THE MIDNIGHT RIDE
April 18th is one of the most important dates in American history and marks the night riders warned fellow patriots that British troops were on the move.
Poetic license
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” (on the right) is based on historic events, but it is more of a tale and not a historical account. Longfellow wrote the poem after taking a tour of Boston in 1860. He was a pacifist and abolitionist who wrote the poem to try and unify a divided nation on course for the Civil War. Historians have dissected the poem since 1860 and compared it to Revere’s account of the ride in his own words and other historic evidence.
The National Park Service points out several inaccuracies including the following three:
• Revere knew the British route before he left Boston. Though two lanterns were held aloft in the Old North Church tower, Revere was not waiting on the Charlestown shore to see them. Instead, they were a fallback plan in case he could not get out of Boston.
• Revere was captured by patrolling British Regulars in Lincoln, just past Lexington, and never arrived in Concord. Revere did not ride alone that night. There was William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott. Revere was one of two riders to leave Boston (with Dawes), and one of many messengers spreading the alarm.
• The omission of other riders was a particularly sore point for some. Henry Ware Holland, a descendant of William Dawes, self-published a history in 1878 titled William Dawes and His Ride with
Paul Revere. He sent a copy to Longfellow, who wryly remarked that it was “a very handsome book… in which he convicts me of high historic crimes and misdemeanors.”
Longfellow’s works may not have prevented the Civil War, but after the war ended and the nation was getting ready to celebrate its centennial, the poem had a renewed importance. The gratitude for Paul Revere led to the preservation of his family home, built in 1680, which is the oldest home in Boston.
A statue of Revere was modeled in 1885 and is near the Old North Church.
The regulars are coming!
It’s unlikely the riders shouted, “The British are coming!” Many Americans living in the countryside still considered themselves British. The Regulars were known to be British soldiers.