On the night of April 18, 1775, some eight hundred of the British troops then occupying the city of Boston were secretly withdrawn from their barracks, and sent, under cover of darkness, on a march through Lexington and Concord. Their purpose may have been to apprehend John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who had retired to Lexington in order to escape arrest; again, it may have been to seize the military stores that the Colonials were reported to have gathered at Concord.
