April celebrates the famous ‘one if by land and two if by sea’. This enduring fame began on the night of April 18, 1775, when two lanterns were hung in a steeple by church sexton Robert Newman and vestry member Captain John Pulling, Jr.
Folk hero of the American Revolution, Paul Revere’s dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775 warned Boston-area residents that the British were coming. Paul Revere did not gain immediate fame for his April 1775 “Midnight Ride.” In fact, it wasn’t until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, which greatly embellished Revere’s role, that he became the folk hero we think of today.
Immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ballad, “Paul Revere’s Ride”, Paul’s name became etched into history to receive sole credit for the midnight ride. Longfellow appears to give Revere the credit primarily because his name rhymed better than Dawes’s or Prescott’s. The ballad was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
It is important however, to acknowledge that the ride was important and why. The warning given to the colonists and the militia by the riders was to enable them to be prepared and fight off the British army’s initial attack. This provided the local militia a key advantage during the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
The primary objective of the riders that night was to contact Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington. It appears they were given a fairly specific (probably written) message to deliver to the patriot leaders. In addition, the riders were to “alarm” the countryside. The British were moving troops out of Boston and planned to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Massachusetts. Revere was tasked with tipping them off to help avoid arrest.
Revere had intended to ride to Lexington to warn Hancock and Adams of the movements of the British regulars (which he did) and then on to Concord where the militia’s arsenal was hidden. He arranged to have a signal lit in the Old North Church – one lantern if the British were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea – and began to make preparations for his ride to alert the local militias and citizens about the impending attack. “One if by land, and two if by sea.”
In reality, Paul Revere didn’t ride through the streets of Concord hollering a warning. He didn’t even make it to Concord at all. Paul Revere rode that night with Samuel Prescott and William Dawes. Revere’s total distance was only about 12.5 miles. It was really Samuel Prescott who completed the midnight ride to reach Concord to warn of the British invasion.
“Following the passage of the Stamp Act in 1965, which imposed taxes on printed materials in the colonies, Revere joined the Sons of Liberty, a clandestine political organization that aimed to fight British taxation.” He took part in the Boston Tea Party and was a principal rider for Boston’s Committee of Safety. He often rode from Boston to New York to spread information about the colonies.
As tensions between the colonies and the British deepened, Revere was tapped to spy on British soldiers and report on their movement using his living as a silversmith, engraver, and dentist to ingratiate himself with them. He became a master propagandist, using his artisan skills to craft engravings that incited the colonists to join in the rebellion.
Then, at about 10 p.m. on April 18, 1775, Revere set out in the dark from his North Boston home with William Dawes to reach Adams and Hancock. The two riders met Adams and Hancock in Lexington and enabled the revolutionaries to avoid arrest.
Revere’s next stop that late night was Concord, Massachusetts, a hotbed of the resistance and the suspected location of the British troops’ second attack. “But Revere, Dawes and a third rider named Samuel Prescott were captured by the British en route, and only Prescott reached Concord.
Revere was soon released, but he had already helped give the colonial militia a key advantage by alerting them to the impending attack by the British. The Battles of Lexington and Concord would spark the Revolutionary War.”
Revere remained active in the Revolutionary War, building Boston’s first gunpowder mill and joining a Massachusetts infantry, but his remaining war record was lackluster, and he was largely unknown in his lifetime. After the war Revere went back to his silversmith business expanding to other areas