Paul Revere's Ride

by David Hackett Fischer

  Bissell made rapid progress on the road. He was in the Connecticut town of Brooklyn by 11 o’clock on the morning of April 20, Norwich by 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and New London by 7 o’clock that evening. From New London, the news traveled west on Long Island Sound. It arrived in New Haven (150 miles from Boston) by noon on the 21st, and New York City (225 miles) by 4 p.m. on the 23rd. Another messenger continued through the night from New York to Philadelphia, and arrived at 9 o’clock in the morning of the 24th—ninety miles in seventeen hours. Baltimore heard the news by April 26, Williamsburg by the 28th, New Bern by May 3, and Charleston by May 9. In the second week of May, the first reports were carried across the mountains to the Ohio Valley. When news of the fighting reached a party of hunters in Kentucky, they called their campsite Lexington. It is now the city of the same name. 41

  These first reports of Lexington and Concord were received by Americans in a manner very different from our common way of thinking about great events—not merely as factual news of a secular happening, but as a sign of God’s Redeeming Providence for America. A “gentleman of rank in New England” wrote to a friend on April 25, “I would only ask, if in all your reading of history, you have found an instance of irregular troops, hurried together at a moment’s warning, with half the number at first, attacking and driving veterans, picked men, 17 miles, and continually firing the whole way, and not losing one third the number they killed? I view the hand of God in it, a remarkable interposition of Providence in our favour.” 42

  This belief was shared by many Whig leaders in New England. They sought to propagate it, by private messages and the public press. Here again, careful preparations had been made. On the night of April 16, 1775, two days before the battle, Paul Revere’s friend Isaiah Thomas, editor of the Massachusetts Spy in Boston, had packed up a press and printing types, and smuggled them across the Charles River with the help of the network that Paul Revere had established with the Whigs of Charlestown. After the battle, the Committee of Safety urged him to set up his press at Cambridge or Watertown, but Thomas preferred the safety of Worcester. The Provincial Congress found him a supply of paper, and his printing shop was soon back in operation, turning out the first newspaper to be published in an inland town of Massachusetts. Its motto was “Americans! Liberty or Death! Join or Die!” 43

  General Gage had respected freedom of the press, in the Blackstonian meaning of freedom from prior restraint. But Admiral Graves was not so scrupulous. He sent a party of seamen ashore with orders to arrest John Gill and Peter Edes of the Boston Gazette on a trumped-up charge of possessing firearms. They were imprisoned in Boston Gaol. Benjamin Edes got away, and with the support of the Committee of Safety began to issue his Boston Gazette from a battered press in Watertown. 44

  Other Whig printers were already hard at work. Ezekiel Russell’s Salem Gazette printed an account of the battle as early as April 21. A few weeks later Russell issued a dramatic broadside, with forty small coffins across the top, and the headline, “Bloody Butchery by the British, or the Runaway Fight of the Regulars.” The handbill was offered to New Englanders, “either to frame or glass, or otherwise preserve in their houses… as a perpetual memorial.” It went through at least six printings. More coffins were added to subsequent editions, to represent New England men who died of wounds after the battle. 45

  The clergy were also recruited to preach from their pulpits. Before the battle, Concord’s William Emerson delivered a sermon on II Chronicles 13:12: “And behold God himself is with us for our captain, and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm.” Afterward he was sent to Groton, where the minister had been “dismissed for Toryism,” and delivered a sermon on the text, “It is better to put trust in the Lord than to put confidence in Princes.” The Provincial Congress also recruited chaplains for the field, and ordered a series of anniversary sermons to commemorate the battle. The first would delivered in 1776 by Lexington’s Jonas Clarke, and published with an eye-witness account of the event. 46

  While couriers, printers, and preachers were busy, the Committee of Safety tried to reach public opinion in yet another way. Within four days of the battle, it mobilized the justices of the peace, and systematically collected sworn testimony from eyewitnesses on the disputed question of the first shots at Lexington and Concord. Paul Revere was asked to testify, along with many others. Depositions were taken from most of the militiamen who had mustered on Lexington Common in the early morning. British prisoners in American hands were also asked to give evidence, and many did so. Other depositions were taken from men who had fought at Concord’s North Bridge. These documents were edited and prepared for publication. 47

  On April 25, the Committee of Safety learned that General Gage was sending to London on that very day his own report of the battle. These official dispatches were entrusted to a British naval officer, Lieutenant Nunn, who was ordered to travel by the first available means, which turned out to be the brig Sukey, a slow sailing private vessel that belonged to Boston merchant John Rowe.

  The Coffin Broadside was a graphic illustration of American casualties on April 19. It was issued by Salem printer Ezekiel Russell in at least six editions. He carefully added more coffins in later printings, for Americans who died of wounds in the weeks after the battle. The broadside was part of a Whig campaign for public opinion, which succeeded brilliantly in both America and Europe. (American Antiquarian Society)

  The Committee of Safety saw an opportunity, and acted with its usual dispatch. On April 26, it decided to send copies of nearly 100 depositions to London, together with a letter by Dr. Joseph Warren addressed to the “Inhabitants of Great Britain.” The Whig leaders sought out Captain John Derby of Salem, owner of the very fast American schooner Quero. They also enlisted his sailing master, William Carleton, a skilled seaman with expert knowledge of winds and currents in the North Atlantic. Derby and Carleton were asked to carry the American depositions abroad as swiftly as possible. Confidential instructions from the Congress ordered them to make all speed to the coast in Ireland, then to cross the Irish Sea by stealth, and deliver the documents directly to the Lord Mayor of London, who was known to be sympathetic to the American cause. Captain Derby was told to keep his orders “a profound secret from every person on earth.” Their crew was not to be told the purpose of the voyage until they cleared the Grand Banks and were safely in blue water. 48

  Quero sailed in ballast on April 29, four days after Gage’s ship. So swift was her passage that she reached Southampton May 27, 1775, a full two weeks before Sukey straggled in. Captain Derby presented his documents to the Lord Mayor, and the American depositions were instantly published by the London press. 49

  The news caused a sensation. The British government, caught by surprise, was unable to confirm or deny the American accounts. The most powerful impression was made by a deposition from a mortally wounded British officer, who generally supported the American version of events and praised the humanity of his captors. A supporter of Lord North complained that “the Bostonians are now the favourites of all the people of good hearts and weak heads in the kingdom.… their saint-like account of the skirmish at Concord, has been read with avidity… [and] believed.” 50

  Even Lord George Germain, no friend of the colonists, wrote on May 30, “The news from America occasioned a great stir among us yesterday… the Bostonians are in the right to make the King’s troops the aggressors and claim a victory.” 51

  When General Gage’s dispatches at last arrived two weeks later, Lord North and his ministers drew the fatal conclusion that the failure in Massachusetts lay not with their own policies, but the man they sent to execute them. Lord Suffolk wrote to Germain, on June 15, “The town is full of private letters from America which contain much more particular accounts of the skirmish than are related by the general. They don’t do much credit to the discipline of our troops, but do not impeach their readiness and intrepidity.”

  Germain wrote back, “I must lament that General Gage, wi
th all his good qualities, finds himself in a situation of too great importance for his talents.… I doubt whether Mr. Gage will venture to take a single step beyond his instructions, or whether the troops have that opinion of him as to march with confidence of success.” 52

  While the King’s ministers in London judged General Gage to be weak and over-scrupulous, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts condemned him in exactly the opposite way. On May 5, 1775, the Congress passed a sharply-worded resolution: “Whereas, his Excellency General Gage, since his arrival in this Colony, hath conducted as an instrument in the hands of an arbitrary Ministry to enslave this people.… Resolved, That the said General Gage hath, by these means, and many others utterly disqualified himself to serve this Colony as a Governor.… No obedience ought, in future, to be paid.…” 53

  British leaders tried their best to compete in this contest for popular opinion. General Gage himself took a leading role, both in England and America. While the Whig expresses were galloping across the countryside, the British commander in chief dispatched his own messengers with instructions to spread a “true account of all that has passed.” These couriers were Loyalist “gentlemen,” who were ordered to carry their dispatches directly to governors throughout the colonies. 54

  Altogether, General Gage became as active as the Whig leaders in trying to spread his version of events, but he went about that task in a different way. Where the New England leaders addressed themselves broadly to an entire people, the British commander sent his gentleman-couriers to senior officials. From long habit he preferred to work through a chain of command. He tended to trust others in proportion to their rank, and genuinely believed that the opinion of ruling elites was what really mattered in the world.

  Further, Gage preserved his old habits of obsessive secrecy even when he was trying to communicate with others. This was not entirely by choice. Secrecy was forced upon him because the countryside was now strongly hostile, and his messages were intercepted. Gage warned Governor Colden that Whig leaders were “not suffering any letters to pass by the post, but those that would inflame the minds of the people.” 55

  Gage’s early efforts to make known his own account of the battle took the form of confidential communications to high officials, whom he expected to pull the levers of power in their provinces. Several tried to do so—Governor Trumbull in Connecticut and Governor Colden in New York with an eye to reconciliation; Lord Dunmore in Virginia with more militant purposes in mind. But they found themselves captives of public opinion that New England whigs had done so much to shape. Gage complained bitterly of the “inflammatory expresses from this province,” and lamented their success. “They have had the effect the Faction here wished they should have,” he wrote. 56

  Still, General Gage kept trying. When private couriers failed to make a difference, he also attempted to put his version of events into print. Once again he had very small success. While governor he had supported Loyalist printers. They failed him in his moment of need. On April 19, Boston had two newspapers that admitted Loyalist pieces. One of them, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, shut down immediately after the battle. The other waffled. At a time when Whigs were detailing the event in copious detail, the spineless Tory editor of the Boston News-Letter told his readers, “The reports concerning this unhappy affair, and the causes that concurred to bring on an Engagement, are so various, that we are not able to collect anything consistent or regular, and cannot therefore with certainty give our readers any further account of this shocking introduction to all the miseries of a Civil War.” 57

  When Loyalist printers failed to get out the news, General Gage issued his own broadside, called “A Circumstantial Account of an Attack that happened on the 19th of April, 1775 on his Majesty’s troops, by a Number of the People of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.” Its argument was summarized in a sentence. “I have shewn them,” Gage wrote, “that the people of this Province were the first aggressors, and that the conduct of the leaders here is the cause of all the misfortunes that have happened, or shall arise.” 58

  The document was elegantly printed on good paper, and made a handsome appearance. But as an appeal to the public it was not a success. At a time when the Whig leaders were issuing impassioned appeals to Heaven, Gage offered an arid factual statement—and one in which so many facts were mistaken that a week later this honorable man felt bound to issue his own correction. Worse, his argument was contradictory its substance, and stilted in its style. In describing the search of Concord, for example, Gage wrote, “Neither had any of the people the least occasion to complain, but they were sulky…” After thirty years of command, General Gage was not at his best in efforts of popular persuasion. The common touch consistently eluded him. 59

  “The Yankey’s Return from Camp” was also called “The Lexington March” after the battle. Like most 18th-century American songs, it borrowed a British tune and developed it in many different forms. This early version, published in 1775, has the same modal rhythm as the tune we know as “Yankee Doodle.” American Antiquarian Society.

  This second battle of Lexington and Concord was waged not with bayonets but broadsides, not with muskets but depositions, newspapers and sermons. In strictly military terms, the fighting on April 19 was a minor reverse for British arms, and a small success for the New England militia. But the ensuing contest for popular opinion was an epic disaster for the British government, and a triumph for American Whigs. In every region of British America, attitudes were truly transformed by the news of this event.

  Before the battle, John Adams had been toiling on a reasoned appeal to the rights of Englishmen, which he published under the significant pen name of Novanglus. Later he remembered that the news of Lexington put a sudden end to that project, and instantly “changed the instruments of War from the pen to the sword.” John Adams was not a man of violence. He was genuinely shocked by news of the fighting, and deeply troubled by the question of how it began. Immediately after the battle, he saddled his horse and went off to find out for himself, traveling “along the scene of the action for many miles.” He picked his way past burial parties and burned-out houses, through crowds of refugees with cartloads of household goods, and marching soldiers with their drums and guns. Everywhere he found “great confusion and distress.” It was only a trip of a few miles from Braintree to Lexington, but John Adams later remembered it as one of the great intellectual journeys of his life. He wrote that he “enquired of the inhabitants the circumstances” of the fight, wanting to be sure about what had happened. Later he testified that his inquiries “convinced me that the Die was cast, the Rubicon crossed.” John Adams returned from Lexington, went on to the second Continental Congress, and never looked back. 60

  In Pennsylvania, the news from Lexington had a similar effect on an English immigrant who had arrived only the year before. At the age of thirty-seven, Thomas Paine had lost everything in England: his home, two wives, and many jobs. He decided to start again in America, and with the help of a letter from Benjamin Franklin, he found employment in Philadelphia as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. Suddenly things began to go better for him. Circulation leaped from 600 to 1500 subscribers. Paine threw himself into his work and kept clear of politics. He wrote later that he regarded the Imperial dispute as merely “a kind of law-suit” which “the parties would find a way either to decide or settle.” Then the news of Lexington arrived. Paine remembered that “the country into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears.” Afterward he recalled, “No man was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775, but the moment the event of that day was known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever.” 61

  In Virginia, April was the planting time in the Potomac valley. The countryside was in bloom, and the air was soft with the scent of Spring. George Washington was working happily on his farm at Mount Vernon when the first report of Lexington arrived. Like many thou
sands of Americans, he left his fields and gathered up his weapons with a sadness that was widely shared in the colonies. To a close friend he wrote, “Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s breast and that the once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by a race of slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?” 62

  Many men, virtuous or not, faced that same choice throughout the colonies. The battles of Lexington and Concord posed it for them in a new way. Long afterward, the novelist Henry James visited the Old North Bridge, and looked back upon that moment of decision. He wrote, “The fight had been the hinge—so one saw it—on which the large revolving future was to turn.” 63

  EPILOGUE

  The Fate of the Participants

  It seemed as if the war not only required but created talents.”

  —David Ramsay, 1793

  THE COST turned out to be very high—higher perhaps than our generation would be willing to pay. On both sides, many of the men who fought at Lexington and Concord died in the long and bitter war that followed. In the British infantry, few of the anonymous “other ranks” who marched to Concord survived the conflict unscathed. Many would be dead within two months.

  At the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, General Gage again used his ten senior companies of grenadiers and light infantry as a corps d’elite. They suffered grievously. The grenadier company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers went into that action with three officers, five noncoms, and thirty other ranks. It came out with one corporal and eleven privates. The light infantry company of the same regiment also lost most of its men—so many that it was said, “the Fusiliers had hardly men enough left to saddle their goat.” 1