Paul Revere's Ride....April 18, 1775

Dave & Kelly Kleber's main page ^ | unknown | Dave & Kelly Kleber

[hedgetrimmer]

Bump for Paul Revere.

[goodnesswins]

Thank YOU....I ordered the Matchlock one, and two of the other ones Four Peas recommended....trailer camping this summer will be full of reading history....he's at a prime age....we're creating a "monster"....he loves the Stock Market Game, and now history....LOL!

[Publius]

Revere had only learned his basic horsemanship the year before. There's a difference between having a horse pull a carriage and climbing on a horse's back, and Revere came to enjoy that difference somewhat late in life.

When the weather was decent, Revere liked to ride the back roads around Boston after he closed up shop. If someone rode past you on horseback at dusk at breakneck speed, you could be sure it was Revere.

He must have been frantic to volunteer for this assignment.

Joseph Warren is one of the great unsung participants in the Revolution because of his early death at Breed's Hill, the correct name for the location of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Warren was Grand Master of all the Masonic lodges in America. When Warren wrote a letter to the American lodges coming out in favor of independence, and the letter was read in town squares, grown men wept. If Dr. Warren favored independence, then it could no longer be considered treason. Thus was his influence.

Months after Breed's Hill, his lodge brothers went to the battlefield where had been hastily buried, disinterred him and brought his corpse back to Boston for proper Masonic funeral rites. Thus was the respect for him.

[cynicom]

Revere was sent on this ride by Dr. Joseph Warren, who later died at the battle of Breeds Hill.

[cynicom]

I see you read history. I dropped off the Warren family tree.

[Jack Black]

He may have an ax to grind against the Puritans but he is quite sympathetic to the two preachers of Lexington, the elder Hancock and his protoge who he basically credits with schooling the Patriots with the moral clarity that allowed them to wage the war. It is not an anti-religous book in the way that a similar history written today might be.

[Jack Black]

A great book. Mine belonged to my dad and is dog eared.

[Publius]

Pitcairn, cursing the day that he was ever given command of a squirming light infantry, took the British on to Concord. The morning was cold and bright and bitterly windy--not at all the balmy spring day that legend says it was; the troops marched fast. They went over the North Bridge into Concord. Pitcairn, preturbed major of marines, pounded on the door of Jones' tavern. He had a tired heart and a parched throat. But Jones had bolted the door against him. Pitcairn stamped about heavily, winded and excitable, striking on the door with the flat of his sword, and rolling out oaths as only a masterly and angered major of marines can. The story is that he did get into the tavern at last and that while his soldiers were wrecking the patriot arsenal he stayed there overlong sipping his Scotch...

For five hours the British lingered in Concord. There was no reason for it; they simply hung on like men too tired or too stunned to move. They evidently felt that the business of destroying the patriot military dumps was a full morning's work. Their accomplishment was a joke. All these passionate protectors of Empire did on that bright spring morning was to spike two cannon in the tavern yard while Pitcairn nodded over his whisky, break up a few barrels of flour, and throw about five hundred pounds of ball into the river. A dozen healthy schoolboys could have done the job in less than an hour. They spent the rest of the time stamping about, throwing out their chests, making an ungodly racket, and trying to bluff the colonials into dread of the dapper and beautifully groomed forces of the Crown.

--John Hyde Preston

[Publius]

I read history and occasionally write it at FR.

One of the most unusual works of fiction about that period was written by fantasy writer Katherine Kurtz. Called Two Crowns for America, in the opening pages it features Dr. Joseph Warren as a character -- after he's died at Breed's Hill! The book explores the Masonic connections among almost all the major Founders.

I'm waiting for someone to write a scholarly biography of Dr. Warren.

[Molly Pitcher]

Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer. What a book! And what a movie it would make. The screenplay would practically write itelf. Mel, PLEASE!!!???

[linMcHlp]

So how is your now 31-year old grandson?

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1120136/posts?page=1#1

[goodnesswins]

Wow...you went back 20 years! He is getting married in September...I will try to remember to ask him.