Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

conservative and traditional.

Okay, Okay. This is the problem with most states. The larger cities are the domain of the Liberal element. The out
lining areas are places where traditional Americans dwell - people who live in the real world.

But this thread is to celebrate an American Patriot and the start of the American Revolution.

There once was a time in America...

Let us all remember this time and gain new inspiration towards returning to these times.

THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON APRIL 19, 1775.

On the afternoon of the day on which the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts adjourned, General Gage took the light infantry and grenadiers off duty and secretly prepared an expedition to destroy the colony’s stores at Concord. The attempt had for several weeks been expected, and signals were concerted to announce the first movement of troops for the country. Samuel Adams and Hancock, who had not yet left Lexington for Philadelphia, received a timely message from Warren, and in consequence the Committee of Safety moved a part of the public stores and secreted the cannon.

On Tuesday, the eighteenth of April, ten or more British sergeants in disguise dispersed themselves through Cambridge and farther west to intercept all communication. In the following night the grenadiers and light infantry, not less than eight hundred in number, the flower of the army at Boston, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, crossed in the boats of the transport ships from the foot of the Common at East Cambridge.

Gage directed that no one else should leave the town, but Warren had, at ten o’clock, dispatched William Dawes through Roxbury and Paul Revere by way of Charlestown to Lexington.

Revere stopped only to engage a friend to raise the concerted signals, and two friends rowed him across the Charles River five minutes before the sentinels received the order to prevent it. All was still, as suited the hour. The Somerset, man-of-war, was winding with the young flood; the waning moon just peered above a clear horizon, while from a couple of lanterns in the tower of the North Church the beacon streamed to the neighboring towns as fast as light could travel.

A little beyond Charlestown Neck Revere was intercepted by two British officers on horseback, but being well mounted he turned suddenly and escaped by the road to Medford. In that town he waked the captain and Minute Men, and continued to rouse almost every house on the way to Lexington, making the memorable ride of Paul Revere. The troops had not advanced far when the firing of guns and ringing of bells announced that their expedition had been heralded, and Smith sent back for a reinforcement.

Early on the nineteenth of April the message from Warren reached Adams and Hancock, who at once divined the object of the expedition. Revere, therefore, and Dawes, joined by Samuel Prescott, “a high Son of Liberty” from Concord, rode forward, calling up the inhabitants as they passed along, till in Lincoln they fell upon a party of British officers. Revere and Dawes were seized and taken back to Lexington, where they were released, but Prescott leaped over a low stone wall and galloped on for Concord.

There, at about two hours after midnight, a peal from the bell of the meeting house brought together the inhabitants of the place, young and old, with their firelocks, ready to make good the resolute words of their town debates. Among the most alert was William Emerson, the minister, with gun in hand, his powder horn and pouch of balls slung over his shoulder. By his sermons and his prayers his flock learned to hold the defense of their liberties a part of their covenant with God. His presence with arms strengthened their sense of duty.

From daybreak to sunrise, the summons ran from house to house through Acton. Express messengers and the call of Minute Men spread widely the alarm. How children trembled as they were scared out of sleep by the cries! How women, with heaving breasts, bravely seconded their husbands! How the countrymen, forced suddenly to arm, without guides or counsellors, took instant counsel of their courage! The mighty chorus of voices rose from the scattered farmhouses, and, as it were, from the ashes of the dead. “Come forth, champions of liberty; now free your country; protect your sons and daughters, your wives and homesteads; rescue the houses of the God of your fathers, the franchises handed down from your ancestors.” Now all is at stake; the battle is for all.

Lexington, in 1775, may have had seven hundred inhabitants. Their minister was the learned and fervent Jonas Clark, the bold inditer of patriotic state papers, that may yet be read on their town records. In December, 1772, they had instructed their representative to demand “a radical and lasting redress of their grievances, for not through their neglect should the people be enslaved.” A year later they spurned the use of tea. In 1774, at various town meetings, they voted “to increase their stock of ammunition,” “to encourage military discipline, and to put themselves in a posture of defense against their enemies.” In December they distributed to “the train band and alarm list” arms and ammunition and resolved to “supply the training soldiers with bayonets.”

At two in the morning, under the eye of the minister, and of Hancock and Adams, Lexington Common was alive with the Minute Men. The roll was called and, of militia and alarm men, about one hundred and thirty answered to their names. The captain, John Parker, ordered everyone to load with powder and ball, but to take care not to be the first to fire. Messengers sent to look for the British regulars reported that there were no signs of their approach. A watch was therefore set, and the company dismissed with orders to come together at beat of drum.

The last stars were vanishing from night when the foremost party, led by Pitcairn, a major of marines, was discovered advancing quickly and in silence. Alarm guns were fired and the drums beat, not a call to village husbandmen only, but the reveille of humanity. Less than seventy, perhaps less than sixty, obeyed the summons, and, in sight of half as many boys and unarmed men, were paraded in two ranks a few rods north of the meeting house.

The British van, hearing the drum and the alarm guns, halted to load; the remaining companies came up, and, at half an hour before sunrise, the advance party hurried forward at double quick time, almost upon a run, closely followed by the grenadiers. Pitcairn rode in front and when within five or six rods of the Minute Men, cried out: “Disperse, ye villains! Ye rebels, disperse! Lay down your arms! Why don’t you lay down your arms and disperse?” The main part of the countrymen stood motionless in the ranks, witnesses against aggression, too few to resist, too brave to fly. At this Pitcairn discharged a pistol, and with a loud voice cried “Fire!” The order was followed first by a few guns, which did no execution, and then by a close and deadly discharge of musketry.

Jonas Parker, the strongest and best wrestler in Lexington, had promised never to run from British troops, and he kept his vow. A wound brought him on his knees. Having discharged his gun he was preparing to load it again when he was stabbed by a bayonet and lay on the post which he took at the morning’s drum beat. So fell Isaac Muzzey, and so died the aged Robert Munroe, who in 1758 had been an ensign at Louisburg. Jonathan Harrington, Jr., was struck in front of his own house on the north of the common. His wife was at the window as he fell. With blood gushing from his breast, he rose in her sight, tottered, fell again, then crawled on hands and knees toward his dwelling; she ran to meet him, but only reached him as he expired on their threshold. Caleb Harrington, who had gone into the meeting house for powder, was shot as he came out. Samuel Hadley and John Brown were pursued and killed after they had left the green. Asabel Porter, of Woburn, who had been taken prisoner by the British on the march, endeavoring to escape, was shot within a few rods of the common. Seven men of Lexington were killed, nine wounded, a quarter part of all who stood in arms on the green.

There on the green lay in death the gray-haired and the young; the grassy field was red “with the innocent blood of their brethren slain,” crying unto God for vengeance from the ground.

These are the village heroes who were more than of noble blood, proving by their spirit that they were of a race divine. They gave their lives in testimony to the rights of mankind, bequeathing to their country an assurance of success in the mighty struggle which they began. The expanding millions of their countrymen renew and multiply their praise from generation to generation. They fulfilled their duty not from an accidental impulse of the moment; their action was the ripened fruit of Providence and of time.

Heedless of his own danger, Samuel Adams, with the voice of a prophet, exclaimed: “Oh, what a glorious morning is this!” for he saw his country’s independence hastening on, and, like Columbus in the tempest, knew that the storm bore him more swiftly toward the undiscovered land.

The British troops drew up on the village green, fired a volley, huzzaed thrice by way of triumph, and after a halt of less than thirty minutes, marched on for Concord. There, in the morning hours, children and women fled for shelter to the hills and the woods and men were hiding what was left of cannon and military stores.

The Minute Men and militia formed on the usual parade, over which the congregation of the town for near a century and a half had passed to public worship, the freemen to every town meeting, and lately the patriot members of the Provincial Congress twice a day to their little senate house. Near that spot Winthrop, the father of Massachusetts, had given counsel; and Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, had spoken words of benignity and wisdom. The people of Concord, of whom about two hundred appeared in arms on that day, derived their energy from their sense of the divine power.

The alarm company of the place rallied near the Liberty Pole on the hill, to the right of the Lexington road, in the front of the meeting house. They went to the perilous duties of the day “with seriousness and acknowledgment of God,” as though they were to engage in acts of worship. The minute company of Lincoln, and a few men from Acton, pressed in at an early hour; but the British, as they approached, were seen to be four times as numerous as the Americans. The latter, therefore, retreated, first to an eminence eighty rods farther north, then across Concord River, by the North Bridge, till just beyond it, by a back road, they gained high ground about a mile from the center of the town. There they waited for aid.

About seven o’clock, under brilliant sunshine, the British marched with rapid step into Concord, the light infantry along the hills and the grenadiers in the lower road.

At daybreak the Minute Men of Acton crowded at the drum-beat to the house of Isaac Davis, their captain, who “made haste to be ready.” Just thirty years old, the father of four little ones, stately in person, a man of few words, earnest even to solemnity, he parted from his wife, saying: “Take good care of the children,” and while she gazed after him with resignation he led off his company.

Between nine and ten the number of Americans on the rising ground above Concord Bridge had increased to more than four hundred. Of these, there were twenty-five men from Bedford, with Jonathan Wilson for their captain; others were from Westford, among them Thaxter, a preacher; others from Littleton, from Carlisle, and from Chelmsford. The Acton company came last and formed on the right; the whole was a gathering not so much of officers and soldiers as of brothers and equals, of whom every one was a man well known in his village, observed in the meeting houses on Sundays, familiar at town meetings and respected as a freeholder or a freeholder’s son.

Near the base of the hill Concord River flows languidly in a winding channel and was approached by a causeway over the wet ground of its left bank. The by-road from the hill on which the Americans had rallied ran southerly till it met the causeway at right angles. The Americans saw before them, within gunshot, British troops holding possession of their bridge, and in the distance a still larger number occupying their town, which, from the rising smoke, seemed to have been set on fire.

The Americans had as yet received only uncertain rumors of the morning’s events at Lexington. At the sight of fire in the village the impulse seized them “to march into the town for its defense.” But were they not subjects of the British king? Had not the troops come out in obedience to acknowledged authorities? Was resistance practicable? Was it justifiable? By whom could it be authorized? No union had been formed, no independence proclaimed, no war declared. The husbandmen and mechanics who then stood on the hillock by Concord River were called on to act and their action would be war or peace, submission or independence. Had they doubted, they must have despaired. Prudent statesmanship would have asked for time to ponder. Wise philosophy would have lost from hesitation the glory of opening a new era for mankind. The small bands at Concord acted and God was with them.

“I never heard from any person the least expression of a wish for a separation,” Franklin, not long before, had said to Chatham. In October, 1774, Washington wrote: “No such thing as independence is desired by any thinking man in America.” “Before the nineteenth of April, 1775,” relates Jefferson, “I never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain.” Just thirty-seven days had passed since John Adams published in Boston, “That there are any who pant after independence is the greatest slander on the province.”

The American Revolution grew out of the souls of the people and was an inevitable result of a living affection for freedom, which set in motion harmonious effort as certainly as the beating of the heart sends warmth and color through the system.

The officers, meeting in front of their men, spoke a few words with one another and went back to their places. Barrett, the colonel, on horseback in the rear, then gave the order to advance, but not to fire unless attacked. The calm features of Isaac Davis, of Acton, became changed; the town schoolmaster of Concord, who was present, could never afterwards find words strong enough to express how deeply his face reddened at the word of command. “I have not a man that is afraid to go,” said Davis, looking at the men of Acton, and, drawing his sword, he cried: “March!” His company, being on the right, led the way toward the bridge, he himself at their head, and by his side Major John Buttrick, of Concord, with John Robinson, of Westford, lieutenant-colonel in Prescott’s regiment, but on this day a volunteer without command.

These three men walked together in front, followed by Minute Men and militia in double file, training arms. They went down the hillock, entered the by-road, came to its angle with the main road and there turned into the causeway that led straight to the bridge. The British began to take up the planks; to prevent it the Americans quickened their step. At this the British fired one or two shots up the river; then another, by which Luther Blanchard and Jonas Brown were wounded. A volley followed, and Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer fell dead. Three hours before, Davis had bid his wife farewell. That afternoon he was carried home and laid in her bedroom. His countenance was pleasant in death. The bodies of two others of his company, who were slain that day, were brought to her house, and the three were followed to the village graveyard by a concourse of neighbors from miles around. Heaven gave her length of days in the land which his self-devotion assisted to redeem. She lived to see her country reach the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific; when it was grown great in numbers, wealth and power, the United States in Congress bethought themselves to pay honors to her husband’s martyrdom and comfort her under the double burden of sorrow and of more than ninety years.

As the British fired, Emerson, who was looking on from an upper window in his house near the bridge, was for one moment uneasy lest the fire should not be returned. It was only for a moment; Buttrick, leaping in the air and at the same time partially turning around, cried aloud: “Fire, fellow soldiers! for God’s sake, fire!” and the cry “fire! fire! fire!” ran from lip to lip. Two of the British fell, several were wounded, and in two minutes all was hushed. The British retreated in disorder toward their main body; the countrymen were left in possession of the bridge. This is the world renowned “Battle of Concord,” more eventful than Agincourt or Blenheim.

The Americans stood astonished at what they had done. They made no pursuit and did no further harm, except that one wounded soldier, attempting to arise if to escape, was struck on the head by a young man with a hatchet. The party at Barrett’s might have been cut off, but was not molested. As the Sudbury company, commanded by the brave Nixon, passed near the South Bridge, Josiah Haynes, then eighty years of age, deacon of the Sudbury Church, urged an attack on the British party stationed there; his advice was rejected by his fellow soldiers as premature, but the company in which he served proved among the most alert during the rest of the day.

In the town of Concord, Smith, for half an hour, showed by marches and counter-marches his uncertainty of purpose. At last, about noon, he left the town, to retreat the way he came, along the hilly road that wound through forests and thickets. The Minute Men and militia who had taken part in the fight ran over the hills opposite the battle field into the east quarter of the town, crossed the pasture known as the “Great Fields,” and placed themselves in ambush a little to the eastward of the village, near the junction of the Bedford road. There they were reinforced by men from all around and at that point the chase of the English began.

Among the foremost were the Minute Men of Reading, led by John Brooks and accompanied by Foster, the minister of Littleton, as a volunteer. The company of Billerica, whose inhabitants, in their just indignation at Nesbit and his soldiers, had openly resolved to “use a different style from that of petition and complaint” came down from the north, while the East Sudbury company appeared on the south. A little below the Bedford road at Merriam’s corner the British faced about, but after a sharp encounter, in which several of them were killed, they resumed their retreat.

At the high land in Lincoln the old road bent toward the north, just where great trees on the west and thickets on the east offered cover to the pursuers. The men from Woburn came up in great numbers and well armed. Along these defiles fell eight of the British. Here Pitcairn for safety was forced to quit his horse, which was taken with his pistols in their holsters. A little farther on Jonathan Wilson, captain of the Bedford Minute Men, too zealous to keep on his guard, was killed by a flanking party. At another defile in Lincoln, the Minute Men at Lexington, commanded by John Parker, renewed the fight. Every piece of wood, every rock by the wayside, served as a lurking place. Scarce ten of the Americans were at any time seen together, yet the hills seemed to the British to swarm with “rebels,” as if they had dropped from the clouds, and “the road was lined” by an unintermitted fire from behind stone walls and trees.

At first the invaders moved in order; as they drew near Lexington, their flanking parties became ineffective from weariness; the wounded were scarce able to get forward. In the west of Lexington, as the British were rising Fiske’s hill, a sharp contest ensued. It was at the eastern foot of the same hill that James Hayward, of Acton, encountered a regular, and both at the same moment fired; the regular dropped dead; Hayward was mortally wounded. A little farther on fell the octogenarian, Josiah Haynes, who had kept pace with the swiftest in the pursuit.

The British troops, “greatly exhausted and fatigued and having expended almost all of their ammunition,” began to run rather than retreat in order. The officers vainly attempted to stop their flight. “They were driven before the Americans like sheep.” At last, about two in the afternoon, after they had hurried through the middle of the town, about a mile below the field of the morning’s bloodshed, the officers made their way to the front and by menaces of death began to form them under a very heavy fire.

At that moment Lord Percy came in sight with the first brigade, consisting of Welsh Fusiliers, the Fourth, the Forty-seventh and the Thirty-eighth Regiments, in all about twelve hundred men, with two field pieces. Insolent, as usual, they marched out of Boston to the tune of Yankee Doodle, but they grew alarmed at finding every house on the road deserted.

While the cannon kept the Americans at bay, Percy formed his detachment into a square, enclosing the fugitives, who lay down for rest on the ground, “their tongues hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs after a chase.”

After the juncture of the fugitives with Percy, the troops under his command amounted to fully two-thirds of the British Army in Boston, and yet they must fly before the Americans speedily and fleetly, or be overwhelmed. Two wagons, sent out to them with supplies, were waylaid and captured by Payson, the minister of Chelsea. From far and wide Minute Men were gathering. The men of Dedham, even the old men, received their minister’s blessing and went forth, in such numbers that scarce one male between sixteen and seventy was left at home. That morning William Prescott mustered his regiment, and though Pepperell was so remote that he could not be in season for the pursuit, he hastened down with five companies of guards. Before noon a messenger rode at full speed into Worcester, crying: “To arms!” A fresh horse was brought and the tidings went on, while the Minute Men of that town, after joining hurriedly on the common in a fervent prayer from their minister, kept on the march till they reached Cambridge.

Aware of his perilous position, Percy, resting but half an hour, renewed his retreat.

Beyond Lexington the troops were attacked by men chiefly from Essex and the lower towns. The fire from the rebels slackened till they approached West Cambridge, where Joseph Warren and William Heath, both of the committee of safety, the latter a provincial general officer, gave for a moment some appearance of organization to the pursuit, and the fight grew sharper and more determined. Here the company from Danvers, which made a breastwork of a pile of shingles, lost eight men, caught between the enemy’s flank guard and main body. Here, too, a musket ball grazed the hair of Joseph Warren, whose heart beat to arms, so that he was ever in the place of greatest danger. The British became more and more “exasperated” and indulged themselves in savage cruelty. In one house they found two aged, helpless, unarmed men and butchered them both without mercy, stabbing them, breaking their skulls and dashing out their brains. Hannah Adams, wife of Deacon Joseph Adams, of Cambridge, lay in child-bed with a babe of a week old, but was forced to crawl with her infant in her arms and almost naked to a corn shed, while the soldiers set her house on fire. Of the Americans there were never more than four hundred together at any time; but, as some grew tired or used up their ammunition, others took their places, and though there was not much concert or discipline and no attack with masses, the pursuit never flagged.

Below West Cambridge the militia from Dorchester, Roxbury and Brookline came up. Of these, Isaac Gardner, of the latter place, one on whom the colony rested many hopes, fell about a mile west of Harvard College. The field pieces began to lose their terror, so that the Americans pressed upon the rear of the fugitives, whose retreat was as rapid as it possibly could be. A little after sunset the survivors escaped across Charlestown Neck.

The troops of Percy had marched thirty miles in ten hours; the party of Smith in six hours had retreated twenty miles; the guns of the ship-of-war and the menace to burn the town of Charlestown saved them from annoyance during the rest on Bunker Hill and while they were ferried across Charles River.

On that day forty-nine Americans were killed, thirty-four wounded and five missing. The loss of the British in killed, wounded and missing was two hundred and seventy-three. Among the wounded were many officers; Smith was hurt severely. Many more were disabled by fatigue.

“The night preceding the outrages at Lexington there were not fifty people in the whole colony that ever expected any blood would be shed in the contest”; the night after, the king’s governor and the king’s army found themselves closely beleaguered in Boston.

“The next news from England must be conciliatory, or the connection between us ends,” said Warren. “This month,” so wrote William Emerson, of Concord, late chaplain to the Provincial Congress, chronicled in a blank leaf of his almanac, “is remarkable for the greatest events of the present age.” “From the nineteenth of April, 1775,” said Clark, of Lexington, on its first anniversary, “will be dated the liberty of the American world.”

NOTE.—The principal part of this account of the Battle of Lexington is taken from Banecroft’s history.—American Monthly Magazine.

Karl Rove must have done the PR for Dawes and Prescott.

Emerson, who was looking on from an upper window in his house near the bridge

That would be the Old Manse.

I used to date a girl who was a ‘guide’ there. She lived in Carlisle. I think I was more turned on by the period costume than by the girl herself.

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Yeah, I remember having to try and memorize the darn thing. Never got past three stanzas. (Although I still remember the first one after fifty some years.)

Only one girl in a class of sixty kids memorized the whole thing. For her reward, she had to go from classroom to classroom reciting the poem.

I used to live in the area of the North Bridge and I'd drive by it every morning on the way to work (Monument St. in Concord). That is a very nice area. There's also a hiking/bike trail that runs straight into Lexington and there's a semi-hidden connector to the Minuteman bike trail that takes you all the way to Cambridge.

With regard to Paul Revere, many people still have the mistaken impression that he shouted "The British are Coming" during his ride.

Of course, it would have made no sense for Revere to say that because at the time, everybody was British, including Paul Revere himself. Instead, he shouted "The Regulars are Coming" which pertained to the redcoats (British Army).

The Ride - Paul Revere short educational film piece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1El-guPeEo

We also had to memorize “Sea Fever” by John Maysfield.

Kid after kid went up to the front of the class and recited it. Everybody was so bored and tired that when i went up to recite it, I said “Sea Fever, by Jayne Mansfield”, and nobody batted an eye!

Thanks for that concise and informative article. I never knew that the idea of Independence was such an odd-ball idea. Until the battle.

"Jayne Mansfield"

I would have loved to see her recite that poem. Wearing the proper uh dress of course. "I must go down to the sea again..."

We used to giggle when saying “Middlesex”, because we knew there wasn’t any “middle-sex”...you were either a BOY or a GIRL!

Saying that NOW, will get a child thrown into a re-education indoctrination camp.

I used to live in the area of the North Bridge

You must have also driven by that old yellow house that had the bullet hole fired by the British Regulars.

I once paddled my canoe down the Sudbury River, to the Concord River. I got as far as the North Bridge, and drifted back.

The whole state is alive with history.

Alas, few give it the proper respect that it deserves.

Obama won EVERY county in Massachusetts, and EVERY congressional district in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is liberal in EVERY county, that is more than just some big cities.

Here is what a conservative, traditional state looks like by county voting.

This is what a liberal state looks like, by county voting.

Listen, my children, and, while I pause,
I’ll tell you the story of William Dawes....

While visiting the Concord Bridge, rent a canoe just a stone’s throw away and have an excellent paddle on the Concord River. Silent, peaceful, and very lovely.

Indeed. Those were innocent times.

I mean...even with “Duck & Cover”, it was better than what kids face now.

You guys in Texas need to watch that invasion from the south. Soon they will have that state flipping blue.

A visit to this most holy of shrines is on my bucket list.

And all I ask is a tall ship
And a STAR to steer her by!”