Our Story So Far …
Part One
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.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, —
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”
That’s a hell of an opening, isn’t it? You can’t hear those lines without asking, “What happened next?!” Which is exactly what Longfellow was trying for. After all, why else would you read a 14-stanza poem? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem and several others celebrating Americans and American history. Most of these poems were written just before the Civil War when the country was even more divided than it is today. Longfellow hoped his work would remind Americans of our common heritage and help reunite the country. The poem was an instant hit. If there had been a Billboard Top 40 chart for poetry, “Paul Revere’s Ride” would have shot to #1, but there are two things to remember about when the poem was first published. First, it was published nearly 100 years after Revere’s ride, so there was NO WAY Longfellow knew the exact events that happened that night. Second, Longfellow did not pretend that the poem was historically accurate. He was trying to create a legend not a CNN news report.
Despite that, for more than a century, Longfellow’s poem has been taken by most people as an historical reality. People admit that maybe the author embellished a little, but they still believe it is an accurate narrative about one of the revolution’s most heroic men. Well, Paul Revere was reasonably heroic, but there is a LOT more to the story.
Part Two – Occupied Boston
Before we get into the night of April 18, 1775, I need to set the stage. After serving in the military during the French and Indian war, Paul Revere, the son of a silversmith, was working as a silversmith in Boston. Because of the tremendous war debt Britian had accumulated during that war and for a bunch of other reason which I am not going to go into right now, the British were trying to squeeze the unruly and ungrateful colonists for as much tax money as they could get. They did this by levying new taxes like the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1768. This was a gut punch to the colonial economy. Revere is a businessman, so these laws hurt him, too.
The citizens of Boston already had a reputation as a bunch of troublemakers. They quickly found ways to fight back. One way they found was to create a communications network between patriots throughout the colonies. (Patriots in this era meant people who were against the British and for the independence. A Loyalist or Tory was a person who supported the British and opposed independence.)
Communication in this period was either in person or through letters. However, if you sent a letter through the regular postal system (what there was of it), your letter could be intercepted by the British. So Samuel Adams came up with the idea of an independent courier system which would allow the colonists to share news and communication without worrying that their message would fall into British hands. This system became known as the Committees of Correspondence, and it allowed the colonies to coordinate their resistance and later their military efforts. Many patriots carried letters, dispatches and other communications via this system throughout the colonies. In Boston, Paul Revere was one of those riders.
Anyway, back to Boston 1768. In addition to demanding new taxes, Parliament inflicted military occupation on Boston to enforce the new laws and to keep the locals in their place. For some reason, the people of Boston were upset by this. Go figure. After a couple of years of this,
(yes, YEARS of this. The Redcoats occupied Boston for a LONG time) tensions between the patriots and the occupying British were high. One day in March of 1770 a public protest erupted in violence. British soldiers opened fire on protestors killing five people. These five deaths are considered the first casualties of the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre is a hugely important event, and I am sure I will do a video on it eventually, but that’s another story for another time. It matters to this story because Paul Revere created an engraving of the event. It went viral, which is to say it was published in pamphlets and newspapers in every city in every colony. Anti-British sentiment skyrocketed as news of the event spread. Revere would also be instrumental in organizing the Boston Tea Party in 1773. After the Boston Tea Party, anti-British sentiment intensified, and local patriots began to organize militias nicknamed Minutemen because they could supposedly assemble for battle in a minute. They also began hiding caches of weapons and ammunition throughout the countryside.
Next Up – The Night of the Ride!!!
So now the stage is set for one of the most pivotal events in American History – Paul Revere’s Ride the night before the Shot Heard ‘Round the World at Lexington and Concord. Who gave the orders? Who exactly did the riding? The signaling? What exactly did Revere shout as he rode? And, most importantly, what was the name of his horse?
All of these questions will be answer in our next exciting tale! See you then.