Nobody Remembers Paul Revere

Nobody Remembers

Listen my Children and you shall hear, the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

                                From “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hey. I believed it. I always had a picture in my mind, of one brave and handsome silversmith, who looked out his window, saw the British coming, jumped on his horse, and went from town to town shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

Sure, I believed it…I was a kid.

The real truth is there were about sixty riders that night, moving about the countryside doing the exact same thing. The “spy” who warned Paul of the coming Brits was by most historian accounts, believed to be Mrs. Gage, the wife of the famous British general.  Nobody Wonders what kind of fight Mr. and Mrs. Gage had the next night, and what was it about Paul Revere that made her tell him such a secret?

By most accounts, he was a good-looking man.

And come on…Paul likely didn’t shout the  “British were coming!”  because…at that time, we were all British.  Paul didn’t finish that ride to Lexington and Concord, because he was captured by a British patrol before he got there, and said a lot of very nasty things to them upon being captured.

Maybe he had a few drinks as he was known to do. But that doesn’t make him any less of an American hero. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty, and involved in every way with Independence.

Revere, not only worked in silver, gold, and dental plates, he drew cartoons and flyers for Sam Adams who as many know, controlled the town’s main printing press, and was the chief agitator.  He was on the boat dumping tea with the best of them, dressed up as an Indian the night of the Boston Tea Party raid.

But on that famous night of April, 18, 1775, there were two other men who rode with him: William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott. William Dawes actually did make it to Concord, and changed history.

“Listen my children and you shall hear, the midnight ride of William Dawes.”

Nope. Doesn’t rhyme. If only William last name had been Deares.

There was another more important reason that Paul Revere should be given credit.(And a personal one for me I might add.)  Besides capturing the American supply of gunpowder and bullets— Gage wanted to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

And because Paul Revere got to them before Gage did…..some of the top guys of the Revolution lived to carry on the fight. Who knows what would have happened in history if John Hancock and Sam Adams had been hanged?

Nobody really knows who fired the first shot at Lexington. Some say, some guy just wanted to get a drink at the pub, emptied his last shot outside, (You couldn’t take your gun into the pubs) and started the whole thing.

But Nobody Thinks that is about as unreliable as Longfellow’s poem written years afterward, giving the credit to just one man. So, why did he twist the truth?

Longfellow later admitted he wrote the poem to stress the importance of fighting for liberty and how individuals could make a difference. It was 1861…right before the civil war.

Noble sentiments.

Nobody Thinks we could use a few more of those old guys.

But..the midnight ride of Paul Revere  was pure propaganda. Remember that the next time you hear that it was Barack Obama killed bin Laden.

The truth is more like:

“Listen my children and you shall ‘yo mamma”, at the midnight parties of Barack Obama.”

What? You were expecting Longfellow?

August 1, 2013 Posted by Joyanna Adams | American History, humor, Uncategorized | History, Humor | 3 Comments