Encountering a small body of militia at Lexington, Major Pitcairn, in command of the British soldiers, called out to them to throw down their arms and disperse; but as they did not do so he ordered his men to fire, killing eight of the sturdy Americans, who even then did not run away, but joined themselves to other minutemen now assembling, and again came in contact with their foes at Concord Bridge.

Just how many were slain the first message did not accurately report; but it was enough that blood had been shed, and it mattered not whether that blood was from ten men or a thousand.
The die was cast, the moment for armed resistance had arrived, and Israel Putnam tarried not for details, but sped straight for the home of Governor Trumbull, at Lebanon (the same who was afterward known as "Brother Jonathan"), and receiving from him mandatory permission to proceed to the scene of strife, hastened back to Brooklyn, arriving at his tavern home late in the afternoon.

He had already been in the saddle for hours, as the news reached him between eight and nine in the morning, but before sunset the tireless warrior was again on horseback and galloping for Cambridge and Concord.

He probably had received refreshment, food and drink at intervals, but he had not stopped to change his working clothes for better, and went off on both long rides in the farmer's frock which he wore when plowing in the field behind his house.
Though the Putnam mansion at Brooklyn Green is no longer in existence, the great trees that stood in front of it in his time still cast their grateful shade upon its site, and the walled field, sloping toward a verdant meadow, may be seen by the visitor, much as it lay to the sun on that lovely morning in April, 1775, when the farmer-patriot was peacefully running his furrows.
The distance to Cambridge was nearly ninety miles, yet Putnam covered it in an all-night's ride, going pretty much over the same ground he had traversed when, a young man of twenty-two, he had taken his wife and child to their new home in Connecticut.

Thirty-five years had elapsed since the young pioneer had made his first venture in the world, ten of which he had passed in fighting for the King against whose soldiers he was soon to lead his fellow countrymen in war.