Such became the Minute Man Statue's importance that when a bomb placed at its base almost detonated in 1973, the National Park Service decided to secure its future by temporarily moving it to a site where a mold could be made. Upon discovering that the 1875 time capsule was missing, the town of Concord immediately asked its Girl Scouts to make another time capsule so that the statue could continue to serve as a means of carrying into the future the energy that sparked the nation's existence. With a new collection of documents and objects stored underneath the statue and the assurance that it will always persist no matter what physical harm is ever done to it, the bronze Minute Man continues, at least theoretically, to remain free of the constraints of clock time. Lest there ever be any confusion about its sacred status, armed law enforcement park rangers are on hand to ensure that visitors strike the reverential attitude required under federal law. The potential for violent retribution that existed in 1971 and that continues to exist today raises an important question: what exactly are Americans being asked, even forced, to sanctify?
When twenty-five-year-old Concord local Daniel Chester French received the commission to add a commemorative statue of a Minute Man on the colonists' side of the deadly 1775 skirmish, he decided to change the historical timeline by several hours so that he could make the case that the nation's forefathers were peaceable, self-sufficient farmers. Word of the impending arrival of British troops intent on searching for and destroying the colonists' military stores reached Concord at 1:30 AM and thus well before the town's farmers had begun carving furrows in their fields for spring planting. Nevertheless, French's Minute Man has been plowing long enough to work up the sweat that has required him to remove his coat and push up his sleeves (Figure 2). French's change to the historical timeline also allows him to insist that Americans prefer peaceable pursuits above all else, as evidenced by the fact that he makes the Minute Man's hand linger on the plow. The sculptor's assertion that Americans are peaceable is further underscored by a verse from Ralph [End Page 100] Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" that is spelled out in bronze letters on its pedestal:
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.
Because a musket shot cannot literally be heard around the world, the shot functions here as a metaphor for the seed of democracy, whose tendrils, once sprouted in Concord, have and will continue to spread across the globe without harm to anyone.
