It was obeyed by American citizens.
Among them was old Master Blood, who saw a ball strike the water when the British fired their first volley.

I heard many of the old men tell their stories of the Battle of Concord, and of the capture of Burgoyne.
I lay down on the grass one summer afternoon, when old Amos Baker of Lincoln, who was in the Lincoln Company on the 19th of April, told me the whole story.

He was very indignant at the claim that the Acton men marched first to attack the British because the others hesitated.

He said, "It was because they had bagnets [bayonets].

The rest of us hadn't no bagnets." One day a few years later, when I was in college, I walked up from Cambridge to Concord, through Lexington, and had a chat with old Jonathan Harrington by the roadside.