Founding Myths (4 page)

              
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Two boatmen who rowed Revere across the Charles River.

              
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Colonel Conant and other patriots from Charlestown who waited patiently to receive the lantern signal they had arranged with Revere two days earlier.

              
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An unidentified messenger who was dispatched from Charlestown as soon as the signal from the lanterns was received. (Since this messenger never reached either Lexington or Concord, the entire signal lantern subplot is never consummated.)

              
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Richard Devens of Charlestown, who greeted Revere by the river's shore and warned him that British officers were patrolling the road to Lexington and Concord.

              
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Devens, Abraham Watson, Elbridge Gerry, Charles Lee, and Azor Orne, members of the Provincial Committee of Safety, who sent a note to Hancock in Lexington, warning him that British officers were headed his way.

              
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An anonymous courier who successfully delivered this
message at about eight o'clock in the evening, three hours
before
Revere would mount his horse.

              
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The innkeeper at the Black Horse Tavern in Menotomy (now Arlington), who later that night warned Gerry, Lee, and Orne that British troops had arrived, enabling them to escape out the back door.

              
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Solomon Brown of Lexington, who warned William Munroe, a sergeant in the town militia, that British officers were headed toward Lexington, and who later tried to alert the people of Concord to the presence of the officers, but was soon captured.

              
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Munroe and eight other militiamen who stood guard through the night at the house of Jonas Clarke, the Lexington minister, where Adams and Hancock were staying.

              
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Thirty other Lexington militiamen who gathered at Buckman Tavern at 9:00 p.m. to deal with the crisis, two hours
prior
to Revere's departure on his famous ride.

              
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Elijah Sanderson and Jonathan Loring of the Lexington militia, who volunteered to keep a watch on the British officers.

              
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Josiah Nelson, a farmer who resided on the road to Concord, who had his head slashed by the sword of one of the British officers, then alerted all his neighbors.

              
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John Larkin of Charlestown, who lent Revere a horse that belonged to his father, Samuel.

              
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Another unidentified messenger from Charlestown who set off at the same time as Revere, heading north. This rider reached Tewksbury, twenty-five miles from Boston, at about the time Revere himself was taken captive by the British officers.

              
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Captain John Trull of Tewksbury, who, upon receiving news from the Charlestown rider, fired three shots from his bedroom window—a signal that lacked the finesse of
the lanterns in Old North Church but that had a greater impact. The militia commander in Dracut, on the New Hampshire boundary, heard the shots and mustered his militia—several hours before the bloody dawn at Lexington.

              
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Samuel Tufts of East Cambridge, who embarked on a ride of his own after his neighbor, Elizabeth Rand, told him she had spotted the British column.

              
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Solomon Bowman, lieutenant of the Menotomy militia, who immediately mustered his town's company after viewing the British soldiers.

              
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Isaac Hull, captain of the Medford militia, who received word from Revere, then mustered his company.

              
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Dr. Martin Herrick, who left Medford to alarm Stoneham, Reading, and Lynn. These towns, in turn, sent out their own riders; by dawn, the entire North Shore of Massachusetts Bay was aroused and in the process of mustering.

              
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Another messenger from Medford who headed east to Malden, and from there to Chelsea.

              
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Yet another messenger from Medford who journeyed to Woburn, and still another from Woburn to the parish above it, now Burlington, and so on, ad infinitum, until almost every “Middlesex village and farm” had been warned by a vast network of messengers and signals—all in the wee hours of the morning on April 19, 1775.

              
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Finally, Samuel Prescott, a doctor from Concord, who managed to get the message to the people of his hometown that hundreds of British troops were coming their way to seize their military stores. Although Revere, Dawes, and Prescott had all been captured on the road between Lexington and Concord, Prescott alone staged a successful escape and completed the mission.
²¹

Paul Revere was not so alone after all. When the main British column approached Lexington, bells and signal shots echoed from front and rear. The entire countryside was aroused and ready. This wasn't the work of one man but of an intricate web of patriotic activists who had been communicating with each other for years. Ever since the overthrow of British authority late in the summer of 1774 (see
chapter 4
), they had prepared for military confrontation. Anticipating just such an event as the British assault on Lexington and Concord, they had rehearsed their response. Each man within each town knew whom to contact and where to go once the time came—and now the time had come. Like Paul Revere, myriad patriots sounded their local alarms and readied themselves for action.

AN ENDURING TALE

Facts matter little when a good story is at stake. From the time of its first publication, “Paul Revere's Ride” was a national classic, and readers assumed it signified actual events. Schoolbooks confidently reiterated Longfellow's distortions. According to an 1888 text,
A History of the United States and Its People, for the Use of Schools
, Revere “waited at Charlestown until he saw a light hung in a church-steeple, which was a signal to him that the British were moving.” It dutifully cited a source, referring students to “Longfellow's famous poem on the subject.”
²²
Although some texts noted that the poem was “not strictly historical,” others blithely accepted Longfellow's altered plotline. A 1923 text,
History of Our Country, for Higher Grades
, stated fancifully, “On that night there was at Charlestown, across the river from Boston, an American of Huguenot descent holding a horse by the bridle, while he watched for a lantern signal from a church tower. His name was Paul Revere, and he is known as ‘the courier of the Revolution.' ”
²³
Texts in 1935 and 1946 also had Revere waiting for the lantern signal—accompanied for a change by William Dawes, who in fact never went through Charlestown.
²⁴

Fiction, in conscientious hands, often follows history, but here history unquestionably followed fiction. Even serious scholars fell into line behind the poet. In 1891 John Fiske, one of the most prominent historians of his generation, told how Paul Revere crossed “the broad river in a little boat,” then waited “on the farther bank until he learned, from a lantern suspended in the belfry of the North Church, which way the troops had gone.”
²⁵

Starting in the 1920s, iconoclastic “debunkers” poked fun at Longfellow's Revere. William Dawes, one of the other riders, enjoyed something of a renaissance when his descendent Charles Dawes became vice president of the United States under Calvin Coolidge. Traditionalists fought back: in 1922 an army captain, E.B. Lyon, dropped patriotic pamphlets from a military aircraft following the trail of Paul Revere's ride.
²⁶

The most serious challenge came not from debunkers or Progressive historians, however, but from Progressive educators, who opposed rote memorization. But as recitations of Longfellow's poem began to fade from the standard curricula, Esther Forbes breathed new life into the Revere story with her Pulitzer Prize–winning
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.
Resuscitated, her Revere is a simple artisan who leads an everyday life. Although Forbes used Revere to celebrate the common man, she reiterated the traditional view that Revere served as the “lone horseman” who saved the day for the patriots.
²⁷

Not until 1994 were Longfellow's errors laid to rest in David Hackett Fischer's
Paul Revere's Ride
, a masterful work of historical detection that influenced the writing of textbooks in the years that followed. No longer was Revere portrayed as the lonely messenger who rowed himself across the river, waited to receive the lantern signals, and alerted the countryside all by himself. (One notable exception was Joy Hakim's
A History of US,
which still followed Longfellow word for word.
²⁸
) Others were involved, most revised texts stated—but they didn't say it very forcefully. “Paul Revere, a member of the Sons of Liberty, rode his horse to Lexington to warn Hancock and Adams,” said one text—then, almost as an afterthought, it added, “Revere was
joined by William Dawes and Samuel Prescott.”
²⁹
The visual accompaniment, of course, featured a statue of Revere, not Dawes or Prescott. According to another, “
Paul Revere
[emphasis in original], a Boston silversmith, and a second messenger, William Dawes, were charged with spreading the news about British troop movements. . . . When the British moved, so did Revere and Dawes. They galloped over the countryside on their ‘midnight ride,' spreading the news.”
³⁰
In these watered-down versions, one rider turned into two or three, with Revere always in the lead.
³¹
The romance was gone, yet there was no hint of the elaborate web of communication that was activated on that momentous night.

Ever since Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's ride has been part of America's heritage, and no history of our nation's beginnings would dare ignore it. All United States history textbooks at the elementary, middle school, and secondary levels, and the vast majority of college texts as well, still mention Paul Revere's ride, and this includes surveys that undertake no more than a cursory review of the American Revolution.
³²
Even texts that evidence no particular desire to pass on the legend must figure a way to mention Revere somehow. According to one current secondary text, “Tipped off by men, including Paul Revere, who had ridden into the countryside to warn of the approaching British troops, the local Patriots rallied to drive the troops back to Boston.” Although Longfellow's influence is reduced to a bare minimum, “including Revere” still must make an appearance.
³³

In the last few years, with memory of Fischer's work receding, there has even been a bit of backsliding. One otherwise excellent college text, while trying to broaden the story, inadvertently reverts to the signal lantern ploy, Longfellow's signature distortion: “Alerted by signal lanterns, express riders Paul Revere and William Dawes eluded British patrols and spurred their horses toward Lexington along separate routes to warn Hancock and Adams. Bells and alarm guns spread the word that the British were coming.” In fact, neither Revere nor Dawes was alerted by signal lanterns, and most modern texts have long since abandoned “the British were coming” in favor of “the
Regulars were coming,” since even the rebels still considered themselves British at that point.
³⁴

Authors of a middle-school text pass on the legend while technically avoiding a falsehood: “As the troops set out, a signal sent by the Patriots appeared in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church. Two men, Paul Revere and William Dawes, then rode through the night to warn the minutemen.” Students reading this passage will of course assume that the two sentences are causally linked and that Revere and Dawes, having seen the signals, set off on their mission. This version, by pulling Dawes into the signal lantern legend, actually magnifies rather that alleviates the error.
³⁵
Another middle-school text, also intent on featuring Dawes, garbles the story entirely: “When Revere and fellow patriot William Dawes saw two lights shine, they set off on horseback. Using two different routes out of Boston, they sounded the alert.”
³⁶
Here, both patriots are receiving the signal
within
Boston, undermining the whole purpose of the lanterns, which was to get the news across the Charles River.

Elementary- and middle-school texts still depict Revere on horseback, even if he is not always the only one: “Revere galloped across the moonlit countryside, shouting, ‘The regulars are out!' to people along the way.”
³⁷
That image excites children and will not die. One current fifth-grade text presents Longfellow's poem in its entirety, then reinforces the basic premise with a question: “CAUSE AND EFFECT—What signal caused Paul Revere to begin his ride?” Then comes a map of Revere's route—no Dawes, no Prescott—and a picture of a statue depicting Revere on his horse, with the steeple of Old North Church rising in the background. “Two lanterns were hung in the church tower to signal British plans to cross the Charles River by boat,” the caption says. No fifth grader could possibly doubt, after all this, that Paul Revere and his horse waited impatiently on the opposite shore, just as Longfellow said.
³⁸