Spent yesterday making a quick visit to the Town Green in Lexington, MA. It is the site at which the first shots were fired to begin the war phase of the American Revolution. The Buckman Tavern was the site at which the Massachusetts Militia in the area had gathered before the British troops arrived. Hearing of the enemy’s arrival, the Militiamen lined up on the green to demonstrate their presence. It is debatable who fired the first shot but several Militiamen were killed. Others were wounded including Prince Estabrook, a local slave who eventually won his freedom fighting in the Revolution for the Continental Army. This gives him the distinction of being the first black man to fight in the Revolution. Since Estabrook left no writings, it is impossible to know exactly what was going through his mind on April 19,1775. We do know that he was in bondage to the Estabrook family and can surmise that he braved the British fire that day because he saw the American cause as just and a mechanism for his freedom from slavery, not just British rule. Politicians today use martial sounding rhetoric that invokes the spirit of the American Revolution and battlefield heroics. This makes it too easy to forget that the men and women who stood at the threshold of a free America did so in real life and death circumstances. “Liberty or death” was not a oratorical abstraction but a real life imperative.