AP US History: What happened at Lexington Green. Looks at the viewpoints of this situation from the standpoint of several different historians.

Essay by neveragain1High School, 11th gradeA+, January 2004

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What Happened On Lexington Green

Time is something unrecoverable. Every passing moment of your life is captured and then lost somewhere in time and will never be replayed again in the physical world. We call this 'history'. History has existed for however long time has existed. The only reason we know about our history is if, after time has passed, the events of that moment were recorded somewhere, whether it be in an audio or video tape, a journal, or in a person's memory. The first hand records of an experience are called "primary sources". These are the most reliable sources for a person who is studying history to use, since they have not been strewn and battered around through opinions of individuals who's intentions are not to depict history accurately, but to depict history through the most favorable outcome for them self. However, primary sources might not tell the whole "truth" to an event, so one must analyze several primary sources of the same event to determine which elements of the story are fiction, and which elements of the story are consistent, and therefore, the "truth".

In section one of 'What happened on Lexington Green', one can read several first hand accounts of the event in Lexington on April 19th, 1775. Each primary source in this section is unique in it's own way because it was visualized and interpreted by different individuals. These individuals are each diverse and come different backgrounds. Some are British soldiers writing letters back to their commander to tell him of the day's events. Some are colonists who watched the situation unfold from a safe distance. Some are Lexington militia-men who stayed awake all night to participate in the battle that was to unfold the next morning. Each one of these sources conclude that a...