Three Days After Concord: The Revolution Becomes an Army

Three days after Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts was organized. In Watertown on April 23, 1775, the Provincial Congress issued a stark, practical resolve: raise forces immediately “for the Recovery and Preservation of our undoubted Rights and Liberties.” Not a speech. Not a poem. A payroll, a structure, and a supply plan, printed as a broadside so the decision could travel faster than any rider.

Edes & Gill Provincial Congress army recruitment broadside

What makes this sheet so gripping is how specific it is. It lays out an establishment for regiments of 598 men, broken into companies of 59, and then lists the monthly pay down the ladder: colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, ensign, and the working backbone; serjeants, corporals, fifers, and the private “centinel.” This is where rebellion stops being a crowd and starts being a command chart. You can almost feel the urgency: if we’re going to fight, we have to know who’s in charge, who gets paid, and what it costs.

Dr. Joseph Warren distributes recruitment sign-up to surronding villages

And it isn’t only about money. The Congress resolves that uniforms will come “a Coat for a Uniform” for non-commissioned officers and privates as soon as the province can manage it. Then comes the community assignment that says everything about how this “first American army” was being built: town selectmen are asked to furnish enlisting soldiers with “good and sufficient blankets,” submit the accounts to the Committee of Supplies, and get reimbursed from the colony treasurer. In other words: enlistment isn’t just a personal vow, it’s a town’s promise to keep you warm, fed, and in the fight.

Colonists sign broadsides to join the revolutionary war.

That’s why this broadside feels like a hinge in history. The gun smoke of April 19 hadn’t even cleared, and already leaders like Joseph Warren were pushing the machinery of war into motion, turning alarm into infrastructure, outrage into logistics, and militia spontaneity into something that could endure. A printed sheet like this didn’t merely report the Revolution. It made it, one set of resolves, one regiment, one blanket at a time.