Paul Revere's Ride
Page 54
6. De Berniere to Gage, n.d. [ca. April 20, 1775?]; MHSC2, 4 (1816): 215-19; Gage to Barrington, April 22, 1775, Gage Correspondence, I, 673—74.
7. Andrews, Letters, 405.
8. Capt. W. G. Evelyn to the Rev. Wm. Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of W. G. Evelyn (Oxford, 1879), 54-55.
9. De Berniere, 319.
10. Ibid.
11. “Intercepted Letter of a Soldier’s Wife,” May 2, 1775, AA4, II, 441.
12. “Intercepted Letters of the Soldiery in Boston,” April 28, 1775, AA4, II, 439-40.
13. Ibid.
14. Barker, British in Boston, 37, 34.
15. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 29 (April 21, 1775).
16. Smith to Gage, April 22, 1775.
17. Percy to Harvey, April 20, 1775, Bolton (ed.), Percy Letters, 52—53.
18. Gage to Dartmouth, June 25, 1775, CO5/92, PRO, Kew.
19. Graves to Philip Stephens, April 22, 1775, ADM1/485, PRO, Kew.
20. “The Conduct of Vice Admiral Graves in North America, in 1774, 1775 and 1776,” Dec. 11,1776 [postscript dated Dec. 1,1777] signed G. G[efferina]. The author was Graves’s flag secretary in Boston. Graves Papers, Gay Transcripts, MHS.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Barker, British in Boston, 40.
24. Nathaniel Ames, Diary, April 19, 1775, and April 19, 1815; Dedham Historical Society. I owe these references with thanks to Robert B. Hanson, who observes that the bullet was not all that Dr. Ames extracted from his patient. The physician’s account book contains an entry: “To extracting a Bullet from the Cubitus of Israel Everett, jr which he received in the battle of Lexington the first of the War with Great Britain, 3s; To sundry visits and dressings of the wound, 12 shilling.” Nathaniel Ames Account Book, April 19,1775; see also Robert B. Hanson, Dedham, 1635-1890 (Dedham, 1976), 154.
25. Abram E. Brown, Beneath Old Roof Trees (Boston, 1896), 226.
26. Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” VII, 19; Chase, The Beginnings of the American Revolution, 15&-57-
27. Elizabeth Clarke, “Extracts,” LHS Proceedings IV (1905-10): 91-93.
28. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS.
29. Rachel Revere to Paul Revere, n.d., Gage Papers, WCL; printed in French, General Gage’s Informers, 170-71.
30. Paul Revere to Rachel Revere, n.d., Goss, Revere, I, 263.
31. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798; drafts of Committee Circulars in Massachusetts Archives; Frothingham, Warren, 466; Cary, Warren, 188; Paul Revere, “To the Colony of Massachusetts Bay…,” Aug. 22, 1775, MA; a facsimile is published in Harriet O’Brien (ed.), Paul Revere’s Own Story (Boston, 1929), 37.
32. There is no evidence that Revere received money for the midnight ride, but he was reimbursed for his expenses on earlier and later occasions. The spirit of bureaucracy appeared at this early date. An authorization to pay Paul Revere ten pounds four shillings had to be passed as a resolution by the entire Massachusetts House of Representatives and countersigned by sixteen men, including James Warren, Samuel Adams, and John Adams. House Resolution, Aug. 22, 1775, “Resolved that Mr. Paul Revere be allowed and paid…,” MA; facsimile in O’Brien (ed.), Paul Revere’s Own Story, 36.
33. Proceedings of the Committee of Safety, AA4, II, 744, 765.
34. Warren, Circular Letter, n.d., April 20. 1775, published in Frothingham, Warren, 466.
35. Heath, Memoirs, 10.
36. The earliest recorded use of the phrase “public opinion” appeared in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volume of which appeared in 1776. The expression occurs in chapter xxxi, III, 257 (1781). The first recorded American use is by Thomas Jefferson.
37. Josiah Warren, “Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” April 26, 1775, Wroth et al. (eds.), Province in Rebellion, doc. 509, pp. 1730—31.
38. Phinney, Battle at Lexington, 23; Memoirs of the Concord Social Circle, 1st series, 97.
39. Its progress was recorded in endorsements by each successive committee.
40. This folktale cannot be correct in its estimate of elapsed time; Bissell would have had to maintain a speed of 18 miles an hour. His next stop was in Brooklyn, Connecticut, at 11 o’clock the next morning, a distance of 45 miles. Thereafter the news traveled through the northeast at about five miles an hour—an exceptionally rapid rate of sustained long distance travel in that era. But the other details may be true. Cf. John H. Scheide, “The Lexington Alarm,” AAS Proceedings 50 (1940): 63.
41. The chronology of the news of Lexington and Concord is grossly inaccurate in Lester Cappon et al., Atlas of Early American History (Princeton, 1976). A more accurate source is Scheide, “The Lexington Alarm,” 49—79; the story of the Kentucky hunters is in George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston, 1858), VII, 312.
42. “A Letter from a Gentleman of Rank in New England April 25, 1775,” (London) Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle, June 17—21, 1775.
43. Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, 2 vols. (1810, 1874; New York, 1970), x, I, 168—69; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain 1764-1776 (New York, 1958), 236-37.
44. Peter Edes, “Diary Kept in Boston Gaol,” June 19, 1775, MHS.
45. Frank Luther Mott, “The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington and Concord,” NEQ (1944), 489-504.
46. Emerson, Diaries and Letters, 61, 76.
47. On April 24, 1775, Jonas Clarke wrote in his Lexington diary, “committee taking depositions concerning the fatal action at Lexington,” Jonas Clarke Diary, MHS.
48. Robert S. Rantoul, “The Cruise of the ‘Quero’: How We Carried the News to the King,” EIHC 36 (1900): 5—13; Cary, Joseph Warren, 191.
49. Gage’s courier Lieutenant Nunn did his best. He left Sukey twelve leagues at sea, boarded a faster vessel, landed at Portland, and raced to London, but the damage had been done. Gage was sharply reprimanded and instructed not to use a merchant ship for his dispatches, but one of the “light vessels” of the Royal Navy. See Dartmouth to Gage, June 10, 1775, CO5/92, PRO Kew; for the impact of the news in London, see Fred J. Hinkhouse, The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as Seen in the English Press, 1763-1775 (1926, New York, 1969), 183-97.
50. Hutchinson, Diary, I, 454—63; London Packet, June 7,1775; Hinkhouse, Preliminaries of the American Revolution, 188. Some accounts have represented British opinion as hostile to the American cause. This was true of Parliament, the Universities, the Church of England, and fashionable London, but not of the nation at large.
51. Lord George Germain to John Irwin, May 30, 1775, add ms. 42666, BL.
52. Suffolk to Germain, June 15, 1775; Germain to Suffolk, June 15, 1775, add. ms. 42266, BL.
53. AA4, II, 786; copies of this resolution were quickly sent to London; see ADM1/293, PRO, Kew.
54. Gage to Dartmouth, May 13, 1775, Gage Correspondence, I, 398.
55. Gage to Colden, May 4, 1775, Golden Papers, 1765-1775, VII, 291.
56. Ibid.
57. Boston News-Letter, April 20, 1775; Mott, “The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington and Concord,” 493-94; Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, 233.
58. Gage to Dartmouth, May 13, 1775, Gage Correspondence, I, 398.
59. Thomas Gage to Cadwallader Colden, April 29, May 4, 1775, Colden Papers, VII, 283-91.
60. John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, ed. Lyman Butterfield, 4 vols. (1961; New York, 1964), III, 314.
61. David Freeman Hawke, Paine (New York, 1974), 20, 29, 32, 35; Thomas Paine, Common Sense ed. Nelson F. Adkins (1776; New York, 1953), 27.
62. Washington to George William Fairfax, May 31, 1775, Fitzpatrick (ed.), Writings of George Washington, III, 291—92.
63. Wheeler, Concord, 131.
17. Epilogue
1. “Return of Officers, Noncommissioned Officers and Privates killed and wounded of His Majesty’s Troops at the Attack of the Redoubts and Entrenchments on the Heights of Char
lestown, June 17,1775,” WO1/2/241—42; Muster Rolls of the 23rd Foot or Royal Welch Fusiliers, Jan. 24, 1775, Sept. 24, 1775, WO 12/3960.
These data correct estimates in Harold Murdock, “The Myth of the Royal Welch Fusiliers,” in Bunker Hill; Notes and Queries on a Famous Battle (Boston, 1927), 142—43; and Ralph Ketchum, Decisive Day, the Battle for Bunker Hill (New York, 1962; rpt. 1974), 190. In general, pay lists and muster rolls understate casualties in these battles as many wounded men continued to be listed as “effectives” and others returned to active duty before the next roster was compiled in September. Most seriously wounded men were described as “sick,” and officers were recorded as on “King’s leave.”
2. “Return of Officers, Noncommissioned Officers and Privates killed and wounded of His Majesty’s Troops at the Attack of the Redoubts and Entrenchments on the Heights of Charlestown, June 17, 1775,” WO1/2/241-42; Muster Rolls of the 4th Foot, Jan. 15, 1775, Sept. 14, 1775; WO12/2194, PRO.
For the use of the “ten eldest compys” of grenadiers and light infantry, that is, the ten regiments with the lowest numbers on the army list, see Barker, British in Boston, 60. The attrition of these units may be observed in Muster Rolls of W012/2194, 2289, 2750, 3960, 5171, 5561, 5871, 6240, 6786, PRO, Kew; also “Present State of His Majesty’s Forces at Boston,” July 21, 1775, Haldimand Papers, add. ms 21687, BL.
3. Harold Murdock, The Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston, 1925), 30, 35-38; Ezra Stiles, Literary Diary, I, 604; Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (1872; rev. ed., 1906, rpt. Rutland, Vt., 1971), 217.
4. General Sir Martin Hunter, Journal (Edinburgh, 1894), 15; Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 310; French, First Year of the American Revolution, 670; A List of the Officers of His Majesty’s Marine Forces… (London, 1777), PRO; ADM 192/2; Army List (London, 1775), 180; (1781), 292; (1782), 292; (1783), appendix, 15; (1784), appendix, 12; (1785), 361.
5. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 49; French, First Year of the American Revolution, 660; Ketchum, Bunker Hill, 217.
6. General Sir Martin Hunter, Journal (Edinburgh, 1894).
7. Marjorie Hubbell Gibson, H.M.S. Somerset, 1746—1778; The Life and Times of an Eighteenth Century Man-o-War and Her Impact on North America (Cotuit, Mass., 1992).
8. Hudson, Lexington, 94-96.
9. Wheeler, Concord, 135.
10. Ibid., 113; Hudson, Lexington, 142-43.
11. Wheeler, Concord. 115.
12. Ibid., 228.
13. Robert Newman Sheets, Robert Newman; His Life and Letters in Celebration of the Bicentennial of His Showing of Two Lanterns in Christ Church, Boston, April 18,1775 (Denver: Newman Family Society, 1975), 13.
14. Church’s intercepted letter is in the George Washington Papers, LC.
15. Ulysses P. Hedrick, Cyclopedia of Hardy Fruits (New York, 1922), 17.
16. Memoirs of the Social Circle in Concord, second series, 78.
17. Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1965), 6.
18. Annual Register (1775), 157; French, First Year of the American Revolution, 324.
19. Revere to Lamb, April 5, 1777, Goss, Revere, I, 279-81.
20. The Penobscot Expedition was the low point of his career. The American commanders were unable to act decisively, and unwilling to withdraw. Revere urged repeatedly that the mission be abandoned. Overruled, he decided to take his men home, and was accused of insubordination and cowardice. A court-martial (convened at his request) cleared his name in 1782. Many of the of relevant documents are reprinted in C. B. Kevitt, General Solomon Lovell and the Penobscot Expedition (Weymouth, Mass., 1976), and Goss, Revere, II, 317—97.
21. Skerry, “The Revolutionary Revere,” 58.
22. Revere to Dr. Lettsom, Dec. 3, 1791, RFP, MHS.
23. Forbes, Revere, 388.
24. Renee L. Ernay, “The Revere Furnace, 1787-1800,” unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1989.
25. Paul Revere to Thomas Ramsden, Aug. 4, 1804, RFP, MHS.
26. Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 283.
27. Wayland’s bell appears in Edward and Evelyn Stickney, The Bells of Paul Revere (Bedford, 1976), 18. There can be no doubt about its authenticity. The original bill and receipt, dated Oct. 24, 1814, is in the Wayland Historical Society: “bo’t of Paul Revere and Son a Church Bell $509.50; credit by the old bell, $43.75; $465.75 received payment Paul Revere and son.” I owe this document to the kindness of Elizabeth Garside Goeselt, curator of the Wayland Historical Society.
Historiography
1. (New York) Weekly Gazette and Mercury, May 1775.
2. Ann Hulton to Mrs. Adam Lightbody, n.d. [April 1775]; Harold Murdock et al. (eds.), Letters of a Loyalist Lady (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), 77. The letter is undated, but from internal evidence (“the 18th inst”) was written before the end of April.
3. William Gordon, “An Account of the Commencement of Hostilities Between Great Britain and America, in the Province of Massachusetts-Bay. By the Reverend Mr. William Gordon of Roxbury, in a letter to a Gentleman in England, dated May 17, 1775.” This essay was published in the (Philadelphia) Pennsylvania Gazette, June 1775; and reprinted in AA4, II, 626—31. Gordon later published The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America, 4 vols. (London, 1788). The first American edition of this work was issued in three volumes at New York in 1789. Gordon mentioned Revere by name, and referred specifically to having interviewed him.
4. Joshua B. Fowle to Samuel H. Newman, July 28, 1875, in Wheildon, Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns, 34—35.
5. The second draft of the deposition was reproduced in facsimile by E. H. Goss in his The Life of Colonel Paul Revere, 2 vols. (Boston, 1891), I, 214-20. Members of the Revere family donated the second draft to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1956, and added the rough draft in i960. They were published with Revere’s letter to Belknap by the MHS in Edmund S. Morgan (ed.), Paul Revere’s Three Accounts of His Famous Ride (Boston, 1961).
6. Ralph Earl, “Four Different Views of the Battle of Lexington, Concord, etc.,” engraved by Amos Doolittle (New Haven, 1775), and advertised for sale in the Connecticut Journal, Dec. 13, 1775. A similar interpretation appears in another drawing for John W. Barber’s History of New Haven. This pattern was first observed by Harold Murdock in The Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston, 1925), 3—9; at least one early illustration does not fit this frame, but in general Murdock’s interpretation appears correct. A facsimile edition, “Famous Doolittle Prints of Concord and Lexington, April 19, 1775” (Concord, Minute Man Printing Corporation, n.d.), is available at Minute Man National Historical Park, Concord.
7. Pamela Brown Fiske, narrative, in Kehoe, “We Were There!” I, 270. Pamela Fiske’s grandfather, Francis Brown, mustered on the morning of April 19, fought through the day, and was severely wounded during the afternoon in the granite field at the Lincoln line by a British musket ball that entered his cheek and lodged in the back of his neck. The bullet was removed in 1776 and he succeeded Parker as captain of the Lexington militia.
Pamela Fiske, at the age of ninety-four, recalled that as a little girl she was taught to trace the history of the Revolution with her fingertip, on the wound scars that her grandfather wore as proudly as a decoration. “I used to put my finger on these scars as he told me just how the ball went,” she remembered, ca. 1894. The memory is so vivid, and told with such sincerity, that one thinks it must have been true. I was very sorry to discover in the genealogical records that Francis Brown died April 21, 1800, and Pamela was born on July 29 of the same year—a caution to uncritical users of grandfathers’ tales. Cf. Hudson, Lexington, genealogical appendix, 29.
8. Wheildon, History of Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns.
9. A manuscript copy of the poem is in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Much poetry was inspired by the ride. John Pierpont composed a six-page epic for the dedication of Acton’s revolutionary monument
:
… the foremost Paul Revere
At Warren’s bidding, has the gauntlet run,
Unscathed, and dashing into Lexington,
While midnight wraps him in her mantle dark
Halts at the house of Reverent Mr. Clark.
10. Boston Intelligencer and Weekly Gazette, May 10, 1818.
11. Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington (Boston, 1825, rpt.1875); Ezra Ripley, History of the Fight at Concord (Concord, 1827; 2nd ed., 1832); Josiah Adams, Acton Centennial Address (Boston, 1835).
12. Murdock, The Nineteenth of April, 1775, 4—13.
13. Paul Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775, Morgan (ed.), Paul Revere’s Three Accounts, [21].
14. Depositions of Elijah Sanderson, Dec. 17, 1824; and William Munroe, March 7, 1825, in Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, 31—35.
15. Richard Frothingham, Jr., History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument (Boston, 1849), 23, 58, 60, 366.
16. (J. T. Buckingham,], “Paul Revere,” New England Magazine 3 (1832): 304—14.
17. Ibid., 307-14; Alden Bradford, Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Men in New England (Boston, 1842), 349—51; Daniel Webster, Speech at Pittsburgh, July 8,1833, quoted in Jayne Triber, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: From History to Folklore” (Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association, n.d.), 3.
18. Frederic W. Cook, Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities and Towns in Massachusetts (Boston, 1948).
19. Longfellow, Journals, April 5, 1860. George Bancroft’s accurate account appears in History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, VII (Boston, 1858), 288-96.
20. Hudson, Lexington, 171.
21. Howard G. Laskey, “The Ride,” in Goss, Revere, I, 197. The caption read, “Shouting at every house he reaches, startling the affrighted inmates from their slumbers with his wild halloo, this strange herald of danger thunders on.”