Minutemen

About Minutemen

Minutemen were members of teams of select men from the American colonial militia during the American Revolutionary War. They vowed to be ready for battle against the British within one minute of receiving notice. These teams consisted about a fourth of the entire militia, and generally were the younger and more mobile, serving as part of a network for early response to any threat. Minuteman and Sons of Liberty member Paul Revere spread the news that "the red coats are coming." Paul Revere was captured before completing his mission when the British marched towards the arsenal in Lexington and Concord to collect the patriots' weapons.

The term minuteman has also been applied to various later United States' military units to recall the success and patriotism of the originals.

In the British colony of Massachusetts Bay, all able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to participate in their local militia. As early as 1645 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, some men were selected from the general ranks of town-based "training bands" to be ready for rapid deployment. Men so selected were designated as minutemen. They were usually drawn from settlers of each town, and so it was very common for them to be fighting alongside relatives and friends. They were trained to respond "at a minutes warning". Some towns in Massachusetts had a long history of designating a portion of their militia as minutemen, with "minute companies" constituting special units within the militia system whose members underwent additional training and held themselves ready to turn out quickly ("at a minute's notice") for emergencies. Other towns, such as Lexington, preferred to keep their entire militia in a single unit.