ded the calling of
the first Provincial Congress of Massachusetts--one of the first
independent legislatures of America--which assembled here on the 11th of
October 1774, and again in March and April 1775. The village became
thereafter a storehouse of provisions and munitions of war, and hence
became the objective of the British expedition that on the 19th of April
1775 opened with the armed conflict at Lexington (q.v.) the American War
of Independence. As the British proceeded to Concord the whole country
was rising, and at Concord about 500 minute-men confronted the British
regulars who were holding the village and searching for arms and stores.
Volleys were exchanged, the British retreated, the minute-men hung on
their flanks and from the hillsides shot them down, driving their
columns on Lexington. A granite obelisk, erected in 1837, when Emerson
wrote his ode on the battle, marks the spot where the first British
soldiers fell; while across the stream a fine bionze "Minute-Man" (1875)
by D. C. French (a native of Concord) marks the spot where once "the
embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world"
(Emerson). Concord was long one of the shire-townships of Middlesex
county, losing this honour in 1867. The village is famous as the home of
R. W. Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry D. Thoreau, Louisa M. Alcott
and her father, A. Bronson Alcott, who maintained here from 1879 to 1888
(in a building still standing) the Concord school of philosophy, which
counted Benjamin Peirce, W. T. Harris, Mrs J. W. Howe, T. W. Higginson,
Professor William James and Emerson among its lecturers. Emerson,
Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Alcotts are buried here in the beautiful
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Of the various orations (among others one by
Edward Everett in 1825) that have been delivered at Concord
anniversaries perhaps the finest is that of George William Curtis,
delivered in 1875.

See A. S. Hudson, _The History of Concord_, vol. i. (Concord, 1904);
G. B. Bartlett, _Concord: Historic, Literary and Picturesque_ (Boston,
1885); and Mrs J. L. Swayne, _Story of Concord_ (Boston, 1907).

CONCORD, a city and the county-seat of Cabarrus county, North Carolina,
U.S.A., on the Rocky river, about 150 m. W.S.W. of Raleigh. Pop. (1890)
4339; (1900) 7910 (1789 negroes); (1910) 8715. It is served by the
Southern railway. Concord is situated in a cotton-growing region, and
its chief interest is in the manufacture of cot