Battle of Lexington and Concord

In a book titled "Great Men and Famous Deeds", Sir Walter Scott wrote of two topics that referenced the Lexington and Concord conflict.  One is found in a section on New York's Seventh Regiment:

'...After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town. Scared, all of them. Now that we were come and assured them that persons and property were to be protected, they ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny to which they, American citizens, had been subjected. We came into contact here with utter social anarchy. No man, unless he was ready to risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act or talk like a freeman. "This great wrong must be righted," think the Seventh Regiment, as one man. So we tried to reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do our duty as the nation's armed police, and mob-law was to be put down so far as we could do it.

Here, too, voices of war met us. The country was stirred up. If the rural population did not give us a bastard imitation of Lexington and Concord, as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat us a la Plugugly somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and Baltimore and Washington Railroad. The Seventh must be ready to shoot...'

The other is in the famous Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about Paul Revere's Ride, which includes:

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

...

It was twelve by the village clock,

When he cross'd the bridge into Medford town,

He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer's dog,

And felt the damp of the river-fog,

That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,

When he rode into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he pass'd,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball. ..'

The Battle of Lexington and Concord occurred on April 19, 1775.

Independence Day

July 4, 1776 is, of course, the birth date of the United States.  Fifty years later, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 to be followed by James Monroe on July 4, 1831.  Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, living in Graff House in Philadelphia while writing it.  Graff House was once the home of Rebecca Gratz who some believe was the model for Scott's Rebecca in "Ivanhoe".  The connection runs through Scott's friend and fellow author Washington Irving.  Gratz herself appreciated Scott's Rebecca saying "I felt a little extra pleasure from Rebecca's being a Hebrew maiden. It is worthy of Scott in a period when persecution has re-commenced in Europe to hold up a picture of the superstition and cruelty in which it originated."

Sources:
http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/thomas-jefferson-declaration-of-independence.html
http://jwa.org/historymakers/gratz/ivanhoe-legend

Siege of Gibraltar

The Siege of Gibraltar effectively began on June 16, 1779, when Spain declared war on Great Britain, hoping to regain territory lost to the British in previous wars. Great Britain was engaged in the American War of Independence at the time, making the moment especially opportune. Part of Spain’s overall plan of attack against the English included a land based assault on British soil. But Gibraltar held strategic significance for trade in the Mediterranean region.

Spanish and allied French navies formed a blockage of Gibraltar, while land forces readied themselves to fight with British troops, which were under the leadership of George Elliot. The Brits held out, forcing Spain to commit more men to the siege, and forestalling the planned invasion of England. Various attacks on the British fort failed, and the British navy scored major victories over the blockading fleet, so that the Siege of Gibraltar ended up a decisive British victory.

Walter Scott voyaged to several European spots toward the end of his life, partly in an effort to improve his health.  He records reaching Gibraltar in his Journal...

November 14 (1831)… I wrote to Mr. Cadell to-day, and will send my letter ashore to be put into Gibraltar with the officer who leaves us at that garrison. In the evening we saw the celebrated fortress, which we had heard of all our lives, and which there is no possibility of describing well in words, though the idea I had formed of it from prints, panoramas, and so forth, proved not very inaccurate. Gibraltar, then, is a peninsula having a tremendous precipice on the Spanish side--that is, upon the north, where it is united to the mainland by a low slip of land called the neutral ground. The fortifications which rise on the rock are innumerable, and support each other in a manner accounted a model of modern art; the northern face of the rock itself is hewn into tremendous subterranean batteries called the hall of Saint George, and so forth, mounted with guns of a large calibre. But I have heard it would be difficult to use them, from the effect of the report on the artillerymen. The west side of the fortress is not so precipitous as the north, and it is on this it has been usually assailed. It bristles with guns and batteries, and has at its northern extremity the town of Gibraltar, which seems from the sea a thriving place, and from thence declines gradually to Cape Europa, where there is a great number of remains of old caverns and towers, formerly the habitation or refuge of the Moors. At a distance, and curving into a bay, lie Algeciras, and the little Spanish town of Saint Roque, where the Spanish lines were planted during the siege.[485] From Europa Point the eastern frontier of Gibraltar runs pretty close to the sea, and arises in a perpendicular face, and it is called the back of the rock. No thought could be entertained of attacking it, although every means were used to make the assault as general as possible. The efforts sustained by such extraordinary means as the floating batteries were entirely directed against the defences on the west side, which, if they could have been continued for a few days with the same fury with which they commenced, must have worn out the force of the garrison. The assault had continued for several hours without success on either side, when a private man of the artillery, his eye on the floating batteries, suddenly called with ecstasy, "She burns, by G----!";[486] and first that vessel and then others were visibly discovered to be on fire, and the besiegers' game was decidedly up…