In Massachusetts, British troops and American colonists clashed at Lexington and Concord on Wednesday, April 19, 1775.28 By the end of the day, after gunfire along a shifting sixteen-mile front, there were 273 British and 95 American casualties.29,30 The exact sequence of the battle is unclear, but the meaning of the bloodshed was unmistakable.31 As Jefferson wrote after hearing the reports, any “last hopes of reconciliation” were now gone.32 “A frenzy of revenge,” he added, “seems to have seized all ranks of people.”33 The painter John Singleton Copley wrote his
