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We've been discussing the subject privately for well over a year now: how do the documentable facts of the Concord Fight blend with mythology about the American Revolution? How have these helped to forge a sense of identity for America and Americans? It's a subject we've kept coming back to again and again, and finally it's making it to these pages.
 This display will demonstrate that some of the earliest blending of mythology and fact came directly after the fight. Within days, sworn depositions were taken by the Committee of Safety of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. These were gathered "to support the truth" of the events on that day. "Although purporting to be unbiased accounts of events as they unfolded, these depositions were collected to present a particular version of the conflicts of April 19th and to generate sympathy and support for the rebel cause," says the introduction to the library's show. From the very beginning, it was difficult to separate fact from the spin that doctored those facts. This rich exhibit will show the development and use of Concord sites and images as compelling national symbols and icons. It depicts stories -- possibly factual, possibly not -- which cannot be substantiated. It displays documentation which substantiate some of the "facts" as well as other information not widely known, allowing viewers to make their own interpretations, as does each new generation of historians. And it celebrates the high emotion and deep meaning we as Americans attribute to this day in history.
Over the next months, Wilson, Ryan and I will explore Concord myth and history from our individual points of view through a continuing series of articles in these pages. However, both these and the library show will not seek to tear down our most cherished beliefs or destroy our view of ourselves -- we will not try to fight "The Battle of De-Bunker Hill" because no doubt we will lose. Rather, we will seek to expand the popularly-held view that history is "just the facts, m'am." We believe it is much richer and more interesting than that: a quirky mix of fact, fiction, human frailty, anthropology, sociology, politics, and psychology.
I enjoy evoking the names of Emerson and Thoreau in this quest, as they are enormous icons and symbols in their own rights. Larger than life and known themselves through a mixture of documentable fact and unsubstantiated story, it is a sweet irony to better reveal one Concord myth through the words of two others.
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The "we" are Leslie Perrin Wilson, Curator of Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library and D. Michael Ryan, Concord Minuteman, 18th century re-enactor and historian specializing in the Concord Fight -- both frequent contributors to this publication. And then there's me: not only obviously interested in Concord as publisher and editor of the Concord Magazine, but also an experienced psychotherapist and healer with an intense fascination about the workings of human minds and emotion.
