John Parker Quotes
Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!
John Parker, 1729-1775, Revolutionary Militia Captain (Minuteman), Command given at the start of the Battle of Lexington, Familiar Quotations
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At the time the President denied that he had decided to invade Iraq. Skelton saw the “handwriting on the world.”
The English were at War with Napoleon and Denmark was neutral. British leaders feared that Denmark might either ally themselves with Napoleon or provide him with ships from their well equipped fleet. The English decided on a preemptive attack on Denmark and Paget and other Captains were ordered to Denmark. When they arrived they were ordered to bombard Copenhagen and force the Danes to surrender. When this happened, the British seized the Danish ships and simply took them as war prizes. The issues of the morality and wisdom of preemptive attacks, as with the Americans in the Iraq war, was thoroughly debated but the government view prevailed to the shame of most Englishmen.
He was criticizing the George W. Bush administration for attacking Iraq, a country which had not attacked the United States or Americans abroad while America did not attack those terrorists and countries which had killed Americans. For example, Hezbollah which blew up the Marine Barracks in Lebanon and the naval ship Cole.
King George did not want to give up the American Colonies and claimed the loss at Yorktown was just a loss of a single battle. The English soldiers had controlled New York, Charlestown and other places and American Tories wanted to fighting to continue. The French were having major problems elsewhere and the states were all broke from the war effort. Hamilton urged Clinton to offer all the New York offers and soldiers half pay tp be available to fight against the other ex-colonies represented in the Continental Congress.
John Parker was an American colonial farmer, smith, soldier, and colonial militia officer who commanded the Lexington, Patriot, colonial militia at the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775.
