It’s the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War

This month sees the official launch of the Revolutionary War commemorations — the beginning of a year-and-a-half-long celebration leading up to next year’s Semiquincentennial. And the (mostly friendly) competition to salute this once-in-a-generation milestone is already heading up — including here in New York City where a nautical-themed spectacle will arrive next year.

April 19th marks the 250th anniversary of the war’s beginning, when battles took place that day almost simultaneously in the lore-filled Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord. A pair of gala celebrations, Concord250 and Lex250, will be feting these major events, and both are staking claims as the war’s one true birthplace. 

In a press release in early March, Concord250 organizers welcomed visitors to commemorate “where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Concord’s Old North Bridge.” It’s a version of history that not everyone agrees with — and both sides are holding their own. 

“The sequence of events is not in question,” says Paul O’Shaughnessy, a co-vice president at the Lexington Historical Society and a Lexington native. “The first shot of the war was fired on Lexington Green at sunrise.”

O’Shaughnessy does concede, however, that both battles were “fought side-by-side on the day,” and both towns will host re-enactments and parades. With a short drive (around seven hours) between Concord and Lexington, both celebrations are easily accessible for the Revolution history aficionados already thrilling over the potential spectacles.

“The historians, re-enactors and park rangers will tell you how the people came together on that day,” he says. “Those who tear us apart now do not honor their memory.”

April 19 is only the beginning of an ambitious and action-packed year and a half — what President Trump has already dubbed a “Salute to America,” which gets into full swing on Memorial Day in May 2025 and culminates in a nation-wide blowout on July 4th, 2026. The full scope of the festivities has yet to be revealed, but Trump has already hinted at some highlights.

There’s the Great American State Fair in Iowa and plans for a National Garden of American Heroes, possibly to be built in North Dakota. New York, meanwhile, will welcome Sail4th, the largest-ever flotilla of majestically masted tall ships, which will sail into the Ports of New York and New Jersey with spectacular vessels from 30 separate nations — along with sailors, diplomats and notable heads of state. This roster, though impressive, doesn’t even include the thousands of smaller-scale events in cities and towns across the country over the next 16 months.

“This isn’t just about a big fireworks show on July 4th,” Rosie Rios, the chair of America250, the bipartisan organization charged by Congress to lead celebrations for the Semiquincentennial, told The Post. “This is a movement, not a moment.”

But are we ready for such a massive celebratory “movement”? President Trump has only been back in office a few months, and the country is still adjusting to this reset. Just getting two towns in Massachusetts to agree about who gets the credit for starting the war has proven to be complicated, so getting all 50 states can agree on a unified vision remains a challenge for organizers.

“There are an almost endless number of stakeholders,” says Nathaniel Sheidley, the president and chief executive of Revolutionary Spaces, a nonprofit that runs several historic sites in Boston. “There are municipal and state governments; multiple federal entities; hundreds of museums and historical organizations; tour operators and tourism industry representatives; neighborhood groups and civic associations; lineage societies and historical reenactors; and the list goes on.

“Figuring out how to harness all of the ideas” has been challenging, he says.

Some Semiquincentennial projects, like Concord250, have been affected by federal funding reductions and cuts, which Concord250’s co-chair Gary Clayton calls “disheartening.” But, he adds, this has just forced them to look locally for funding. “[This celebration] is what this town has decided it wants to do, and they’re willing to put financial resources behind it,” he says. 

There are those who question Trump’s ability to pull off such an expansive nationwide celebration in a short period of time. But Wilfred M. McClay, a professor of history at Hillsdale College and a member of the federal commission, thinks the president deserves more credit. “His enthusiasm for the American experiment is genuine and unmistakable,” he says. The Biden administration, in contrast, observes McClay, seemed “unable to decide whether this anniversary should be a celebration or merely an observance.”

When Trump issued an executive order about the 250th anniversary just days after returning to the Oval Office — which established Task Force 250 to help coordinate anniversary plans — it might have seemed like a scramble to catch up. But Rios, who was appointed as America250’s chair in 2022, says plans have been in the works since at least 2016. 

“America250 has already spanned three presidential administrations — from Obama to Trump to Biden, and now back to Trump,” she said.

Many of the state committees for the Semiquincentennial have also been making plans for some time. “Here in Concord, we’ve been celebrating the beginning of the American Revolution for over 200 years,” Clayton says. “We do it every year. It’s a state holiday.”

A unifying theme echoed by many organizers is that the celebrations should be . . . well, unifying. 

“This anniversary belongs to all Americans,” says Rios. “Patriotism or love of country can’t be a partisan issue. That’s why America250 has been steadfast in our commitment to bipartisanship and non-partisanship.” The task force’s 268 members come from both sides of the aisle, she says, “nearly equally represented across party lines, making it the largest bipartisan, bicameral caucus in Congress.”

With Trump back in the White House, there’ll be protests, of course. Some are already soliciting participants, like a “resistance”-styled march planned for Cape Cod on April 19, the anniversary of the war’s beginning. (The protest organizers declined to comment.) More will surely come — but isn’t that what American democracy is all about? Sheidley, for once, says his group hopes to transform the Old South Meeting House in Boston “into the raucous theater for popular protest that it served as in Revolutionary Boston.”

Some disagreements about our nation’s history and how it should be observed — is this a celebration or just a commemoration? — might be exactly what the Semiquincentennial needs. M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, a historian and author of “History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s,” says in much the same way that the Bicentennial of 1976 helped Americans “find personal and emotional connections to the past,” the upcoming celebration is happening during a peak moment of popular interest in our shared history.

“You see it in the kinds of TV shows people are watching — like “Bridgerton,” “Peaky Blinders,” “Yellowstone 1923” — but also in the proliferation of people who are making history content online,” she says. “Americans are . . . really thinking deeply about commemoration, which is happening all around us.”

Ty Seidule, a retired US army brigadier general who led a 2023 effort to rename military installations named after Confederate soldiers, told The Post he hopes America250 won’t shy away from the “complicated” history of our country. For instance, “I hope we tell the story of Billy Lee, George Washington’s enslaved servant who was with him at every battle as a kind of enlisted aide,” says Seidule. “The only portrait of Washington at West Point has Lee in the picture. America’s complicated origin story in one painting.”

The Bicentennial of 1976 also had controversy, coming during an especially polarized moment after the Vietnam War and Watergate. But that celebration worked, says McClay, because it didn’t ask Americans to reach a single conclusions about a range of contemporary issues. “It lifted their minds and hearts above those things,” he says. “I hope something of the same can happen this time.”

The Semiquincentennial will ultimately be successful not if it has the biggest parades, the loudest fireworks and the most glorious recreations of Revolutionary War battles. It will succeed if it serves as “an invitation to the entire nation to come together, and remember what unites us as Americans,” says Clayton. 

That doesn’t mean not arguing with each other. After all, the Founding Fathers and everyone who fought alongside them “didn’t always agree with one another,” says Clayton. “But they shared ideals. That’s the message for all of us today.”

This isn’t the occasion to compel everyone to agree, adds McClay, or relitigate every old quarrel. “This is the moment to set all of that aside.”