Listen, My Children, and You Shall Hear of the Midnight Ride of … Oh Dear!
The real hero of April 18, 1775 didn’t rhyme
I first read “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the 8th grade in school. I can still recite the first stanza:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
It’s a resounding poem, but it’s not history.
Four men, Paul Revere, William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, and Israel Bissell, made history on April 18, 1775. They set out late at night from Boston to carry a message to American colonists that The American Revolutionary War was beginning.
Two of the men, Paul Revere and William Dawes, rode from Boston to Lexington on the 18th to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were about to arrest them. Then, they set out for Concord to warn officials that British troops were about to seize weapons stored in that city.
The two riders reached Adams and Hancock in time for them to avoid capture and be available a year later to sign the Declaration of Independence. They then proceeded toward Concord, encountering Samuel Prescott on the way.
