Paul Revere's Ride

by David Hackett Fischer

  24. Ibid., 55.

  25. Ibid., 56.

  26. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 18.

  27. Sutherland to Clinton, April 25, 1775; on Adair, see below, Epilogue.

  28. Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1775, 54-56.

  29. Simon Winship, Deposition, April 25, 1775, AA4, II, 490; Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops (Worcester, 1775), 664. This pamphlet has often been reissued: on microprint in the Readex microprint edition of Early American Imprints, Evans 14269; on microfiche in Wroth et al. (eds.), Province in Rebellion, document 591, pp. 1804— 29; and AA4, II, 489—501, 673-74.

  8. The Capture

  1. Paul Revere to Belknap, n.d. ca. 1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS; Arthur B. Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord (New York, 1959), 100.

  2. Goss, Revere, I, 202.

  3. Paul Revere, Draft Deposition, n.d., ca. April 24, 1775, RFP, MHS.

  4. Joyce Lee Malcolm, The Scene of the Battle, 1775; Historic Grounds Report; Minuteman National Historical Park, Cultural Resources Management Study No. 15 (Boston, 1985), 27— 35-

  5. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Revere to Belknap, n.d., ca. 1798; in one account Revere estimated that he was 200 yards ahead of the others, in another he estimated the distance at 100 rods, or 550 yards. In 1775 many British and New England narrators reckoned middle distances in rods of 16.5 feet.

  6. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798; this passage was deleted from the published text but appears in the ms. draft in the MHS archives, MHS; idem, Draft Deposition.

  7. Goss, Revere, I, 185.

  8. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798; Revere Draft Deposition, ca. April 24,1775; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” I, 20.

  9. A tablet presently marks the supposed spot of Revere’s capture. If it is in the right place, the pasture was part of a farm owned by William Dodge and occupied by a tenant farmer named Jacob Foster in 1775. The stone wall that Prescott jumped would have been the old boundary between Concord and Lexington, before the division of the town of Lincoln. A wood is shown north of the pasture, as Revere remembered, in a map drawn in 1902 by George A. Nelson. This location also squares with Revere’s estimate that they were halfway between Lexington and Concord.

  Sanderson’s account, however, suggests another location. He remembered that he was stopped “just before we got to Brooks’s in Lincoln,” and led off the road to what he suggested was the same “field” where Paul Revere was later captured. The farms of the Brooks family were 9000 feet west of Foster’s pasture, on the Concord-Lincoln line.

  If Sanderson was correct, Revere traveled nearly two miles farther. But this was in a deposition taken fifty years after the battle. It is controverted not only by Revere’s account but also by independent evidence of the identity of Lincoln residents who were awakened by Dr. Prescott after his escape and Revere’s capture. Their homes lay to the east of the Brooks farms, and some were just to the west of the place that is identified today as the site of the capture. Taken together, these sources strongly indicate that the place where Paul Revere was captured must have been west of the Josiah Nelson house and east of Samuel Hartwell’s farm. The site of the modern monument (much debated by the staff of the National Park) appears to be roughly in the right place, if not precisely correct.

  A nagging doubt arises from the facts that the present line of the road, and its inclination, do not match Revere’s description, and the shoulders do not incline each way as Revere remembered. But the terrain along the highway has been much altered in the past two centuries by road construction and changes in land use. Cf. Malcolm, The Scene of the Battles, 1775, 41, 51—53; David H. Snow, “The Thomas Nelson, Sr., Farm,” National Park Service, 1969, pp. 21-23; Leland J. Abel and Cordelia Thomas Snow, “The Excavation of Sites 22 and 23, Minuteman National Historical Park,” Concord, Massachusetts, National Park Service, 1966; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” I, 18—19.

  10. Henry W. Holland, William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere (Boston, 1878); the site of the house where Dawes’s ride ended was identified by National Park archaeologists in 1964 as a shallow depression approximately 100 yards west of the Josiah Nelson house, of which nothing remains but a ruined chimney. See Abel and Snow, “The Excavation of Sites 22 and 23…”; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” I, 18—19.

  11. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Sanderson remembered that “they detained us in that vicinity till a quarter past two o’clock at night. An officer, who took out his watch, informed me what the time was. It was a bright moon-light.” The testimony of Revere and that of Sanderson closely coincide; cf. Elijah Sanderson, Deposition, Dec. 17, 1824, in Elias Phinney, History of the Battle of Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775 (Boston, 1825).

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Sanderson, Deposition, 32; Sanderson’s version of this conversation is generally consistent with Revere’s deposition, but more detailed and dramatic. Here as elsewhere, Paul Revere’s three accounts err on the side of understatement.

  17. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775.

  18. No secondary study has got this episode right. Most authors, even those sympathetic to Revere, represent him as merely responding more or less passively to his British captors. Iconoclasts and debunkers (p. 340, above) have accused him of betraying the American cause. They fail to take account of Sanderson’s deposition, and of a passage in Revere’s manuscript draft of his letter to Belknap that was excised from the published text. Forbes missed this passage altogether, relying as she did on published texts; Goss worked from the manuscript and knew about it, but missed its significance. These primary sources are evidence of a response by Revere that is very different from what appears in the secondary literature—not at all passive, but active and very aggressive.

  Secondary accounts also fail to notice a deeper pattern in Revere’s behavior while a prisoner—the fact that all of his words and acts were consistent with the single purpose of trying to move the British patrol away from Lexington, and to protect Hancock and Adams, which was the primary purpose of Revere’s mission that night. Far from betraying the American cause, as the debunkers have suggested, Revere was serving it with skill and courage. Only Galvin (Minute Men, 124) saw a larger significance in his behavior while a prisoner, mainly in its impact on the fighting that followed.

  19. Sanderson, Deposition, 31—33.

  20. Ibid.; Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775.

  21. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798.

  22. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Sanderson, Deposition, 31-33.

  23. Sanderson, Deposition, 32.

  24. For the number of captives, see Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; other accounts vary in detail.

  25. Sanderson, Deposition, 32.

  26. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798.

  27. Sanderson, Deposition, 31-32.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Goss, Revere, I, 205.

  31. Sanderson, Deposition, 31-33.

  9. The Alarm

  1. Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1890), II, 257, 294.

  2. Samuel Adams Drake, History of Middlesex County (Boston, 1880), II, 376; Chase, The Beginnings of the American Revolution, II, 63—64.

  3. Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775, 41.

  4. Hall Gleason, “Captain Isaac Hall,” Medford Historical Society Publications 8 (1905): 100-103; Helen Tilden Wild, Medford in the Revolution; Military History of Medford, Massachusetts, 1765-1783 (Medford, 1903), 8; Charles Brooks, History of the Town of Medford (Boston, 1886).

  5. Galvin, Minute Men, 124; Chase, The Beginnings of the American Revolution, II, 333; Dr. Martin Herrick was born ca. 1746, and died July 10, 1820, in Lynnfield, aged 74. Vital Records of Lynnfield, Massachusetts, to the End of 1849 (Salem, 1907),
85; much relevant material appears in T. B. Wellman, History of the Town of Lynnfield, Mass., 1635—1895 (Boston, 1895).

  6. Galvin, Minute Men, 124; Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775, 32; Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall History of Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts… (Boston, 1865), 33.

  7. Thomas Boynton Journal, April 19-26, 1775, MHS; printed in MHSP 15 (1877): 254.

  8. “Journal of James Stevens,” EIHC 48 (1912): 41 (April 19, 1775); Richard D. Brown, “Knowledge is Power”: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700—1865 (New York, 1989), 250.

  9. Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775, 34.

  10. Wild, Medford in the Revolution, 8; “Medford and Her Minutemen,” Medford Historical Society Publications 28 (Sept. 1925): 44-45; Mellen Chamberlain, A Documentary History of Chelsea, 2 vols. (Boston, 1908), II, 425-31.

  11. Revere to Belknap ca. 1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS.

  12.“This morning a little before break of day, we were alarmed by Mr. Stedman’s Express from Cambridge.” Loammi Baldwin, Diary, April 19, 1775, in Hurd, Middlesex County, 1,447. The Committee of Safety had held its first meeting in Stedman’s house, Nov. 2, 1774; Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1775, 11, 33. For the messenger from Captain Joshua Walker to Jonathan Proctor in what is now Burlington, see Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 1775-1975 (Southborough, 1977), 314; a copy of this rare work is in the library of the Minuteman National Historical Park, Concord.

  13. Coburn reckoned Revere’s ride to the Clarke house at 12.98 miles, and Dawes’s to the same point as 16.83 miles. Several modern attempts to reconstruct these routes have yielded similar estimates of distances traveled. See Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1773, 25.

  14. William Munroe, Deposition, March 7, 1825, Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775 (Boston, 1825), 33–35

  15. Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 712; cf. Edmund L. Sanderson, Waltham as a Precinct of Watertown and as a Town (Waltham, 1936), 56; Charles A. Nelson, Waltham, Past and Present… (Cambridge, 1882), 101-02. A Waltham company in Gardner’s Regiment submitted a muster roll for service “on Alarm in Defense of the Liberties of America under the command of Abraham Pierce Captain to Concord and Lexington Fite!” (April 19, 1775, MA). But there is no evidence that it arrived in time to join the battle, and independent scholars conclude that it was not in combat. Most of the companies submitting muster rolls under the Lexington Alarm did not actually see action that day.

  16. Partisans of Dawes have asserted his equality with Revere, and even his priority. These claims continue to be made in print by his descendants, and have been taken up by iconoclasts who use them as a way of disparaging Paul Revere and the event itself. The correct interpretation is a mediating judgment that respects Dawes’s role, but also recognizes the important qualitative difference between his actions and those of Paul Revere.

  17. Clarke, “Narrative of Events of April 19.”

  18. Hannah Winthrop to Mercy Otis Warren, n.d., MHSP 14 (1875): 29—31.

  19. Nathan Munroe testified in 1824, “In the evening of the 18th of April… I with Benjamin Tidd, at the request of my captain (John Parker] went to Bedford in the evening, and notified the inhabitants through the town, to the great road at Merriam’s Corner, so called, in Concord, then returned to Lexington.” In Bedford the alarm was given by ringing the bell in the bell tower on the common lands. Louise K. Brown, A Revolutionary Town (Canaan, N.H., 1975), 116; Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 830; Nathan Munroe, Deposition, Dec. 22, 1824, Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, 38.

  20. Nathaniel Baker and Elizabeth Taylor married in 1776. See Amos Baker, Deposition; John C. Maclean, A Rich Harvest: The History, Buildings and People of Lincoln, Mass. (Lincoln, 1907).

  21. William Smith was the brother of Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of future President John Adams. See MacLean, A Rich Harvest…, 264-69; for a critique of local legends; also very valuable is Douglas Sabin, “April 19,1775,” II, 22-24; Frank W. C. Hersey, Heroes of the Battle Road (Boston, 1930), 21-22; and Abram English Brown, Beneath Old Roof Trees (Boston, 1896), 320.

  22. Samuel Cooper, “Diary, 1775-6,” AHR 6 (1901): 301-41; Brenton H. Dickson and Homer C. Lucas, One Town in the American Revolution: Weston, Massachusetts (Weston, 1976), 85.

  23. William Emerson’s independent account entirely confirms the accuracy of Paul Revere’s testimony. “This morning between 1 & 2 o’clock we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and upon examination found that ye Troops, to ye number of 800, had stole their march from Boston in boats and barges from ye bottom of ye Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman’s farm.… This intelligence was brought us at first by Samuel Prescott who narrowly escaped the guard that were sent before on horses, purposely to prevent all posts and messengers from giving us timely information. He by the help of a very fleet horse crossing several walls and fences arrived at Concord at the time above mentioned.” Diary, April 19, 1775, Amelia Forbes Emerson (ed.), Diaries and Letters of William Emerson, 1743-1776 (Boston, 1972), 71.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 253.

  27. Ibid. II, 872; Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 144.

  28. Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 81.

  29. A “Revolutionary soldier” in Sudbury later remembered that “an express from Concord to Thomas Plympton Esquire who was then a member of the Provincial Congress [reported] that the British were on their way to Concord. In 35 minutes between 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning the sexton was immediately called on, the bell ringing and the discharge of musket which was to give the alarm. By sunrise the greatest part of the inhabitants were notified. The morning was remarkable fine and the inhabitants of Sudbury never can make such an important appearance probably again.” Hudson, Sudbury, 364.

  30. Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 208.

  31. Francis Jackson, A History of the Early Settlement of Newton, County of Middlesex, Massachusetts, from 1639 to 1800 (Boston, 1854), 184—85.

  32. Robert B. Hanson, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1635-1890 (Dedham, 1976), 152; History and Directory of Dedham, Mass., for 1889 (Boston, 1889), 22—23.

  33. William Heath, Memoirs, 5.

  34. According to tradition in Watertown, the word reached town “through the messenger Paul Revere,” Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 385; see also Watertown’s Military History (Boston, 1907), 77.

  35. Samuel F. Haven, Historical Address, Dedham, September 21,1836 (Dedham, 1836), 46; Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1775, 45.

  36. The only accurate secondary account of Revere’s role in the alarm system is Galvin, Minute Men, 124.

  10. The Muster

  1. Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of Events of April 19.”

  2. John Parker, Deposition, April 25, 1775, AA4, II, 491; Elizabeth S. Parker, “John Parker,” in LHS Proceedings 1 (1866-89) 47.

  3. Thomas Fessenden and William Draper, Depositions, April 23-25, 1775, AA4, II, 496.

  4. Clarke, “Narrative of Events of April 19.”

  5. This is an undocumented hour in Paul Revere’s activities, between midnight (or a little later) when he arrived in Lexington and one o’clock or (or a little after) when he and Dawes left for Concord. Revere wrote only that they refreshed themselves. If that happened at the Buckman Tavern, it is probable that he and Dawes might have joined Captain Parker in some of the early discussions.

  6. These customs gave rise to the American expression “enlisted men,” still commonly used in the United States, but not in the United Kingdom, where enlisted men are called “other ranks.” These terms express two profoundly different systems of military stratification in the English-speaking world.

  7. Galvin, Minute Men, 17—46; The earliest recorded use of the word “minuteman” found by Galvin was in the payroll of Abadiah Cooley’s Brookfield company and was endorsed “Minute Men on the Crown Point Expedition, 1756” (p. 41).

  A large literature on the New England m
ilitia includes: John Shy, “A New Look at the Colonial Militia,” A People Numerous and Armed (New York, 1976), 22—33; Timothy Breen, “The Covenanted Militia of Massachusetts: English Background and New World Development,” Puritans and Adventurers (New York, 1980), 24-45; Fred Anderson, A People’s Army; Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, 1984).

  Much recent work studies the militia as a social institution, an approach very different from Galvin’s, who considers them as functioning military organizations from the perspective of a professional military officer. A major opportunity exists for a cultural historian who might wish to combine these two approaches.

  8. Francis S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury (Roxbury, 1878), 30. Heath in a letter to Harrison Gray Otis, April 21,1798, claimed that the first company of minutemen was raised in Roxbury.

  9. Lexington Town Records, Nov. 10-Dec. 27, 1774, Lexington Town Hall.

  10. “Training Band” is the word that appears in the Lexington Town Records, Nov. 28, 1774. Captain Parker himself, and other members of the Lexington company always described themselves as militia, not minutemen. They were part of Gardner’s Regiment of Militia, not of the various regiments of minutemen. In 1774 the town agreed to support both its “training band” and its “alarm list,” but no mention was made of “minutemen.” The town records of Lexington were reported “lost” long ago for the period from January 1 to April 19, 1775. Someone, many years ago, ripped out four pages. Their absence allowed the myth of the Lexington minutemen to flourish. Cf. Galvin, Minute Men, 262, and Hudson, Lexington, 162, 177.

  11. Galvin, Minute Men, 72.

  12. Edward Butterfield, March 1, 1775, in Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 751.

  13. Boston Gazette, Nov. 28, 1774.

  14. Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 28.

  15. Amos Barrett in the letters of the Rev. Henry True (1900); Jonathan Harrington in Hudson, Lexington, 94.

  16. AA4, II, 441.

  17. Abram English Brown, Beside Old Hearthstones (Boston, 1897), 249—50.