"Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, / on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year." These lines form the opening stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," a poem generations of schoolchildren once learned by heart. Written in 1860, the work first appeared in December of that year in the Boston Transcript and then in the January 1861, issue of The Atlantic Monthly. In 1863, Longfellow included it in his Tales of a Wayside Inn. The introductory poem of that volume creates a framework of six friends from town spending an autumn evening at an old inn, telling tales at the fireside. The inn of the book was the Red Horse Tavern in Sudbury, Massachusetts, a place Longfellow had visited. The fictional landlord began the storytelling with "Paul Revere's Ride." Two first editions of Tales of a Wayside Inn are located in Special Collections.
The first appearance of "Paul Revere's Ride" in book form was in Tales of a Wayside Inn in 1863. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), although familiar with the facts of April 18, 1775, used a large amount of poetic license in fashioning his tale of the midnight rider.
Longfellow's verses of the solitary horseman's "midnight ride," raising an alarm "Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm," transformed a patriotic Boston silversmith and Son of Liberty into a national hero. The poem is historically inaccurate, but it has become intertwined with the events of April 18, 1775, when Dr. Joseph Warren, chairman of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, sent Paul Revere and William Dawes riding out from Boston to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were staying in Lexington, that British troops were on the march, possibly to apprehend the Patriot leaders on their way to seize the powder, shot, and ordnance of the province of Massachusetts stored at Concord. If any part of the poem is still remembered, presumably it is the line "One, if by land, and two, if by sea," referring to the signal lanterns placed in the steeple of Old North Church to alert the countryside from which direction the British regulars would be approaching the towns of Lexington and Concord.
Old North Church from Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston,1856).
Paul Revere, by his own account, "was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics [artisans], who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers" in late 1774 and early 1775. A leader in the Patriot cause, he had been a participant in the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. In the aftermath of that event, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which included laws to close the port of Boston and alter the government of Massachusetts. To enforce these punitive measures, the king appointed Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage Commander-in-Chief of British forces in America and governor of Massachusetts. By April 1775, twelve regiments of foot and a battalion of marines garrisoned Boston. In defiance of Gage's September 1774 proclamation dissolving the Massachusetts legislature, that body had reconstituted itself as the Provincial Congress. It created a Committee of Safety and a Committee of Supplies. Gage knew that the colony was housing military stores in Concord and decided to seize them in an attempt to quash armed resistance. The maneuver was supposed to be secret, the light infantry and grenadiers setting off at night so as to arrive before an alarm could be raised. Nothing, however, was secret in Boston.
Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and John Hancock (1737-1793), engravings after the portraits by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) from Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston,1856).
Thomas Gage (1721-1787) from Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston,1856).
When the grenadier and light infantry companies were relieved from duty on Saturday, April 15, it was obvious something was afoot. On Sunday, Warren sent Revere to Lexington to alert Hancock and Adams, who were staying at the Reverend Jonas Clarke's house after the adjournment of the Provincial Congress. On his way back through Charlestown, Revere made arrangements with "Colonel Conant and some other gentlemen, that if the British went out by water, we would shew two lanthorns in the north church steeple; and if by land, one, as a signal; for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to cross the Charles River, or get over Boston neck."
Detail of a map of Boston with its Environs in 1775 & 1776 from Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (Boston, 1851).
On Tuesday evening, April 18, British soldiers began mustering at the foot of Boston Common and Warren, who had already sent Dawes, a tanner, by way of Boston Neck to warn Hancock and Adams, summoned Revere to his home and asked him to set off immediately for Lexington. Revere stopped at Old North Church to arrange for two friends to briefly show two lanterns in the steeple window, as he had planned with Colonel Conant. Then, after collecting his "boots and surtout," he made haste to his boat in the north end of town. Two more friends rowed him across the river to Charlestown, past the HMS Somerset, man-of-war. Once in Charlestown, he procured a horse and began his journey. Prior to departing, a member of the Commitee of Safety warned him that at least ten mounted and armed British officers were patrolling the road to Lexington.
The eighth stanza of "Paul Revere's Ride."
Revere would later recount that he "set off upon a very good horse; it was about eleven o'clock, and very pleasant." Eluding two British officers as he was crossing Charlestown Neck, he galloped to Medford and alerted the captain of the minute men. He then "alarmed almost every house, till I got to Lexington," arriving at the Reverend Jonas Clarke's home around midnight. After about a half hour, Dawes came riding up to the house. "We refreshed ourselves, and set off for Concord." Dr. Samuel Prescott, "a high son of liberty," joined them as they spread the alarm. About halfway to Concord, they were stopped by a group of British officers.
In Longfellow's poem, Revere rides alone to spread the alarm, there are no British officers to block the road, and he arrives in Concord in the early morning. In reality, Dr. Prescott jumped his horse over a low stone wall and continued to Concord, Dawes escaped and returned to Lexington, and Revere was surrounded and forced to dismount. One of the British officers "clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, and told me he was going to ask me some questions, and if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out." After being interrogated, Revere was allowed to remount as the group rode back to Lexington. Near the meetinghouse, Revere was forced to give his horse to a grenadier sergeant and was released. As he walked back to the Reverend Clarke's house, the British were drawing ever closer to the town. Soon the first blood of the American Revolution would be shed.
"So through the night rode Paul Revere; / And so through the night was his cry of alarm / To every Middlesex village and farm,— / A cry of defiance and not of fear, / A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, / And a word that shall echo forevermore!"
"The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" from Frederic Hudson, "The Concord Fight," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May, 1875.
Sources:
Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere's Ride. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. F69.R43F57 1994
Frothingham, Richard. History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. 2d ed. Boston: Little and Brown, 1851. E231.F93 1851
Livingston, Luther S. A Bibliography of the First Editions in Book Form of the Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Burt Franklin Bibliography and Reference Series No. 182. New York: B. Franklin, 1968. Z8515.L78 1968
Revere, Paul. "A Letter from Col. Paul Revere to the Corresponding Secretary." Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1st ser., vol. 5. Boston: Samuel Hall, 1798. Reprint. Boston: John H. Eastburn, 1835. F61.M41
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