We finished off last time with the stage set. British soldiers slaughtering Patriots in the street. Parliament squeezing patriot citizens for every penny in taxes. The Patriots stockpiling weapons and ammunition throughout the countryside. All of New England was a powder keg and one fateful night, the fuse was lit…
Part Three –The Night of the Ride
Which brings us to the night of April 18th 1775. The patriots have a large stockpile of weapons hidden at Concord, Massachusetts. Patriot leaders, Sam Adams and John Hancock, were lying low at a safe house in Lexington. The Sons of Liberty, a clandestine group of patriots and political agitators, were camped across the Charles River from Boston. At the time, Boston was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land called the Boston Neck. There were two ways out of Boston. One could either row a boat across the Charles River or one could travel across the Neck. The route over the Neck was the longer one. Lexington and Concord were north of Boston. If you crossed the river by boat, you could go straight north. But if you went across Boston Neck geography made you go pretty far south before you could turn and head north.
That evening, Dr. Joseph Warren, the leader of the patriots in Boston, summoned Revere and another courier, William Dawes. Warren informed the men that he had received word that the Redcoats were going to send out a patrol. The patrol might march to Lexington to arrest Adams & Hancock or to Concord to capture the armory hidden there or both. Warren wanted to two men to ride along different routes to warn both towns. That way if one was captured, the other might make it. The three agreed that Dawes would take the land route across Boston neck while Revere would cross the Charles and take the shorter route. The water route meant Revere would have to slip past British warships and water patrols. Knowing that he could be captured before he even reached the opposite shore, Revere arranged for a friend to signal the Sons of Liberty encamped across the river. One lantern would mean the troops were marching across Boston Neck. That was the “One if by land.” Two lanterns meant they were rowing across the river. “Two if by sea.”
That’s the first inaccuracy of the poem. The coded signal was not meant for Revere. It was meant as a backup, so the Sons of Liberty could warn Concord & Lexington if Revere himself was captured while crossing the Charles. After arranging the signal, Revere went home to change into boots and a dark overcoat. Then he had a couple of friends (whose names are, sadly, lost to history) row him across the Charles to the Sons of Liberty camp.
Also lost to history is the name of the horse that Revere rode. Oddly enough, what was the name of the horse is the most frequently asked questions by elementary school children about this historical event. Since he left Boston by boat, Revere did not have his horse with him. He borrowed a horse from John Larkin and no one remembers what Larkin had named the horse. ☹ That is something else to learn when someone invents a time machine.
Anyway, back to 1775. Revere set off around 11pm. After dodging several Redcoat patrols, Revere passed through the town of Medford where he warned militia leader Isaac Hall. He stopped in most of the towns he passed through warning patriots of the approaching crisis. He did NOT, however, yell “The British are coming!” from the street. First, most towns contained loyalists as well as patriots and yelling his message in the streets would warn them as well as the patriots. Second, most people, even patriots, still identified as British themselves, so no one would have known what he was talking about. His whispered message was, “The regulars are coming out.” Regulars being a term for British soldiers. It was more respectful than the derogatory Lobsterbacks but not as respectful as Redcoats. Revere reached Lexington around midnight. He located the house where Adams and Hancock were staying and warned them to leave before the British got there. They thanked him for his message and gave him something to eat and drink. Half an hour later Dawes arrived. He arrived after Revere even though he left earlier because the Boston Neck route was longer and he warned the towns as he passed through them just as Revere had. After Dawes had grabbed a bite to eat, both men left for Concord.
Now we need to shift our attention to the third participant in Revere’s ride, Samuel Prescott. Almost nothing is known about Samuel Prescott. We know he was a doctor in his mid-twenties. We know that Revere considered him a “high Son of Liberty” which most historians take to mean he was a member of the local Sons of Liberty chapter and possibly a courier like Revere and Dawes. We know his part in the events that night, but little else. A Dr. Prescott served as a surgeon at Fort Ticonderoga and another Dr. Prescott was imprisoned in Halifax, Nova Scotia and probably died there. However, there is no evidence to show if those doctors were the same as Dr. Samuel Prescott from Concord. It is as if Samuel Prescot popped up onto the pages of history, performed one crucial task and disappeared from history once his task was completed. Perhaps someday we will know more but for now we will work with what we have.
So back to the night of April 18th Revere and Dawes are leaving Lexington to complete the second half of their mission. They bump into Prescott on his way home to Concord. Legend says the Prescott had just left his fiancé’s house and was on his way home to Concord. This comes from a source written by Edward Everett fifty years later. Since there were people still alive from that night, most historians agree that this account might be accurate. Another theory says that since Revere referred to him as a high Son of Liberty, Prescott might have been, too. Certainly, his profession would have given him a plausible reason to be riding between towns at all hours of the day and night.
Personally, I like the idea that he just left his girlfriend’s house. I can picture the 24-year-old young man full of unspent passion after courting his girl under the watchful eyes of her parents. He gets a huge surge of adrenaline from meeting two horsemen on the road. They turn out to be friends on secret mission. How exciting is that! Of course, Prescott wants to go with them. Prescott convinces Revere and Dawes that since he lives in Concord, he will have a better chance of convincing the residents that the threat is for real. The three set off together.
They passed through the town of Lincoln and warn the patriots living there. Just outside of Lincoln the three were stopped by a patrol on the lookout for patriot couriers. The three men dashed off in different directions. Dawes rode into a yard shouting as if to companions “I got them. They’re right behind me.” That convinced the soldiers that they were riding into an ambush, so they turned back. According to Dawes’ own story as related to his children, his horse threw him and ran off, so he had to walk back to Lexington. If he played any other role in the battle, history does not know it.
Prescott road off in the other direction, dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and vaulted over a stone wall. The wooded and swampy terrain allowed him to elude capture, and he soon arrived at Hartwell Tavern. He alerted the patriotic Hartwell family and moved on. He soon located Capt. William Smith, leader of the Lincoln minutemen. Smith ordered the town bell rung to summon the militia to arms. When Prescott got to Concord and warned the sentry, the Concord bell was also rung. Thus, young Samuel Prescott completed Revere and Dawes’ mission to rouse the countryside. He spread the word that the Redcoats were coming, and the Revolution was about to begin!
So, Prescott finished the mission and warned the patriots. Dawes was thrown by his horse and had to walk back to Lexington. But what about Revere, the hero of Longfellow’s poem, star of stage and screen, legendary patriot and catalyst of the Revolution? What happened to Paul Revere? Well, he was captured. The patrol they ran into managed to catch up to Revere and capture him. They held him for questioning, but eventually they released him. Unfortunately for Revere and for John Larkin, the British commander admired Revere’s borrowed horse and confiscated it. Like Dawes, Revere walked back to Lexington and witnessed the end of the first battle of the revolution. So only historical enigma, Samuel Prescott, who made it to Concord to warn the patriots and ignited the American Revolution.
Part Four –What does it matter and why do I care?
The events leading to the battle at the Old North Bridge are still shrouded in mystery and legend. What is certain is that thanks to the courage of many people including Paul Revere, the patriots were ready to defend themselves against the rampages of the British army. Longfellow, who was writing in the twilight years of the Republican generation, knew that it was a joint effort by many patriots whose names have been lost to history. That is why I believe his poem, The Ride of Paul Revere, intended for Revere to be an Everyman, representing all of the many people who lent vital assistance to the Minutemen before that history-making battle.
Furthermore, I do not think it is a stretch to say that the Paul Revere poem represents all of the many couriers throughout the Revolution. The day after the Lexington and Concord battle, Isaac Bissell and Israel Bissel (who may or may not be related or even the same person) rode to the colonies of Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to report the results battle.
Two years later, Sybil Ludington rode forty miles on a similar mission to warn her father, Col. Henry Ludington that the British were about to raid the town of Danbury.
Oh, and before I forget, I want to make a quick mention of Wentworth Cheswell, who has sometimes been called the “Black Paul Revere.” I didn’t know anything about him. So I looked him up while I was researching this video, and I quickly realized that to call Cheswell the “Black Paul Revere” is a HUGE disservice to Wentworth Cheswell. The other riders I have talked about in this video were riders. That’s it. They rode horses and carried unbelievably important messages about historically important events.
That’s not true of Cheswell. He participated in several key events in the Revolution AND he & his family have historical importance before and after the Revolution. In fact, he has a bigger place in history than Paul Revere. Believe me, I am going to do an article about Wentworth Cheswell at some point. If you can’t wait, Google him. You’ll learn a lot.
Anyway, to get back to my point, there were LOTS of couriers riding around colonial America. Fast couriers often made the difference between victory and defeat. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow knew this, and I believe he wrote The Ride of Paul Revere to celebrate all of them. The evil critic in my head keeps saying, “Why’d he pick Paul Revere, then? I’ll tell you why. Paul Revere was an old white dude just like Longfellow.” That is probable, I confess to my evil critic, but there IS a lot more historical documentation for Revere than any of the others. Or hey, maybe it was just easier to rhyme things to Revere than Ludington. Whatever Longfellow’s reason was for immortalizing Revere, his greater purpose is well known. He wanted to remind Americans that we are all one people, a great people. A people who beat one of the most powerful empires in the world in order to create a society where a beggar is equal to a king. Beyond the historical facts and the distorted legends, I think that’s a really cool purpose and The Ride of Paul Revere is a really cool poem. I think it can remind us who we are and what this country is FOR. We aspire to be a beacon of freedom to the world. We want to carry the torch of liberty into a future where all people are free to forge their own destinies. Where they can pick the kind of government they want to live under and which leaders they want to follow. That’s what I want, too, and I’m glad that The Ride of Paul Revere exists to remind me when I forget or get so tired that I want to give up. That’s not what Americans do. We do not give up on Liberty, Paul Revere reminds me. So, I take a nap, and I get a bite to eat and then I pick the torch back up and keep going. I hope Longfellow’s poem will do that for you, too.
