Lexington & Concord

Gage's secret raid on the Concord stores leaked before the boats were in the water. Riders, church bells, and signal guns put a county on the road by morning, because the towns had spent months building a system for exactly this night.

Eight dead at dawn on Lexington green, a shot nobody can assign, an ordered American volley at the North Bridge, and then the real battle: 16 miles of road home, fought from behind every wall, with the worst of it house-to-house in Menotomy.

The casualty returns, the race to tell London who fired first, and the siege that began that night. The raid that was supposed to prevent a war had started one instead.