only one of the 13 colonies that did not send representatives to the First Continental Congress and also even to the Second Continental Congress. Well, we'll get to the Continental Congresses in a minute. I should remind our viewers that we're taking questions. I'll try to weave them throughout, but you can send them in by using the chat feature on YouTube. And then those will come to me and I'll ask your questions. So in terms of the fascinating historical references, you come upon this poem. I'll read it to you and then you can comment on when, how you found it and why it was so fitting. It's from the New York Journal on August 18th, 1774. And it's the first words of the book. It's a poem, come, come my brave boys, from my song, you shall hear, that will crown 74 a most glorious year. How did you stumble upon such a poem? Well, I was just reading the New York Journal. The New York Journal was the mouthpiece of the radicals in New York City at the time. And so it was the kind of place one might expect to find something like this. But I joke about the fact that that poem, which says that 1774 is critically important, is the kind of thing a historian would have to invent if you hadn't found it. But of course I found it, so I didn't have to invent it. And the poem goes on and on. Actually, I quote the entire many verses of the poem at the very end of the book. But it just went to show me that I was not wrong in thinking that 1774 was critical because people at the time thought it was critical. So again, we want to advertise the book and for people to go and buy it in the bookstore of it. First, tell us, David Ferrier was already kind of suggested, but what do you mean by the long year of revolution, which is the subtitle? It's about the year 1774. But for me, the year 1774 starts in really October of 1773 when the tea ships sent by the East India Company under the terms of the Tea Act adopted by Parliament in the spring of 1773 when they leave for America. And it ends basically the day before Lexington and Concord, the day before the battles. And that's why I call it the long year. It's really a 16 month year. So we're going to do our best to do that sweep of 16 months in the next half an hour. And we're going to start with tea. And again, why don't you explain what the image of this artifact on the cover of your book is? The little bottle on the cover is it has a statement written on it or written on in paper on it that unfortunately you really can't read on the cover. But what it says is that the bottle is full of tea that was picked up from the shore of Dorchester the day after the Boston Tea Party. So it's a critical artifact. It's at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I know you noted in the book you credit one of your colleagues for when did it become known as the Boston Tea Party. And so when do we think that label was written? Yeah, it was 1820. Oh, it doesn't say that. That doesn't say that. But it was picked up after the on the shore. Yeah, the Boston Tea Party is just a shorthand for talking about what was called at the time the destruction of the tea and which I call it all always in the book. I don't accept to explain that the term the Boston Tea Party first appeared in a newspaper in 1826, which was found by my colleague at Cornell, Larry Glickman, who investigated consumer boycotts. Great. So if you can describe briefly what did the Tea Act do and why were the columns so upset about it? What the Tea Act did was contrary to what we tend to think, we tend to think it raised the price, raised the taxes on tea. No, it did not do that. It lowered the taxes on tea. So why were people complaining about lower taxes? They were complaining about lower taxes because they objected to being taxed by Parliament. They really did believe in no taxation without representation, which to them meant that only colonial legislatures could tax them. And the tax, let me bond the colonists for on the import of tea by Parliament, even though it was lowered was something that the colonists were opposed to. Now, I might add here that the colonists were notorious tea smugglers. And it's clear, even though we can't really study smuggling very clearly, because of course the whole point of it was to conceal what they were doing, we do know that colonists were drinking a great deal of smuggled tea in the period just prior to the Boston Tea Party. And so therefore, the whole idea behind the Tea Act was that if Parliament lowered the tax on legal tea, then that legal tea might be able to compete in price to smuggle tea, which the colonists were drinking in the hundreds and thousands of pounds, and meanwhile only drinking legal tea in the hundreds or thousands of pounds, but at least from the customs records. You describe in the book that the East India Tea Company was close to going bankrupt and members of Parliament were stock... Stockholders, yes indeed. Parliament did not want the East India Company to go bankrupt because many of them were stockholders in the company, right? And it wasn't, of course, just tea. They imported all legal things from China to the British Empire, like textile things. So again, I highly recommend it's the first chapter of the book, and we'll go through it with so much more material. So there's seven ships that head out. We know that three come to Boston and get ransacked is what we know is the destruction of the tea or the Boston Tea Party. And in Philadelphia and New York City, they don't even let the ships into the harbor. That's the way they solve the problem. But tell us, I've kind of very interesting what happens in Charleston, South Carolina, and then we'll talk about Cape Cod. Do Charleston first? Yeah, well Charleston is fascinating because I didn't know until I worked on this book that the tea ship arrived in Charleston at basically the same time the tea ships arrived in Boston. And in fact, Boston and Charleston were dealing with tea simultaneously. So in the first chapter, my narrative goes back and forth between the two places almost week by week talking about what the two towns are doing differently. What happened in Boston is that people reached consensus pretty quickly. That is to prevent the tea from landing and destroying it if you had to. In Charleston, they couldn't make up their mind. They had meeting after meeting, sometimes big meetings, sometimes little meetings. And in the end, they sort of threw up their hands and they colluded with the customs officers in confiscating the tea. And you write that they actually sell the tea two years into the war and actually make some money to support the war? Yes, eventually they did that. Yes, I didn't find that out. Someone else did. James Fichter. I'll give a verbal footnote to James Fichter at the University of Hong Kong who is working on a book on tea in this period. And he discovered the ad in the South Carolina Gazette that two or three years later that indicated the tea was going to be sold. And then tell us about the fascinating thing on Cape Cod. Well, to me that was one of the most interesting things in part because I spend my summers on Martha's Vineyard. And so, and was able to go to visit the site of what happened because what happened was the fourth ship bound for Boston wrecked on Cape Cod. Wrecked on a sandbar pretty much south of Race Point, southeast of Race Point and the and led to some of the tea ending up on Cape Cod. While some of the most of it was set up to Boston to the British headquarters. The tea that ended up on Cape Cod ended up causing an enormous problem on the Cape. I will not go into it and ready great detail. Let's just say they were competing town meetings. As everybody argued whether the tea could be sold or not. And in the end, amazingly enough, the people on the Cape decided that it could be sold. And so it's actually the only tea of all those seven ships that was actually sold in America in 1774. In the spring of 1774. So we're moving sequentially to the aftermath of the tea party. And we want to look at the British response back in England and then the various colonies response. But let's start with how did the British and the heart of Parliament respond to the destruction of the tea? Well, the ministry was very upset and proposed to Parliament that that the Boston Port be closed, which they did decide to do. So the Boston Port Act declared that the Port of Boston would be closed to all trade except for food and fuel until the tea was paid for. And the Boston only found out about that on the 10th of May 1774. And the port was to be closed on the 1st of June 1774, which as you can imagine led to enormous difficulty in Massachusetts in Boston as people tried to arrange their lives around basically a two and a half week notice that the Port of Boston was going to be closed. So the Boston Committee of Correspondents then asked all the other colonies to join in a immediate boycott of all British trade of all British goods, both imported goods and exported goods from the colonies. But other people were not so happy about this. There was a lot of upset. Many people criticized Boston, including Benjamin Franklin, who was in London at the time representing Massachusetts for what they had done for the destruction of the tea. And so Boston did not, in fact, get everybody behind them as they wanted. I mean, we tend to think that everybody said, hooray Boston about the team destruction, but in fact that was completely incorrect. And I appreciate the anecdote you tell about George Washington and the quote we hear, but we don't hear the full quote. Yes. Well, George Washington, when he heard about the Port Act, wrote rather famously, the cause of Boston is now the cause of all America. But what people don't usually quote is the parenthesis after that, which is not that I approve of their destruction of the tea closed parentheses. And that's pretty typical of the attitudes of people elsewhere outside of Boston and even in Boston, for that matter, because there were people who stepped forward to say, OK, I will contribute money to help pay for the tea so the port can be opened again. Two thoughts go through my head. And one is just contemporary relevance that many people today are in favor of protest, but not when they cross the line to the destruction of private property. Exactly the same thing. And I found that in all kinds of other instances, too, in the book, that is, when private property was destroyed, there was always a lot of criticism of it, even from people who supported the protests. And then I also smiled because, you know, this is so an ongoing rivalry between the city of Boston and the city of New York. And even at that time, the city of New York was controlled more by merchants. And they were, again, more opposed to this notion of the destruction of private property and non consumption because it would hurt their waltz. Yes. New York was very sharply divided in this period over supporters and opponents of resistance to Britain and to the Boston Port Act. I mean, when, because in addition to the Boston Port Act, the British sent a new military governor to Boston, General Thomas Gage. And he, because he had difficulty finding workers, civilian workers in Boston, he often turned to New York for help, but that became very much a topic of political disagreement in New York as groups developed to try to coerce merchants and workers in New York, not to go to Boston to help out the British. And this notion of coercion, another one of your findings that I found quite interesting is what you tell us, which side was more in favor of freedom of the press? It's not what I would have thought. No, what was the people who were loyalists who later ended up being loyalists were much more in favor of freedom of the press than were the revolutionaries. John Adams, for example, famously, when his pamphlet, Novanglis, were his essays, Novanglis essays that he wrote in early 1775, basically said there is no right to dissent against the, he called it the Constitution of the country. Right. And the loyalists were the major arguments about the fact that their ideas were being suppressed and not taken seriously. Because in some ways the radicals wanted to have their way and wanted to hold sway and they were the ones who were suppressing dissent. So we're absolutely suppressing the dissents of the loyalists, right? And not just loyalists, but others. I mean, because as I say, the term loyalist doesn't develop until late in the year and it's used by a man, it's first used by a man who calls himself a loyalist. And you don't have that term until you have people who are perceived as openly disloyal. So I regard that as an important turning point. And then there's an effort to kind of throughout this period, you can tell me more when it's at its apex, but promoting non-consumption of tea and especially outreach to women. Tell us about those efforts and whether they were successful or not. Well, it's actually hard to know whether they were successful. They actually led to lots and lots of newspaper essays telling women they shouldn't drink tea. Some for political reasons, some for health reasons. There was a whole string of essays that said to women, don't drink tea because it'll be bad for your health and you will give birth to sickly children. Which women didn't really go for. Some of them wrote back to the newspapers and said, wait a minute, why don't just make a political argument about this. And of course they were aimed precisely at women because women were known and this is absolutely true to socialize over tea, whereas everybody did drink tea. I mean, the people drank tea for breakfast, they drank tea for lunch, they drank tea for dinner, but women socialized over tea in the middle of the afternoons. And that was sort of the cultural trope that was being advanced and talked about. It's very hard to know how successful all this was. I mean, there were public burnings of tea. For example, the students at Princeton held a public demonstration where they burned their tea. Now, does that mean they burned all the tea that they had tucked away in their rooms? Who knows? But they went out there and did it. I mean, I was particularly interested in the story of the town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, which had a public tea burning and invited everybody from Boston to come witness and then they served them booze while they were burning the tea. It turned into quite an alcoholic event. So the Port Act is followed by two other acts. Why don't you describe the first one, the Massachusetts Government Act. What did it do and what were other colonies' response to it? The Massachusetts Government Act changed the charter of Massachusetts. Massachusetts at the time was governed under a charter that had been developed in the late 17th century. Other colonies, for the most part, were under charters that were developed in the early 18th century and they had different provisions. Basically, the Massachusetts Government Act changed the charter of Massachusetts to give more power to the governor and to change the way the Massachusetts Council, which was the upper house of the legislature, was chosen. In most of the other colonies, the king appointed those people. In Massachusetts, those people were elected by the lower house. The governors had been complaining for years that they therefore could not use the members of the council as their wise advisors because they were actually in the thrall of the lower house. Basically, the Massachusetts Government Act responded to constant complaints that the governors of Massachusetts had had. Other colonies with other charters, some of them said, wait a minute, all they're doing is changing the Massachusetts charter to be like ours, so big deal. It doesn't make any difference. But then some people said, wait a minute, if Parliament can change the Massachusetts charter without consulting Massachusetts, then they could change our charter without consulting us. So that's not a good idea. So there was a real division in opinion about the Massachusetts Government Act. So we have our first question, and again, I'd like to weave them in as they come if they fit within the flow. So this is just a general question about percentages. Was there a way to say what percentage were radicals, what percentages were loyalists? Did you try to do any of that in your research? You can't do that in this period. It's impossible. And later on, people have done it for the revolution itself. And once the war starts, yes, and especially after it goes on, you can. And I'm a believer in a formula that was developed by Paul Smith, a longtime staffer at the Library of Congress and an excellent historian of the Revolution, who argued that in the long run, about two-thirds of the population was in favor of the revolution. About two-fifths of the population was in favor of the revolution. One-fifth of the population was opposed, and two-fifths went back and forth. Sometimes they said a plague on both your houses, or sometimes they went with one side or the other. And I think that's right. I don't mean to be too lighthearted or contemporary, but contemporary polling doesn't seem to be all that accurate either. Exactly. And especially not in this period, because what people are doing is they're arguing about different means of responding to British policies. It's not as though the issues were really clear, or as clear as they become retrospectively once the war starts. So we have the Massachusetts Government Act, and then you said there was an even stronger reaction to the Administration of Justice Act. Tell us what that did and why they called us reacted so strongly. This is an act that, in fact, I was very surprised, not surprised, but I was shocked when I saw the first reference to it in the letters I was reading. The colonists called it the Murder Act, and basically in brief what it did was to provide that if a colonial official or a military officer killed a colonist in the course of maintaining order, that person could be tried in England rather than in the colonies. In retrospect, what it could have done, an easy way to think about it is it could have moved the Boston Massacre Trial to London. And the colonists were extremely upset about this act. As I said a minute ago, there were defenders of the Massachusetts Government Act. I found no defenders of the Administration of Justice Act. I found future loyalists who wrote violently against the Administration of Justice Act. So it was a completely different thing. As I said, I never found any defender of the Administration of Justice Act at all the things I read. So again, we apologize to the audience that we have to move so quickly. But after these acts, they really do lead up to the First Continental Congress. But the point that I found most interesting there is the initial impetus was really more of the conservatives or those trying to find a way to have conciliation with the British Parliament. But is that an accurate reading? Yes, that's absolutely correct. Because remember I said that what the Bostonians wanted was an immediate boycott of all British trade. The response from the more conservative and moderate colonists was, no, no, we want to talk about this first. We can't just join you in doing that in response to the Boston Port Act. And so over the summer of 1774, groups met all the way through the colonies to talk about it. And they named delegates to the First Continental Congress. But it was basically people from Connecticut and from New York that said, we really got to talk about things. We have to have a continent. We have to have a Congress rather than just moving right ahead with opposition to Britain. And ultimately the people in Massachusetts had to exceed to that. They really didn't have any alternative. And in terms of whether or not to pay the East India Tea Company for their, for the tea that they had lost, the Continental Congress comes out on what side? The Continental Congress finally settles the debate, which goes on all year long basically until October. And the Continental Congress says, no, we're not going to reimburse the tea. We're not going to reimburse the company for the tea. But I found that it was fascinating that, for example, as late as July, someone as prominent ultimately in the revolution as John Dickinson proposed to the colony of Connecticut, I mean to Pennsylvania, that an offer be made to pay for the tea to the British in response for concessions that they would want. In other words, people were trying to use it. Dickinson thought it could be used as a bargaining chip. So it's not as though everybody thought, as again, back to the point that Boston was right to destroy the tea. And it was a topic of conversation. And even really after my book ends, it reminded, ended up being a topic of conversation. Benjamin Franklin sailing back from England to America even ruminated on the boat about what can we get something out of the British if we pay for the tea. So I want, since we're moving towards the battle of Lexington and Concord, I want to talk a little bit about armaments. So first, just briefly tell us about the powder alarm and what happened there and why it was consequential. Yeah, the powder alarm is kind of a rest rehearsal for Lexington and Concord because Governor Gage decided to take the colonies gunpowder out of a powder magazine in Charlestown. And what it, although it was a fairly simple thing to do, it gave rise to wild rumors in the effect that six men had been killed while the soldiers came to take the gunpowder away. Also that the governor had been confiscating privately owned gunpowder as well as the colony, as well as simply taking the colonies gunpowder because both colony, both public and private gunpowder was stored in that same powder magazine. And then finally, a viral rumor spread through Connecticut that the town of Boston was being bombarded by the naval vessels in the harbor. And so the upshot was that thousands of men rallied from the countryside in the defense of Boston joined on the Cambridge Common and were prepared to move on until the Boston Committee of Correspondence came out and said, wait, it's all a rumor. It didn't happen. Nothing happened. Go home. And so they did. But meanwhile, the people in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress got the story. Interestingly enough, John Adams and others questioned it. They were skeptical. They really didn't think it had happened and they were right. But they actually talked about doing something like moving the Continental Congress to Rhode Island so that they could support the people in Boston if this was really true. But it wasn't. They were right. My last name is Putnam, and my family doesn't come up with anything too good in this story. Yes. It was in fact Colonel Israel Putnam who spread the false rumor throughout Connecticut and he actually was then chided by the Boston Committee of Correspondence. They sent him an angry letter saying, do not spread rumors. We will tell you what's right and only spread the news that we tell you is okay. I mean, you can understand it in the simple story of the boy who cried wolf that if there were too many of these, then when the alarm truly went out from Lexington and Concord, people might not have responded if they thought, you know, how do I know for sure. Right. But in this case, it was just this one time. Right. So you write that even before the First Continental Congress adjourned, Americans were seeking armaments in Europe and the British were frantically trying to stop them. I mean, there were attempts to try to bring canon over, just maybe describe how that happened and what the British tried to do to stop them. Yes. Well, one of the things I did in London was to read correspondence from the Foreign Office and I found letters from the British ambassador to the Netherlands frantically writing to London explaining that he was tracking American vessels trying to buy arms and ammunition in the Netherlands and so he called for assistance from the British Navy and they sent a ship over that basically played cat and mouse with this one particular vessel all around the waters around Amsterdam and forced him to stay, to unload his cargo. But then they found out that a lot of the cargo had been unloaded onto a Dutch vessel that was headed for the Dutch colonies in the West Indies which they could not control that. I mean, they could control, the Dutch could control ships bound for America but they couldn't control ships bound for the Dutch colonies and so, in fact, the Dutch colony in question was probably St Eustatius, the island now known as Stacia which was a major smuggling haven in the Caribbean and was a place that the Americans sent all kinds or the smugglers had been meeting for years not just tea but other items to smuggle items into the American colonies and this time it was arms and ammunition. And you, the British issue an order forbidding the export of arms and ammunition from Britain to the colonies that arrives and Providence, Rhode Island through incidents in Newport, Rhode Island and New London, Connecticut tell us about the one in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, what happens up there? Well, it was particularly interesting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire because the governor, well, first thing that happened was that Paul Revere arrived from Boston with the news of the order in council from George III that preventing the export of all arms and ammunition from Britain to the colonies for six months. That aroused the locals and they decided, the three or four hundred guys decided to overrun the local fort and to confiscate the gunpowder and muskets and everything there. I should add that the British had five soldiers there. They could not hold up to four hundred or so militiamen. But what I thought was most interesting about it was that the governor, the royal governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth told the local sergeant of the militia to go out and beat the drum on the corners which is the sign to muster the militia and he did that but he came back and he said no one mustered because basically the militia were the guys who had overrun the fort. And Governor Wentworth was just, well, he wrote to Lord Dartmouth that the strings of government failed me. There was nothing he could do but he was like all the governors in this period that is in late 74, early 75 who uniformly wrote to England saying to the British Ministry, saying to Lord Dartmouth, we're trying to control these people and we can't. They're not paying any attention to us and so it's actually better if we don't try because if we try it will just show up how impotent we are. He wrote, no jail would hold them long, no jury would find them guilty. And he was right. He issued a dramatic proclamation saying to all the residents of New Hampshire do not harbor these people, turn them over to the authorities. You'll all be in big trouble and nobody of course did anything. So we're moving now closer to 1775 and you show how the king proves himself to be unwilling to compromise British authorities as you just suggested or stymied in their efforts to restore a royal law and order. But you also write that Americans wrote private letters to their friends in Britain and what were they telling those friends? What they were telling those friends in Britain was it's all over. America will be seeking independence, will be resisting unless the British somehow change their tune. That is unless they come up with some kind of a compromise, there's not going to be an acceptable compromise. There's not going to be any compromise from here. We will not accept anything other than taxing ourselves and the other demands that we're making. And I thought that was fascinating. In fact, one of the things I found very interesting was that I found more surviving letters in the months of December 74 and January 75 than in any other period, any other month or two long period. And I assume that means that more people wrote. I mean, it doesn't mean I saw every letter written, but I do think that Americans generally, not just officials, were writing to their friends and it was saying things have to change. You're the one who has to change, not us. So again, we're being sponsored tonight in part by the American Semi-Quincentennial Commission and America 250. So this year, and I saw it also on YouTube, that you gave a talk on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, a live talk of all things before the pandemic hit. We had an event here. It was one of our last events of the week before we were closed down. So I do want to remind the audience that that is the major anniversary that we're celebrating the 250th anniversary this year of the Boston Massacre. But in your book, describe why those orations were important and you covered two of them, one in 74 and one in 75 and they have very different tones. Right. Well, Boston, after the massacre in 1770, Bostonians set up an annual commemoration of the event and they voted for and asked various men, prominent men, to give these talks. In March of 1774, it was John Hancock and one of the things that he did, in addition to reviewing the events of the massacre, which they always did, the speakers always did that and always basically led the audience to tears. We hear from the accounts that survived. One of the things that he did was to propose, in fact, a Continental Congress or in effect, he'd said it differently, but he proposed a meeting of all the colonies to talk about what to do. And of course, this is before he knew about what the Port Act was going to say. They didn't know anything about that at that point. In 1775, the speaker was Dr. Joseph Warren and he was far more militant. He also reviewed the history. He reviewed the massacre itself. He reviewed the history of New England, claiming as people in Massachusetts were want to do at the time that they owed nothing, that the settlers of Massachusetts owed nothing to the English whatsoever, that they'd done it all on their own, that they bought the land from the natives and that they did not have any support from England, which is a dubious claim, but that's another matter. And he basically said, we're under siege or we're being attacked and we need to be prepared to fight. And so it's very different from what the tone of Hancock's speech. I mean, you really do understand they're on the brink of war and they know that they're on the brink. They know they're on the brink of war. I mean, everybody in by January and February of 1775, they know they're on the brink of the war and they all say things like there's going to be war in the spring. Right. And they're right. So here's a question from the audience. How did the radicals come to carry the day and when the debate, when there was much inertia and resistance to their thinking? Well, it depends on what you mean by carrying the day and what the debate is. I mean, in a lot of ways, they didn't win the debate. I mean, they certainly didn't win the debate about immediate opposition to British authority. They had to give way to the consensus that everybody had to think things through. And I have to say that the people who are members of the First Continental Congress regarded that what they had done as being rather conciliatory and mild, it was the British who thought they weren't being conciliatory. And it was also some loyalists in the colonies who thought they weren't being very conciliatory. But they were hoping that they had laid out in the documents that they adopted some means of negotiation with the British. Dartmouth and the King were not the least but interested in those offers or what they were proposing. Right, so I'm never too interested in counterfactual questions, but did the moderates have any chance, in other words, had the King and Parliament not been so short-sighted in their thinking, do you think war could have been avoided? Yeah, it's always hard to know, but I think they're, you know, back, if I go back to John Adams' response after the Boston Tea Party and while they're waiting to hear what the British are doing, John Adams basically predicted that nothing much was going to happen, that there was going to be a pendulum and it was going to swing back and forth, and they were going to keep arguing for years, for months, certainly, and for years. And I think if the British had not been so heavy-handed in the way they dealt with the colonists, yeah, it's entirely possible that war could have been avoided, entirely possible. I'm not sure if you handle this question in your book, but the questioner asks, what can Professor Norton tell us about the derivation and use of the label America to describe the British colonies that became the United States? Yeah, that I can't tell you about. I can tell you about the use of American in the language of the, of 1773 and 1774, which is when, or my countrymen, one of the things I discovered is that in traditional colonial language, when people spoke of my countrymen, they meant other representatives of their colonies. But by the summer of 1774, when people spoke of my countrymen, they meant all the American colonies. It was a quite dramatic shift in the referent of the language. And so you can see the colonies beginning to come together in a way that they're not in 1773. Just in the use of this language, but America generally know I can't explain that. What are the intersections, if any, between your studies in women's history and this book? Yes, well, one of the things I do in this book is I talk a fair amount about what women are doing in the course of all of this. Alas, I didn't find as much as I would have liked, but I did find, for example, one woman who happens to be a relative of Abigail Adams instructing her nephew about how his loyalist proclivities are incorrect, and she's telling him how he's supposed to behave politically. And on other times, I found sources that I emphasized that make it clear that women were a part of the local dialogues on politics, even though they don't turn up. Women don't write the pamphlets. There is a satirical pamphlet that is supposedly written by a woman, which is a very clever pamphlet, and that uses a female persona to adopt a critical position on the Continental Congress. But most of the time, you don't see women's voices in the public prints. You do see them in some of the private correspondence that I use. So I did as much as I could with women. But I will say this. I became convinced while working on this book that one of the reasons, I mean, that men were taking charge of this and moving against things like consumer boycotts was that if you have a consumer boycott, women are key consumers and you have to involve them. But if the men are controlling things and they're the ones who are coercing the merchants, you don't need a consumer boycott because the merchants never get the stuff in the first place. So it's not there for the women to buy. So one could adopt a kind of a conspiratorial argument here, and I verge on it at a couple of points in the book. But I do think that men wanted to keep command of what was going on, and they didn't, for the most part, like what the women might have done. Because the women, I think, were going out and buying and drinking tea, regardless of what the men said. You have various advices from London in your book. Well, first, just describe why you chose to use that technique. Well, what I do in the book is I keep the book very tightly focused on North America. I don't admit, if other people who are watching this are familiar with other books on this period, they usually switch their analysis or their focus at some point to Britain, and they tell you in a chapter or two what's going on in Parliament. I didn't do that. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to keep the focus specifically on America, and so very much the information, and deal with only the information that the Americans were getting. And so every chapter has a short section called Advices from Usually London, which has in it letters or statements about what Parliament is doing. And that's basically how the Americans in the colonies learned what was going on. They didn't know the details about parliamentary debates. They didn't know that, and so I wanted to keep the focus always on what the Americans knew. And the story that we tell both in our new exhibit and in the microsite, of course, is how well-organized the local militia and Minutemen and the alarms. So it's so striking, again, to be January 27, 1775 or Dartmouth to General Gage, quote, the violences committed have appeared to me as the acts of a rude rabble without plan, without concert, and without conduct. And he's got it so wrong. And he thinks therefore that's why they should act quickly and there'll be no response. Right. Right. He thinks it's time to move. And Gage thinks it's time to move. He's already thought that. He was just waiting for the go-ahead from Dartmouth. And when that letter, that late January letter from Dartmouth arrives in mid-April, Gage in fact moves and sends the troops to conquer it. Right. So I want to end. I'll have you comment on this. Again, it proves the main thesis of your point. It's the epigraph from Dunlap's Pennsylvania packet. And it was printed in November 14, 1774. I'll read it and I'll let you reply. I must wish to live to hear the triumphs of the Jubilee in the year 1874 to see the medals, pictures, fragments of writings that shall be displayed to revive the memory of the proceedings of the Congress in the year 1774. Yeah, it's like the poem. I mean, when I found that I said, oh my God, this guy is talking about the centennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1876. I mean, I was just blown away by that statement. And he just got it two years too soon. And it was interesting because I thought maybe that it's anonymous. I have no idea who wrote it. I thought maybe it was written by Thomas Paine. But in fact, we know, because Paine's so famous, we know when he arrived in Philadelphia. And he didn't arrive until a couple weeks after that appeared. So he couldn't have written it. It's some local Philadelphian who wrote this. And it does speak towards independence. There's no question. And it was read at the time as speaking of independence. And it became very controversial for that reason. And I also have to say that I'm not the first person, the first historian to have read that particular essay. But nobody else ever commented on that sentence. I mean, it just blew me away that no one had ever commented on it because to me it just leapt out on the page. Again, it's like the poem. It's the kind of thing I would have had to invent if I hadn't found it. So I'm going to invite viewers to remain watching. We're going to switch in just a moment to the launch of the Concord Museum's new shot heard around the world website. But I'll give the last word to this segment of the program to you, Professor Norton. So again, what is the main takeaway that you would like our audience to leave with from this conversation this evening? The main takeaway is that Americans have argued about politics forever, and they certainly did so in 1774. And I really hope that people will understand that the revolution was not a done deal at all and that these disagreements were severe and critical, and ultimately Americans were able to arrive at a consensus that involved a majority of them. And it's a hopeful note to end on because we're very divided these days. And one hopes that the country harkens back to these founding ideals and that those inform the way we resolve the challenges that divide us today. Yes, and everyone listened to everybody else. I will say this. I mean, one of the things I really enjoyed doing was to reading the pamphlets that argued with each other and dealt with, and I talk at some length about how, for example, John Adams tried to argue against the loyalist Massachusetts pamphlets and vice versa. And it's really interesting to follow the dialogue and to see what each author chooses to talk about and not talk about because the silences are also important. Right, right. But you're right, they are at least talking to each other. But as I said, no one defends the murder act, which I find very telling. Nobody defended it. Well, Mary Beth Norton, thank you so much. And again, I'll do one last plug for the book. I hope you will go to your local bookstore. I suppose you can buy it online as well. But Mary Beth, thank you so much for joining us this evening. It was a pleasure talking with you. Sure, absolutely. And it's better to go to the local bookstore. Exactly. So you can leave the meeting and we're going to continue here on to the YouTube channel. And you can watch via the YouTube channel if you like. You can stay on too. OK, all right. So my thanks again to Mary Beth Norton and to all of you for watching and for joining us this evening as we now launch the Concord Museums, the Shot Heard Round the World Micro-site. One benefit of the pandemic is the ability for us to gather for programs like this one from the safety of our homes. This session is being recorded, so please share the link with others who can watch it at their leisure. The list of individuals responsible for us being here today is too long to enumerate, beginning with the embattled farmers whose ranks in our dynamic new Micro-site are found to include women, children, and ending, of course, with my dedicated and talented colleagues who so creatively chronicle their stories. But let me open these remarks by thanking tonight's host, the National Archives and Records Administration and my friend and mentor, David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States. I also want to give special thanks to John Parris-Piedi, who I will introduce in a moment the Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. During his tenure, the museum here has received the Landmarks History Grant and Teaching Institute on Henry David Ferriero, and more recently, an exhibit implementation grant for our new April 19th galleries, which we will preview in a moment. And lastly, I want to thank Brian Martin and all of his colleagues at the America 250 Foundation and the United States Semi-Quincentennial Commission, represented tonight by Commissioner Lucas Morell. We're proud to be just the second institution officially recognized by the Commission as an expression of the America 250 vision to inspire the American spirit. This is perhaps fitting since the battle at the North Bridge in Concord was the second engagement on April 19th, 1775, and combined with the opening military skirmish in Lexington sparked the Revolutionary War. As you likely know, this volley of gunfire was later memorialized by none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson with his legendary Concord hymn. 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. Emerson spoke these words as the town erected a battle monument or what he later refers to in the poem as a votive stone or shaft on July 4th, 1837. And while the first stanza is the most cited, I've always appreciated the last stanzas as well. On this green bank by this soft stream may a votive stone that memory may their deed redeem when like our sires our sons are gone. Spirit that made those heroes dare to die and leave their children free, bid time and nature gently spare the shaft we raise to them and me. Before any shots rang out and as the British regulars made their first approach from Boston on that fateful morning, it was the all too young veteran John Parker, dying of tuberculosis but brimming with vigor who ordered his troops to stand their ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. For months we've been heralding that this microsite is coming, the microsite is coming, and while thankfully it arrives without portent of musket and fireball, it is an auspicious moment for the Concord Museum and for its generations. For if we mean to share this story beyond the confines of Concord to a national and international audience, let it begin here. If we mean to engage legions of online visitors and lifelong learners from school children to retirees, let us begin here. If we, along with America 250, the National Archives, the NEH, and patriotic citizens throughout our land mean to recapture the ideals that were so courageously fought and died for in this battle on all those that followed in our country's proud history, we'll let that begin here too. And if we do so, hopefully for years to come visitors of all ages after having engaged this website and been inspired by its wares, we'll both begin and cement a love affair with this country and all that it stands for and which over the past two centuries and a half many have fought and given their lives to maintain. So today we raise not a 19th century war memorial but we launch a 21st century website and one senses that Ralph Waldo Emerson would not begrudge us to invoke that same spirit that made those heroes dare to die and leave their children free the time and nature gently spare this sight we raise to them and me. It is now my pleasure to introduce a video featuring closing remarks from the President of the Concord Museum's Board of Governors Ralph Earle whose tireless and thoughtful leadership as well as that of our full board has guided this project to this transformational moment. We will also hear from General Joseph Dunford the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and remarks he offered virtually at the museum last week on Veterans Day Lucas Morrell, a professor at Washington and Lee University and a member of the U.S. Semi-Quincentennial Commission and Sarah Smith who led the creative team who designed the interactive elements in our new April 19th, 1775 exhibit which you'll get a brief glimpse of and our new shot curd around the world microsite. Immediately following Sarah's remarks the media design firm she works for Richard Lewis Media Group has crafted a one minute sizzle reel to give you a sense of the microsite and my colleague Allison Schilling will be sharing the URL in the chat room for you. You'll visit the site and then share the link with others. So we begin now with remarks from the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities John Parrish Peaty who I first met when I was working for the National Archives and he was working at the National Endowment for the Arts. In fact as my colleagues and I began to think how best to open our new April 19th, 1775 exhibit this fall I will credit an email I received from Chairman Peaty last spring reminding me of a special collaboration he and I worked on together in 2012 which engaged veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share their wartime experiences through writing including inviting some to read their work in a very moving public forum at the Kennedy Library. It was a privilege and pleasure to work with him eight years ago and to have reconnected again through this special initiative to begin marking the various 250th anniversary celebration of our nation's founding. Without further ado I present NEH Chairman John Parrish Peaty. Fine introduction. I remember well the Veterans Day program that you and I collaborated on at the Kennedy Library as part of the Operation Homecoming Initiative. I commend the Concord Museum staff board and supporters for opening the April 19th, 1775 exhibition on Veterans Day and I applaud the decision to offer no charge admission for veterans and active duty service members. I don't call it free admission for they surely paved with their service and sacrifice instead of all of our nation's men and women who have won the uniform across the centuries. The National Endowment for the Humanities is proud to support the museum and this new permanent exhibition $300,000 grant. Concord is the cradle of the American Revolution and this exhibition will educate a new generation about its pivotal role and reshaping world history. I'm pleased that the museum has raised additional resources from other donors to help create the new shot heard around the world microsite so that students and lifelong learners can benefit from this interactive online resource that brings the battles of Lexington and Concord to life. These projects are exactly what NEH had in mind when we launched our initiative A More Perfect Union to coincide with the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding. This grant program will help Americans better understand the history of the world's oldest constitutional democracy and how our founding ideals are met in our pluralistic society. Our $400,000 grant to the Concord Museum complements other NEH grants that inform the public about the founding era. We have awarded millions of dollars in funding for massive editing projects on the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the John and Abigail Adams family. We have funded a $500,000 infrastructure grant to help repair the steeple of Philadelphia's famous Old Christ Church whose congregation included 15 signers of the Declaration of Independence. We have funded the American Inquiry Society's Summary Institute for Teachers and a national discussion program organized by the Gilder-Lairman Institute of American History to spur community conversations about text fundamental to democracy. Tom, I thank you and your colleagues for inviting me to share a few words along with my esteemed colleague David Ferriero and the distinguished scholars Lucas Morel and Mary Beth Norton. I commend the museum on its ambition and achievements examining foundational moments in our shared history and riches us as individuals and unites us and one and all as we the people. Thank you. I am honored to represent the United States Semi-Quincentennial Commission this evening along with fellow commissioner and archivist of the United States David Ferriero and to share this virtual stage with Professor Norton and Chairman Petey. I am here at the gracious invitation of the Concord Museum and to offer a few and the commission's official recognition of the shot heard around the world virtual exhibit. I also want to acknowledge one of the museum's partners Revolution 250, a consortium of over 30 Massachusetts organizations which is also partnered informally with the commission. Congress formally designated the 250th anniversary of the United States the Semi-Quincentennial. The commission adopted America 250 as an easier to say brand name. We envision America 250 as a monumental initiative likely surpassing in scale and participation any commemoration in our nation's history. America 250 will inspire the American spirit within all Americans and within each American in three ways by deepening understanding of our history democratic process through education. Increasing engagement in our communities and governing affairs and fostering unity that promotes the common good while also respecting individual liberty. Anniversary dates matter in July 4th, 2026 will certainly provide the focal point of America 250 but it will also be the culmination of a commemorative season that has already begun and will continue to build over the next six years. Although the commission will lead nationwide signature programs it intends to facilitate a largely decentralized America 250 of, by and for the people. Key to this approach is officially recognizing programs that express the America 250 vision to educate to engage and to unite. In 2006 the commission anticipates more than 100,000 officially recognized programs will ensure that America 250 reverberates with many voices speaking with one another about the meaning and promise of America. Which brings me to the Concord Museum's virtual exhibit The Shot Her Round the World the second program to be recognized officially by America 250. The battle between provincial and British regulars targeting Concord on April 19, 1775 produced The Shot Her Round the World that echoes in Emerson's Concord hymn and resounds still in our pursuit of a more perfect union and humanity's quest for freedom. We remember history where it happened and acknowledging the power of place yet in the 21st century we have the remarkable opportunity to engage authentic places and artifacts virtually. Programs like The Shot Her Round the World will bring America 250 to people across the nation and across the globe. America rests on its ideals, institutions and people. This exhibit highlights the people who are participated in this seminal moment of our shared history. We hear the voices of Concord residents like William Emerson Martha Moulton and Amos Barrett. The exhibits animated maps and running tally of the men engaged on both sides highlight anew the miscalculation of Lord Dartmouth the British Secretary of State for the colonies. His message to General Gage which prompted the April 18, 1775 March on Concord characterized the rebellious people of Massachusetts Bay colony as a rude rabble without plan, without concert and without conduct. Instead, the patriots of the revolutionary generation came to be remembered by no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln when reflecting upon the usefulness of July 4th celebrations he called those patriots iron men who fought for the principle that they contended for. Professor Norton Scholarship documents how such principles as equality, liberty and government by consent of the governed lay at the heart of the dispute leading to the bloodshed at Concord. A little more than a year later the Second Continental Congress expressed in the Declaration of Independence what had already begun to be paid for by blood. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. That Lincoln said is the electric cord in that declaration that links the heart of patriotic and liberty loving men together that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. Thank you for inspiring the American spirit. A few dates in world history are better known than April 19th 1775 when a group of embattled farmers locally trained militia and men exchanged fire with what was then the most powerful army on earth. They were defending their community their sense of liberty and their ideals of self-government. I'm honored to share in this celebration of a new exhibition that tells this foundational story in dynamic, engaging and inclusive ways. I salute the museum for choosing to open these three new permanent galleries on Veterans Day and for inviting local veterans and active duty personnel to be the first to have exclusive access to these exhibits free of charge. President Washington spoke about the willingness of future generations to serve being informed by the manner in which we treat our veterans. I'm sure President Washington would approve of how the museum is bringing that sentiment to life. Throughout my career in the military from serving as a platoon commander through being the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff I've always been proud of my Massachusetts roots. Having been born in Boston the cradle of liberty and growing up in Quincy the home of John Adams and his family. We remember of course the names of revolutionary leaders like Adams and Hancock in Revere but it's equally important to recount the actions of those who led men in battle those who fought on the front lines those who were wounded and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I hope all those who visit the museum are inspired by the stories of our founding fathers and reminded that we came together in 1775 in order to form a more perfect union a more perfect union that would allow all citizens to enjoy the blessings of liberty regardless of race class or creed. I hope all those who visit the museum are also reminded of our responsibilities as citizens to protect our proud legacy of democracy and pass it along to the next generation of citizens. Let me close by commending the curators and the fabricators who have brought our history to life and in advance let me thank the educators who will use this museum to tell our story to the next generation of citizens. God bless America and those who work to keep our nation strong, safe, and united. Let me just give you a general overview of how the show was designed. First and foremost we highlight the iconic artifacts that are part of the museum's world-renowned collection including of course the lantern that signaled Paul Revere to begin his ride. Over here we have the tread on which the person who hung the lantern would have climbed the stairs to hang it in the north church. Those artifacts are then augmented and really brought to life by a number of animations. Behind me is a map that was developed by J. DeCosta in 1775 to report back to London to the King what happened in this engagement and our colleagues at Richard Lewis Media Group have brought that map to light so that you can see in a short span of five to six minutes the 24-hour span of engagement between the British regulars and the local militia. The entire exhibit was designed by our colleagues at AMA's design and it's built really around the engravings of Amos Doolittle who came to conquer just days after the engagement to record what happened on April 19th, 1775 but once again through 21st century animation we bring those engravings to life. Hi, I'm Sarah Smith from RLMG. I'm the project manager for the media for the April 19th gallery and I had the great fortune of working with a wonderful team here at RLMG of motion graphic designers, sound designers graphic designers and our creative director and together we worked with the Concord Museum staff and AMA's design on this really unique opportunity to tell the story of April 19th with their collection and with these historical assets that became the base of our media. We made five pieces of media one of them the sort of showcase piece it uses a map from 1775 that was made to tell the story of the day and at the urging of AMA's design to really use it as a projection surface which was a wonderful idea we formed out some of the key features of the map and use it as a projection surface and add a lot of delight and detail with the media we really turn it into a world and bring it to life in a way that we think the map makers would have wanted to do themselves but didn't have the technology to do it. The other four pieces that we do use historic prints by Amos Doolittle it was really fun to work with those because he was really trying to take a snapshot at different moments in the day and what we do is unfurl those snapshots we combine them with first person quotes who are describing what's actually happening in that freeze frame and we cut out details we enhance the beauty by to certain focus points and we turn them into little stories one of the challenges was not to overpower the wonderful amazing collection so with the Doolittle print pieces they're very subtle in the gallery they do a perfect job of just breathing a little life into the space and helping situate those objects. RLNG was then asked to take the media that we did for the April 19th gallery and turn it into a website so we made a page that will live on the Concord Museum's website it's dedicated to the day, April 19th and we used the material, adapted it for this website and combined it with the other resources the objects and the first person quotes the interactive timeline so you can scroll through these moments in the day and see subtle animations click on the quotes and hear what was happening, open up objects, click on these luscious photographs detailed photographs and pan and zoom on them and make your way from 10.30 at night on the 18th to 7.00 at night on the 19th Good evening everyone I'm Ralph Earl, president of the Concord Museum Board of Governors let me begin by thanking our partners this evening the National Endowment for the Humanities the US Semi-Quinn Centennial Commission and the National Archives and Records Administration as well as our featured speaker Mary Beth Norton for her fascinating account of the transformational 16 months that led up to the famous battles in Lexington and Concord as has been mentioned last week we opened our new April 19th Galleries on Veterans Day as they are a testament to the first Americans who gave what Abraham Lincoln called 88 years later the last full measure of devotion for the then revolutionary ideals of liberty and democracy while the nation we now know did not exist in 1775 it was a dream embraced by those who fought on the North Bridge and on the battle road a dream that required vision, sacrifice commitment and just plain hard work the Concord Museum is committed to telling the story of our town and its role in the American saga fully and completely in a way that celebrates both the events and people that are well known and those who much of history has forgotten and as we have shown tonight we plan to do so in our museum and virtually through our shot around the world micro-site my colleagues have just shared the URL with you via YouTube's chat mechanism and we urge you to visit the site and to encourage others to do the same as I did last week at our exhibit opening I would like to close tonight's program with a quote from Arthur Ashe a man who most of us remember as a barrier breaking tennis player but who was also an army veteran who once remarked that quote true heroism is remarkably sober it is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost but the urge to serve others at whatever cost I want to thank all of you for viewing tonight's forum and the launch of our new micro-site and to express my appreciation to all those who made this evening and our new exhibit and micro-site possible the donors the board of governors our talented staff and our creative design partners united in the desire to build a new museum and virtual presence that will serve our community and our nation for generations to come this concludes our program thank you and good night