The Minute Man

Unveiled for the Centennial celebration of the Battle of Concord, The Minute Man stands guard over the commemorative landscape surrounding the North Bridge, where the first colonial militiamen were killed in Concord on April 19, 1775. The statue depicts a farmer relinquishing his plow to take up arms in defense of his land and serves as a poignant reminder of an individual’s responsibility to uphold the values of liberty and freedom.

The Minute Man was the first commission of twenty-five-year-old Concord native Daniel Chester French. French hailed from a well-to-do New England family and was an art student of Louisa May Alcott’s younger sister, Abigail. His career as a sculptor of public monuments would span six decades and include such seminal works as the Abraham Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Cast from old Civil War cannons by the Ames Foundry of Chicopee, Massachusetts, the seven-foot bronze Minute Man stands on a pedestal base measuring seven-and-a-half feet tall and four-and-a-half feet on each side.

The first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Concord Hymn” unveiled at the dedication of the 1836 Battle Monument in 1837, is inscribed on the base:

BY THE RUDE BRIDGE THAT
ARCHED THE FLOOD,
THEIR FLAG TO APRIL’S
BREEZE UNFURLED,
HERE ONCE THE EMBATTLED
FARMERS STOOD,
AND FIRED THE SHOT HEARD
ROUND THE WORLD.

“No ceremony was needed to unveil the statue,” the April 20, 1875 edition of The Boston Journal reported in its extensive coverage of the Centennial day activities. “It stood in bold relief covered only by the canopy of heaven, touched only by the April breeze which waved on it.”

During the dedication, symbolic items were placed into a time capsule in The Minute Man’s base, including Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 book A History of the Town of Concord, an account of the Concord fight from the diary of Rev. William Emerson; an 1874 Town Report; photographs of Daniel Chester French and The Minute Man; a map of the village in 1775; a map of the center of Concord in 1874; coins, stamps, newspapers of the time, and invitations to the 1875 celebration.^[1]

In 1975, the statue was removed to fabricate a duplicative cast. To commemorate the Bicentennial of the Battle of Concord, a second time capsule was installed with microfilm containing images of letters, photographs, and scrapbooks made by Girl Scouts; a cassette tape with “The Sounds of Concord”; an American flag; a Bicentennial flag; military patches; Girl Scout pins, and money.

^[1] https://www.nps.gov/mima/learn/historyculture/the-minute-man-statue-by-daniel-chester-french.htm