Hmmmm. All along I thought he was awakening the Minutemen, members of the Concord militia.
Learn something every day.
The militia comprised of what? Regulars? no, Common citizens. Men 16 through 50 yrs of age that were required to muster 2 times a year for a couple of weeks to drill, but mostly ended up partying.
Still common citizens...not paid military soldiers.
What he was doing was trying to get to Rev. Jonas Clarke's house in Concord to deliver Dr. Joseph Warren's message that a British patrol had left Boston proper and was heading their way to arrest them. But Revere---and others---had been through this drill before, with the Powerderhouse Alarm, the Portsmouth Alarm, the Salem Alarm . . . Lex & Conc. was just the latest and greatest British gun grab. Along the way, of course, he awakened the captain of militia in every town through which he passed.
William Dawes was doing the same thing as Revere, only he left through Boston's South Gate, sneaking right past the guards, pretending to be drunk. All of eastern Massachusetts was ripe with post riders on the night of 18 April 1775.
This point can't be emphasized enough: the revolutionary spirit would not have flowed from the city to the countryside, where the Revolution that launched a nation ignited, if it were not for a series of British gun grabs and power-plays that convinced the yeoman there that the British actually were out to get them. Had the British not tried to seize arms in Essex County, Middlesex County, etc., the revolutionary spirit might have died right in Boston---it was mainly Boston's problem up until then.
Not just the Concord militiamen or minutemen (as you know I'm sure, the minutemen were an especially well trained subset of the militia), but those from many other towns as well. Lexington of course, but also Lincoln, Menotomy(sic) (now Arlington), Medford, Bedford, Salem, Danvers, Beverly and others. Not all those made it to the fight at the bridge, but all made it to the running gun battle on the road back to Boston/Breed's Hill. Many more from even farther away made it into the later Bunker Hill battle.
But who were the members of the Miltia and Minutemen, but common citizens? The militia was organized along town or township lines, but wasn't really a part of the town government in the usual sense. The US Supreme Court in Miller defined the Militia as "all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. "A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline." "