Minutemen were civilian colonists who independently organized to form militia companies self-trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies from the American colonial partisan militia during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Wikipedia
Defination of Minute Men from a 1920s book:
Minute Men.the soldiers of the American Revolution who, in the anxious months the war broke out, held themselves ready to fight at a minute's notice.
It was the minute men who met the British on Lexington Green that eventful April morning of 1775, who fired the "shot heard around the world" at Concord, who flocked swiftly and silently to the British path of retreat until they seemed, as one British officer wrote " to drop from the clouds." Their deadly fire poured into the ranks of the British fleeing madly to Boston, until that goodly company of troops was utterly demoralized.
The minute men were van at Bunker Hill; they played a prominent part throughout the Revolution.
A queer (strange)-looking body of men they were, made up of farmers, school teachers who had dropped their books at the sound of battle, half-grown boys, and the like, clad (dressed) in any garments they happened to own,but they could fight.
Longfellow in Paul Revere's Ride,describes their fighting at Concord thus:
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled--
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again,
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
