The SAR is a historical, educational, and patriotic non-profit, United States 501(c)3, corporation that seeks to maintain and extend:
- the institutions of American freedom
- an appreciation for true patriotism
- a respect for our national symbols
- the value of American citizenship
- the unifying force of e pluribus unum that has created, from the people of many nations, one nation and one people.
We do this by perpetuating the stories of patriotism, courage, sacrifice, tragedy, and triumph of the men who achieved the independence of the American people in the belief that these stories are universal ones of man’s eternal struggle against tyranny, relevant to all time, and will inspire and strengthen each succeeding generation as it too is called upon to defend our freedoms on the battlefield and in our public institutions.
One of the most important stories to the world and to America is that of the shot fired at Concord Bridge on April 19, 1775. It gave birth to the American Revolution and is eloquently described by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose grandfather was there…
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
That shot was the bold challenge of the New World to the Old World. It heralded the beginning of the end of the old order, a world where servility to a hereditary monarch, class, privilege, and family connection were everything and no man could acquire land or wealth unless he was born to it. The shot ushered in Novus Ordo Seclorum – a “new order of the ages”, an era in which the common man, freed from the limitations of the old order and restricted only by his ability, crossed the Atlantic for the opportunities beckoning in America’s wilderness, her cities and became an American citizen.
In the next two hundred years these freedoms would be expanded and untold millions of men, women, and children from all the continents and corners of the earth would cross the world’s oceans and come to American in search of a better life and to play their role in the American experiment born on Concord Bridge on April 19,1775. The shot fired by the embattled farmers has not lost its power, today it echoes and reverberates in the hearts and minds of men and women all over the world where people yearn to be free.