The start of the Revolutionary War 250 years ago can be traced to one manuscript containing the orders for the Concord Expedition on April 18, 1775.
The physical quill-to-paper draft orders written by famed British Army officer Thomas Gage's hand, which sparked the battles of Lexington and Concord, are housed at the University of Michigan Clements Library.
Typical of the time period, the draft contained Gage's original, handwritten thoughts based on intel from his operatives, and the final copy that would be sent out would be penned by his secretary, with a secondary secretarial copy maintained for their records, which is also part of the Clements' collection.
Maj. Gen. Gage, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America in the decade leading up to the American Revolution and governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1774 to 1775, sent the following orders to Lt. Col. Francis Smith:
"Sir, You will march with the Corps of Grenadiers and
Light Infantry put under your Command with the utmost Expedition
and secrecy to Concord, and where you will seize and destroy
all the Artillery and Ammunition Provisions Tents & all other military stores you can find, you will knock off one Trunion at least of each of the Iron Guns, and destroy the Carriages and beat in the Muzzles of the Brass ones so as to render them useless."
Smith led the soldiers across the Charles River to the mainland and set in motion the American rebels' prepared communication network-including alarm riders Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott-to notify the countryside. Over the course of April 19, as they made their way north, British troops confronted armed resistance by American Minutemen at Lexington, sparking the first gunfire of the Revolution on April 19, 1775.
"You can see in the draft document where Gage has added insertions, where he's stricken out portions of his initial thoughts. You'll also see lists of notes on specific locations where he believes that military stores, ammunition, provisions, tents are located in Concord. And you can see the ways that Gage's thoughts were developing in this, and then in their final concrete form," said Cheney Schopieray, curator of manuscripts at the Clements and project director.
"Among the differences between the draft and the final, one that is rather striking is that the draft does not contain the line, 'but you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property.' That sentence is added sometime between the draft and the final copy going out."
The Gage letter is part of the Thomas Gage Papers collection of over 23,000 items. One of the Clements' largest and most utilized collections, researchers can find handwritten letters, documents, journals, financial records, military orders and more.
Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the complete Thomas Gage Papers have been digitized; 50 volumes are freely accessible online now, with plans to make the remainder available later this year.
"The Gage papers, which are one of the crown jewels of the Clements Library, have been studied by generation after generation of historians," Schopieray said. "They contain extraordinary documentation of colonial America through the paperwork of the highest echelons of British administration in the colonies during the tumultuous years leading up to the Revolutionary War."
Procured in 1930 by William L. Clements, the namesake of the historical library, the collection arrived in a dozen secretarial trunks, one for each year of Gage's command of the British army in North America.
"Most of the trunks had two tiers of pigeon holes, and each of the pigeon holes-these rectangular spaces into which they put documents-were labeled with either a geographical location or city, or military post," Schopieray said.
"When letters or documents came in to the commanding officer, they would read them, digest the information, decide whether and how to respond, and file them away. That way they can not only see what the communication was, but they can also tell whether or not any letters were referenced that didn't make it to them."
Pieces from the collection-one of the aforementioned secretarial trunks, original historical manuscript letters, documents, newspapers and artwork-will also be on view as part of the library's latest exhibition, "Bloody Work: Lexington and Concord 1775."
"What I'm really focusing on in the exhibit is this period immediately before these orders are given to Francis Smith of the Tenth Regiment of Foot on April 18 of 1775 to march northwest from Boston to seize military stores at Concord, the effects of the order while being carried out on April 19, and the immediate aftermath," Schopieray said.
Because these materials can be difficult to read and are riddled with abbreviations, the Clements enlisted students from the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance studying voiceover work and acting to narrate each of the manuscripts on view in the exhibit.
One such letter is a note from Rachel Revere to her husband Paul, which was intercepted by British spies and delivered to Gage. This is the reason it is part of the collection today; it never reached its intended recipient.
"Handwritten letters and documents are vital to understanding not only what happened in the past, but also to connecting these sources to the individuals who created them," Schopieray said.
"So, for example, when you look at this draft letter, this is Thomas Gage's handwriting. You can see in it where he presses the pen harder, or what he's emphasizing, even where he pressed too hard and the pen broke leaving little ink splatters. It brings you about as close as you can get to the physical person that is writing the pieces, and that's an extraordinarily powerful thing."
He believes the physical features of manuscripts make them quite personal and help to bring forth the humanity of those who were living through these key moments in history.
"Bloody Work" is free and open to the public, on view through Sept. 19, 2025.
