"Stand your ground! Don't fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war, let it begin here." So said Captain John Parker to his militia, assembled in a grassy field in Lexington at dawn on April 19, 1775.

"If I draw my sword but half out of its scabbard, the whole banditti of Massachusetts will run away," bragged Marjor John Pitcairn, who led the British infantry out to face the rebellious colonists.

By sunset, some seventy British soldiers and fifty Americans would lie dead along the road between Boston and Concord. In Let It Begin Here! Don Brown tells the story of the day that began the American Revolution: the events that led to it, Paul Revere's famous midnight ride, the angry skirmishes as the British army retreated to Boston. The words of the people who fought — both American and British — and watercolor illustrations that capture the mud, blood, and desperation of battle, dramatize this account of one of the most famous days in American history. 

From the dust jacket