Paul Revere's Midnight Ride
Paul Revere's Midnight Ride occurred on the night of April 18, 1775, as a crucial event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. Revere, a Bostonian silversmith and engraver, set out to warn colonial leaders John Hancock and Sam Adams in Lexington, as well as alerting militia members in Concord about an impending British troop advance. His ride was famously connected to a signaling system involving lanterns at the Old North Church, which indicated whether the British would approach by land or sea. The alerts allowed colonists to prepare and arm themselves for the ensuing conflicts the next day, which marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
Revere was not only known for this ride but also for his active participation in earlier patriotic efforts, including the Boston Tea Party. He was deeply involved in revolutionary activities, serving as a courier and a member of various committees advocating for American rights. Following the war, he transitioned to a successful career as an artisan and manufacturer. Paul Revere's legacy continues to resonate as a symbol of American patriotism and resistance against British rule.
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Paul Revere's Midnight Ride
Paul Revere's Midnight Ride
On April 18, 1775, the American patriot Paul Revere made his famous ride to warn of an impending British march on Lexington, Massachusetts (where colonial rebel leaders John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying), and Concord, Massachusetts (where rebel colonists had stored military supplies). A well-known poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes the ride, as well as Revere's arrangement with confederates to signal the British approach by hanging lanterns in Boston's North Church steeple: “One if by land, and two if by sea; / and I on the opposite shore will be, / ready to ride and spread the alarm, / through every Middlesex village and farm.” Forewarned, the colonists were armed and ready for the arrival of British troops the next day. The resulting skirmishes marked the beginning of the American Revolution, setting in motion the departure of the American colonies from the British Empire and ultimately the formation of the United States of America.
Paul Revere was born in Boston, in the British colony of Massachusetts, in 1735. He was a silversmith and engraver, proud of his work: instead of donning his best clothes and a powdered wig to sit for a portrait by John Singleton Copley in 1768, he chose to be painted at his workbench in his shirtsleeves, with a fine silver teapot in his hand. Both tea and shirt linen were then commodities that the British government intended to control, despite objections from the restive colonials, and Revere's look of brooding determination as he displays these items gives a clue to his political opinions. He was an early and persistent activist for the American cause.
In 1773 Revere was one of a committee of three people chosen to suggest what form a protest against the local sale of British tea should take. The result, a spectacular rebuff to the British, went down in history as the Boston Tea Party, in which Revere participated, along with 50 other workingmen disguised as American Indians. This and other political activities brought him into close contact with such pre-Revolutionary leaders as Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Revere played an important role as the Boston Committee of Safety's main express rider and as official courier for the defiant Massachusetts Provincial Assembly.
Soon after the Boston Tea Party he rode to New York to apprise the local Sons of Liberty of the event. In the spring of 1774, Revere went by horseback to New York and Philadelphia with an appeal for help in protesting the Boston Port Bill, which threatened ruin for North America's second-largest port. He also carried to the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, the Suffolk Resolves, a stirring declaration on American rights subsequently endorsed by the Congress, which outlined measures for defiance of the Intolerable Acts of 1774. In December of the same year, Revere rode off for New Hampshire, where he warned local patriots of British plans for removing a valuable store of munitions from Portsmouth's Fort William and Mary. His message precipitated the colonists' first aggressive act, a raid in which John Sullivan and his men captured the fort's arms and gunpowder. The captured munitions were used six months later against the British at the battle of Bunker Hill.
During the years of agitation that preceded the American Revolution, Revere's stocky figure was seen galloping across the countryside so frequently that his name even began to appear in London newspapers. After his most famous ride of all, on April 18, 1775, Revere went on to serve the Revolution by building a powder mill that helped supply colonial troops with ammunition. He also served as a lieutenant colonel in command of the strategic Castle William in Boston Harbor. After the American Revolution, Revere became a prosperous artisan and manufacturer in Boston. He died there on May 10, 1818.