It's highly doubtful that Palin even knew about this. She was fumbling and stumbling and just got lucky.I don't think she got lucky at all, she knew what she was talking about.
He who warned, uh, the … the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringin' those bells and, um, by makin' sure that as he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warnin' shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free … and we were gonna be armed.
I think it's fair to say that Sarah was speaking as she thought and as she was remembering. It was free flow and off the cuff. No one can say it wasn't a bit mangled. Nor can anyone fairly say that the thrust of her remarks weren't historically accurate.
These are Sarah's actual words again, I've struck through ums and uhs...
He who warned, uh, the … the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringin' those bells and, um, By makin' sure that as he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warnin' shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free … and we were gonna be armed.
Here edited...
He who warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms.
By makin' sure that as he's ridin' his horse through town (alerting folks) to send those warnin' shots and ring those bells.
We were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.
Here's a very good perspective I found on another website....
The seminal book on the topic is “Paul Revere’s Ride” by the Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer. As it recounts, the British mission on April 19, 1775 was to seize a store of gunpowder that was thought to be in Concord, Massachusetts, as one operation in a general effort by the British command in Boston to deprive the American militia of arms. Revere made his ride to generally warn the countryside of that mission, and, on the way, to warn Hancock and Adams of the possibility that they would be arrested. He stopped at house after house on his ride, and, as part of a previously-arranged alarm system, town after town in eastern Massachusetts, upon hearing the news, began ringing bells. The bells are what drew militia to Concord from all over Massachusetts, leading to the militia’s victory there over the later-arriving British.
Palin’s account is an impressionistic but broadly accurate description of Paul Revere’s ride, which is now as much symbol as it is historical event: the ride definitively *was* about protecting American arms, and it prompted the ringing of bells all over eastern Massachusetts in the morning, and gunfire from morning until night, when the British force escaped back into Boston, badly defeated.
As to Palin’s reference to warning the British, I think you know what she meant: that Revere’s ride, and the closely-related events of that day, served as a strong message to Britain that the colonists intended to fight for their freedoms. She’s right about that, and I’m not sure it even qualifies as a misstatement. It would be fine to say that the militia “warned” the British that day; it seems equally fine to say (especially in an extemporaneous setting) that Paul Revere did so. He’s become, in effect, a symbol of the colonist’s actions that day.
From 1774-1775 the British military, based in Boston, and led by General Gage, was intent upon disarming the colonists. The British mounted a series of operations — including the one on April 19, 1775 — that were designed to do just that. This was the period of the so-called “Powder Alarms.”
Here’s David Hackett Fischer, a recognized expert on the period, at p. 43 of his esteemed book “Paul Revere’s Ride”: Gage’s “purpose was to remove from Yankee hands the means of violent resistance until a time when cooler heads would prevail. To that end, General Gage proposed to disarm New England by a means of small surgical operations . . . The plan had one major weakness. It could only succeed by surprise. The people of New England were jealous of their liberty, including their right to keep and bear arms. If they learned in advance of General Gage’s intentions, his strategy for stopping the movement toward war could start one instead.”
Hackett Fischer isn’t taking some controversial position here; this is basic history, and simple research will lead you to it quite readily.
As to the British mission on April 19, it in particular was part of the broader effort to (using Hackett Fischer’s own term) “disarm” the colonists. If you want, you can simply look up the text of Gage’s written order. It does not mention the arrest of anyone. It orders the troops to proceed “with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all Artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military stores whatever.”
I think you’re right that Revere’s primary purpose, initially, was to warn Adams and Hancock (I don’t know what Hamilton you are referring to). He and his colleagues incorrectly thought Adams and Hancock were the targets of the British troop movement. But upon reaching Lexington, he, Hancock and others concluded that such a large British operation (900 troops or so) must have some other purpose. A fellow named Jonas Clarke, present in Lexington, later wrote: “It was shrewdly suspected that [the British] were ordered to seize and destroy the stores belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord.”
So I really think you and your fellow critics of Palin’s extemporaneous statement are unjustifiably denying the essential truth of its thrust — that the events of April 19, 1775 were very much about the British seeking to disarm the colonists, and the colonists resisting that effort. And if Hackett Fischer sees fit to link these events to the colonists’ perceived “right to keep and bear arms,” it’s probably OK for Sarah Palin to do so as well; at minimum, it shouldn’t subject her to ridicule.
