Paul Revere's Ride (89 page)

At Warren’s bidding, has the gauntlet run,

Unscathed, and dashing into Lexington,

While midnight wraps him in her mantle dark

Halts at the house of Reverent Mr. Clark.

10
.
Boston Intelligencer and Weekly Gazette,
May 10, 1818.

11
. Elias Phinney,
History of the Battle at Lexington
(Boston, 1825, rpt.
1875);
Ezra Ripley,
History of the Fight at Concord
(Concord, 1827; 2nd ed., 1832); Josiah Adams,
Acton Centennial Address
(Boston, 1835).

12
. Murdock,
The Nineteenth of April, 1775,
4—13.

13
. Paul Revere, Draft Deposition,
ca.
April 24, 1775, Morgan (ed.),
Paul Revere’s Three Accounts,
[21].

14
. Depositions of Elijah Sanderson, Dec. 17, 1824; and William Munroe, March 7, 1825, in Phinney,
History of the Battle at Lexington,
31—35.

15
. Richard Frothingham, Jr.,
History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument
(Boston, 1849), 23, 58, 60, 366.

16
. (J. T. Buckingham,], “Paul Revere,”
New England Magazine
3 (1832): 304—14.

17
.
Ibid.,
307-14; Alden Bradford,
Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Men in New England
(Boston, 1842), 349—51; Daniel Webster, Speech at Pittsburgh, July 8,1833, quoted in Jayne Triber, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: From History to Folklore” (Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association, n.d.), 3.

18
. Frederic W. Cook,
Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities and Towns in Massachusetts
(Boston, 1948).

19
. Longfellow, Journals, April 5, 1860. George Bancroft’s accurate account appears in
History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent,
VII (Boston, 1858), 288-96.

20
. Hudson,
Lexington,
171.

21
. Howard G. Laskey, “The Ride,” in Goss,
Revere,
I, 197. The caption read, “Shouting at every house he reaches, startling the affrighted inmates from their slumbers with his wild halloo, this strange herald of danger thunders on.”

22
. Maury Botton, “Thomas Edison’s ‘Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’—A Silent Film,”
Revere House Gazette 25 (1991): 1—7; a copy of the film is owned by the Paul Revere Memorial Association. I am grateful to Patrick Leehey for the loan of it.

23
. The original model is reproduced in Harriet E. O’Brien,
Paul Revere’s Own Story
(Boston, 1929), facsimile 1; see also Wayne Craven, “Cyrus Edwin Dallin,” in
Dictionary of American Biography,
ed. Allen Johnson, 20 vols. (New York, 1927-81), supplement III, 210-11;
New York Times,
Nov. 15, 1944; Kammen,
Mystic Chords of Memory,
504; John C. Ewers, “Cyrus E. Dallin: Master Sculptor of the Plains Indian,”
Montana
18 (1968): 35-38.

24
. E. T. Paull, “Paul Revere’s Ride; March-Two Step” (New York: E.T. Paull Music Company, 1905); also “Paul Revere; A Musical Comedy in Three Acts. Book, Lyrics and Music by May Hewes Dodge and John Wilson Dodge,” Piano-Vocal Score (Cincinnati, 1919), NYPL.

25
. Another surviving 17th-century structure within the present limits of Boston is the Blake House, but this was originally part of the town of Dorchester. No other 17th-century building survives today in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore.

26
. Goss,
Life of Colonel Paul Revere,
II, 622.

27
.
Ibid.

28
. Murdock,
The Nineteenth of April 1775,
84, 133.

29
. French,
Day of Concord and Lexington,
52, 77-80.

30
. Frank Warren Coburn,
The Battle of April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, and Charlestown, Massachusetts
(Lexington, 1912), vii.

31
. Zechariah Chafee, “Freedom of Speech in Wartime,”
Harvard Law Review
32 (1918— 19): 939-40; I owe this reference to the kindness of Morton Keller.

32
. In the same letter, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., raged against a recent account that Thomas Jefferson had ridden to his inauguration on horseback instead of by carriage, and in an egalitarian gesture had tied his horse to a fence outside the Capitol. Michael Kammen observes that “Adams preferred truth to fairy tales, especially if the tales were intended to exemplify an egalitarian ethos. Truth is particularly preferable to fiction when the fiction sustains a value system that one finds unwarranted.” Kammen,
Mystic Chords of Memory,
84.

33
. “What’s in a Name?”
Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
51 (Feb. 1896): 36; Dixon Wecter,
The Hero in America
(New York, 1941).

34
. A good example of this dated humor is Robert Benchley, “Paul Revere’s Ride: How a Modest Go-Getter Did His Bit for the Juno Acid Bath Corporation,”
Inside Robert Benchley
(New York, 1942), 195-201.

35
. Richard Shenkman, “I
Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not”
(New York, 1991), vii.

36
. Jayne Triber, “Paul Revere’s Ride: From History to Folklore,” ms., PRMA.

37
. A leading critic of American marksmanship was Allen French,
The Day of Lexington and Concord,
27-36, 255-58, who reckoned from the arithmetic of British casualties and New England muster rolls that “not one American in ten made his mark upon the enemy” (p. 258). This statement was seized upon by debunkers in the 1930s and 1970s as evidence that the heroes of the American Revolution were military incompetents who “could not shoot straight” (e.g., Richard Shenkman,
Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History,
[N.Y., 1988], 79—80). Echoes of this interpretation continued in the academic scholarship of the Vietnam generation.

It is mistaken—a compounding of many errors. British casualty reports included only deaths and very serious wounds. Even so, the ratio of hits to rounds fired was higher on the American than the British side, and much higher than in other wars. Fighting with 18th-century weapons, and being deliberately held at long range by their commanders, the fire of the New England militia was in fact remarkably accurate. The strongest evidence comes from Regular British officers who were on the receiving end. Carter, Percy, Lister, Barker, and Mackenzie testified that the American fire was in Carter’s words “heavy and well-directed.”

38
. “There is little tactical benefit from a study of these operations,” Fred M. Green, “Lexington and Concord,”
Infantry Journal,
April-May, 1935, pp. 109-16.

39
.
Nathan Schachner, “Do School-Books Tell the Truth?
American Mercury,
Dec. 1938, p. 416.

40
. Forbes,
Revere,
475n.

41
. Kammen,
Mystic Chords of Memory,
504; quoting Forbes to R. N. Lincott, July 24, 1940, Forbes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

42
. Forbes,
Revere,
23, 319.

43
. Donald M. Nielsen, “The Revere Family,”
NEHGR
145 (1991): 291.

44
. Forbes,
Revere,
475; for complaints of “literary license,” see Neilsen, “The Revere Family,” 291.

45
. Robert Lawson,
Mr. Revere and I
(Boston, 1953); Jean Fritz,
And What Then Happened, Paul Revere
(New York, 1973).

46
.
Boston Herald,
April 18, 1950.

47
. Galvin,
Minute Men.

48
. Richard Bissell,
New Light on
IJJ
6 and All That
(Boston, 1975), 34—40.

49
. Quoted in Triber, “The Midnight Ride,” [7].

50
.
Ibid.,
[6-7].

51
. Richard Shenkman,
Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History
(New York, 1989), 23-24, 82, 154.

52
. Susan Wilson, “North Bridge: Span of History,”
Boston Globe,
April 15, 1993.

53
. Tim O’Brien, “Ambush!”
Boston Magazine,
April 1993, pp. 62—67, 101—06.

54
. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager,
The Growth of the American Republic,
2 vols. (New York, 1930).

55
. Bernard Bailyn
et al., The Great Republic: A History of the American People
(1977), 277; John M. Blum
et al., The National Experience
(New York, 1962); Bernard Weisburger, “Paul Revere, the Man, the Myth, and the Midnight Ride,”
American Heritage
28 (1977): 25-37.

56
. Virginus Dabney,
The Patriots
(1976), v, vi.

57
. Mary Beth Norton
et al., A People and a Nation; A History of the United States.
2 vols. (Boston, 1986), I, 136.

58
. (London)
Times,
Feb. 25, 1993.

59
. A history appears in
Handbook of the Paul Revere Memorial Association
(Boston, 1950); and its current activities are summarized in, Nina Zannieri, director,
Paul Revere Memorial Association, Annual Report, 1991/1992
(Boston, 1992).

Bibliography

1
. Louis Shores,
Origins of the American College Library 1638—1800
(Nashville, 1934), 215; quoted in Frederick Rudolph,
The American College
fcf
University: A History
(Athens, Ga., 1990), 287.

This project began in the Spring of 1992, with an invitation from Len Tucker to present a paper to the Massachusetts Historical Society. I am grateful to the members and staff of the Society for their encouragement and support.

In the following year that paper grew into this book. A critical stage in its conceptual development came in an unexpected place during the summer of 1992, when James McPherson and I were refighting the western campaigns of the Civil War for a floating alumni college on board the steamboat
Delta Queen.
We had occasion to talk about our mutual interest in contingency and choice in history. One night, while making an advance visit to the battlefields, we made a mistaken choice of our own, and tried to get too close to the site of Fort Henry (now underwater). Our car sank deep into the mud of the Tennessee River. As we walked many miles through a dark night while bolts of lightning flashed on the horizon, the idea of contingency struck home with special force! I have a major debt to Jim for his pathbreaking work on this problem.

Another large debt is due to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, who read a rough draft and offered many helpful suggestions for the narrative construction of the work. As always I have learned much from his depth of insight into historical problems.

In Boston, many scholars shared their expertise on various aspects of the midnight ride. A large debt is due to Nina Zannieri, director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, and to Patrick Leehey, head of research at Paul Revere House. Both Nina and Pat found time in their busy schedules to read the manuscript in several drafts. They gave it the most careful, rigorous, and constructive criticism I have ever received on any project. In subsequent conversations they and Edith Steblecki and other members of the staff at the Paul Revere House helped on many questions of substance, detail, bibliography, and illustrations.

On the fighting at Lexington and Concord, I have learned much from Douglas Sabin, chief historian at Minute Man National Historic Park, the leading authority on the battle. Doug generously shared his own unpublished research, walked the Battle Road with me, and closely criticized several drafts of this manuscript. Three historians of Lexington and Concord also read the manuscript: Robert Gross of the College of William and Mary, Joseph Fairbanks of Whittier College, and David Wood at the Concord Museum. All made helpful suggestions, and shared unpublished materials. Other scholars helped with specific problems in the course of the research: Marjorie Hubbell Gibson and Nathaniel Champlin on HMS
Somerset,
and Thomas Boaz on Major Pitcairn and the Royal Marines, Thomas Smith on Loammi Baldwin, the Reverend Robert W. Golledge of Old North Church, and S. Lawrence Whipple on Lexington Common. Colonel Vincent Kehoe sent the results of his latest research on the 10th Foot.

At the American Antiquarian Society, Georgia Barnhill was as always a model of high efficiency. With her unrivaled expertise on early American imprints, she also helped to locate materials at other institutions. Also helpful in other ways were Judith McAllister Curtis at the Adams National Historic Site, Braintree; Christine MacKenzie and Diane Broadley at Anderson Photo, Inc.; Meredith McCulloch at the Bedford Public Library, Philip Bergen of the Bostonian Society, Laura Monti at Boston Public Library, the staff at the British Library and the British Public Record Office, Susan Danforth of the John Carter Brown Library, Charles Sullivan at the Cambridge Historical Commission, John Dann and Arlene Shy at the William L. Clements Library, Mrs. William H. Moss and Joyce Woodman at the Concord Free Public Library, Carol Haines at the Concord Museum, Robert Hanson at the Dedham Historical Society, Nancy Heywood and William La Moy at the Essex Institute, Mark Burnette at the Evanston Historical Society, Ed Olsen and Susan Cifaldi of the Fifers and Drummers Museum, Sanna Deutsch at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Sarah Brophey and Anne Ireland at Lexington Historical Society, Jane Eastman at the Lexington Library, Bernice H. Fallick, Town Clerk of Lexington, Louis Plummer of Photoassist, Inc.
who helped with the Library of Congress, Bobbie Robinson and Frank Sorrentino at Massachusetts Archives, Peter Drummey, Virginia Smith, Catherine Craven and Brenda Lawson at Massachusetts Historical Society, Susan Greendyke Lachever of the Massachusetts Art Commission, Eileen Sullivan at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Karen Otis of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, John Hamilton and Maureen Harper at the Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, Claire Wright and Emma Armstrong at the British National Army Museum, Philip Jago at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Liza Verity at the National Maritime Center, George Price of the National Park Service, Ralph Crandall and Linda Skinner at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society; Jim Campbell and Vicki Chirco at the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Roberta Waddell at the New York Public Library, Roxana Adams and Peggy Pritchard at the Provincetown Museum, Jane Porter of the Portsmouth Athenaeum; Lorna Condon at the Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities, Nancy Petersen at the Timken Museum of Art, Robert Panzer of VAGA, Inc., Elizabeth Garside Goeselt of the Wayland Historical Society, W. N. Stelzer of Winterthur Museum, Bill Wallace at Worcester Historical Museum, Suzanne Warner at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Timothy Goodhue at Yale Center for British Art.