The First Blow for Liberty

This engraving, of the skirmish at Lexington, is by A.H. (Alexander Hay) Richie.

A Scotsman who was born in 1822, and emigrated to America, Richie was well-known in the nineteenth century for the clarity of his engravings. He produced this work based on a drawing by F.O.C. (Felix Octavius Carr) Darley, a popular American illustrator of the mid-nineteenth century.

In 1842, The Saturday Museum magazine, edited by Edgar Alan Poe, described Felix Darley's art as "more truthful and full of character than anything of a similar kind which we have seen..."

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