Paul Revere's Ride
by David Hackett Fischer
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Book Summary Information
Author: David Hackett FischerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-04-19
ISBN: 0195098315
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Reviews of Paul Revere's Ride
Book Review: Exploding Myths about Paul Revere
Summary: 5 Stars
In what David Hackett Fisher calls these days of national amnesia, Paul Revere's ride - the event, not the book - holds a prime position in American folklore. Composers have written a march and an operetta about it. Artists have painted it, scientists have theorized about its astronomy, geology and meteorology and authors have written scores of children's books about it. The only group that seems to have ignored it is that composed of academic historians. Hackett Fisher says it's because the "only creature less fashionable in academe than the stereotypical dead white male is a dead white male on horseback." He's more reflective when he says an entire generation of academic historiography has lost its sense of the power of particular actions and contingent activities, what Walter Lippmann calls the crystallizing event.
Paul Revere's Ride is about the political and tactical chess match between American patriots and British imperialists in the months leading up to the beginning of the American Revolution. Its epicenter chronicles the execution of the plan that alerted the colonial militia to mobilize and march to engage the British at Lexington and Concord in April, 1775. David Hackett Fischer demonstrates his skill as storyteller and historian as he wraps his work around civic-minded Boston silversmith Paul Revere and his nemesis, aristocratic British general, Thomas Gage. Both men believed deeply in freedom; Revere's version cherished collective rights with individual responsibilities, Gage's was more hierarchical, more elitist than Revere's. The book is wonderfully engaging because Hackett Fisher weaves primary sources into both historical and contemporary context while exploding several myths along the way. In other words, the book is about much more than Paul Revere's ride.
Hackett Fisher describes the revolutionary movement in Boston as large, open, diverse, complex and pluralistic. For example, there were 255 members in seven groups of Massachusetts Whigs that together formed the leadership of revolutionary New England. Paul Revere was one of only two men who were members of five of the groups, making him a lynchpin of the revolutionary movement. Born in 1734, Revere was the son of a French Huguenot immigrant, Apollos Rivoire and a fifth generation New England Yankee, Deborah Hitchborn. He had matured into an American original: a successful small businessman who attended church regularly, earned a "can do" reputation by serving his community frequently - including leadership in several political groups - and considered himself a gentleman. Revere's first wife died after bearing eight children; his second wife gave birth to eight more. Of his 16 children, he buried five as infants and five more as young adults. Revere was naturally gregarious and well-met, but Hackett Fisher says his spirits were utterly crushed by each child's death. A measure of the man, he renewed himself each time with a deep commitment to the common cause of liberty and the equal right of all people to be judged according to their worth.
General Gage was the cautious, conservative commander-in-chief for British North America in 1775, a career soldier more successful in peace than war. His reputation was for discipline and economy, not strategy and tactics. Married to an American heiress, Gage had become a major landowner in North America with a vested interest in keeping the peace with the colonials while guarding the interests of the Empire. Nonetheless, he was the quintessentially arrogant British imperialist who wrote in 1770, "America is a mere bully, from one end to the other, and the Bostonians by far the greatest bullies." Lord Perry, Gage's subordinate officer, described those same Bostonians as "a set of sly, artful, hypocritical rascals, cruel and cowards." The two British officers knew of Paul Revere's frequent journeys to New York and Philadelphia carrying details of the Boston Tea Party and news of the Suffolk Resolves, Massachusetts' reaction to the Intolerable Acts (Britain's Coercive Laws). In fact, General Gage referred to Revere in his correspondence simply as "P. R."
The intrigue that preceded the Battles at Lexington and Concord which began the American Revolution centered on the planning and execution of the patriots' alarm system in which Paul Revere's ride played such a famous role.
As the commercial and political atmosphere surrounding the British and their colonial subjects in New England became more strained, the colonists realized the British possessed an insurmountable advantage if they surprised the colonists with quick military actions. They had no doubt one was on the way in the late summer of 1775. Their theory was ratified by General Gage's successful raid on the Provincial Powder House on September 1, 1775; all the colonists could do was ring their church bells after the fact in what came to be known as the Powder Alarm. Patriot leaders met in Worcester on September 21 and recommended an advance system of alarms and express riders be organized throughout Massachusetts. It was this decision and the planning that followed, coordinated by Paul Revere and a handful of others that made the difference in the colonial victory over the British at Lexington and Concord seven months later.
Revere and the colonials' Committee of Safety worked out three fundamental procedures to send early warnings of movements by British soldiers out of Boston based on whether Gage had closed the town exits. Their first alternative was to dispatch express riders from Boston along open roads to alert local militias. If the British blocked the main roads, special messengers would attempt to leave Boston by more clandestine routes. If the British stopped them, a complex system of lantern signals would be implemented from Boston across the river to Charlestown, setting off a dispersal of riders and ringing of church bells throughout the colony to alert the colony of pending British military movement. The brilliance of the colonial scheme lay in its contingency planning.
It was complex, yet understandable, fast and flexible. Paul Revere knew what to do for example when he was confronted by two British soldiers on the road to warn Sam Adams and John Hancock about Gage's plan to surprise and arrest them in Lexington and seize colonial military assets held at Concord. When the time came to mobilize the Massachusetts militias because "The Regulars are coming out" - Revere's actual words to fellow patriots on his 13-mile, less than two hour ride from Charleston to Lexington - no time was lost to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Unlike the British and the loyalists, the colonists weren't following one man; they were following their collectively designed plan.
Hackett Fisher says the colonists concluded war was inevitable months before Gage decided to move against their leadership and military stores. The citizen soldiers of Massachusetts militia prepared not just to fight, but to win; their motivation was visceral in defense of their lives and their property. While towns organized militia companies - some more than one, like Sudbury which mobilized five - they also loaded wagons with supplies, ready to follow the militia when they finally marched. Captain Isaac Davis of Acton, a farmer and gunsmith, represented the depth of preparation when he built a firing range behind his shop so his company of militiamen could practice their marksmanship twice a week for six months leading up to April 19. The culture of planning and preparation was pervasive.
Age made no difference to the volunteers. A Dedham source wrote, "The gray-haired veterans of the French wars, whose blood was stirred anew by the sights and sound of war, resolved to follow their sons into battle." Hackett Fischer says the older colonial men were among the most dangerous adversaries the British faced. Many years later, an historian asked 91-year-old Captain Levi Preston of Danvers what made him join the militia to fight the British. "Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should."
One of the most interesting parts of the book is a historiographical section on "Myths after the Midnight Ride." Perhaps the most compelling is Hackett Fisher's treatment of Longfellow's Myth of the Lone Rider. "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and published in 1861. Hackett Fisher says Longfellow was "utterly without scruple in his manipulation of historical fact" when he wrote the poem that's arguably the main reason for Paul Revere's popular fame. In part, it reads,
Listen my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere ... The people will waken and listen to hear, The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
"As an historical description of Paul Revere's ride, the poem was grossly, systematically, and deliberately inaccurate," says Hackett Fisher. "(Longfellow) invented an image of Paul Revere as a solitary hero who acted alone in history ... (his) verse instantly transformed a regional folk-hero into a national figure of high prominence. Paul Revere entered the pantheon of patriot heroes as an historical loner of the sort that Americans love to celebrate." Longfellow apparently could have cared less; his purpose in writing the poem was to awaken public opinion to the Union cause in the national debate preceding the Civil War. It should be noted Hackett Fisher is obviously comfortable riding Longfellow's coattails and Revere's cultural image, leveraging it in his title to attract greater attention. Some historians may look down their noses at this, but Hackett Fisher is only taking advantage of the power of Revere's name as a mnemonic.
Over the years, Hackett Fisher says several other myths have attached themselves to the history of Paul Revere. Many originate from jealous Bostonians who resent Revere's notoriety, others from historical revisionists looking for something new to say about the Revolution. For example, patriotic engravers always represented Paul Revere's horse, Brown Beauty, as a fine-boned thoroughbred. Historical debunkers in the 20th century took great pleasure maintaining Revere actually rode a heavy-set plow horse. Rubbish, says Hackett Fisher. Nonetheless the charge has crept into the historical literature. Another debunker in the 1920s went so far as to claim Revere's midnight ride never happened. President Warren Harding was so incensed on hearing this that he weighed in on the debate from the White House. "Somebody made the ride," he said, "and stirred the minutemen in the colonies to fight the battle of Lexington, which was the beginning of independence in the new Republic of America. I love the story of Paul Revere, whether he rode or not." The moral? Don't mess with Mother Nature, don't mess with Texas and don't mess with Paul Revere!
David Hackett Fischer is a thorough historian and an excellent writer, infused with a healthy dose of the skeptic. As a result, Paul Revere's Ride throws a bright light on a piece of American history most people think they know well but actually don't. Hackett Fisher clears academe's research hurdles, challenges earlier work with critical thinking and entertains with a skillful narrative style. For the popularity of history and the benefit of posterity, other academic historians are encouraged to follow suit.
Summary of Paul Revere's Ride
Paul Revere's midnight ride looms as an almost mythical event in American history--yet it has been largely ignored by scholars and left to patriotic writers and debunkers. Now one of the foremost American historians offers the first serious look at the events of the night of April 18, 1775--what led up to it, what really happened, and what followed--uncovering a truth far more remarkable than the myths of tradition.In Paul Revere's Ride, David Hackett Fischer fashions an exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of revolution and the emergence of the American republic. Beginning in the years before the eruption of war, Fischer illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition. Revere ranged widely through the complex world of Boston's revolutionary movement--from organizing local mechanics to mingling with the likes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When the fateful night arrived, more than sixty men and women joined him on his task of alarm--an operation Revere himself helped to organize and set in motion. Fischer recreates Revere's capture that night, showing how it had an important impact on the events that followed. He had an uncanny gift for being at the center of events, and the author follows him to Lexington Green--setting the stage for a fresh interpretation of the battle that began the war. Drawing on intensive new research, Fischer reveals a clash very different from both patriotic and iconoclastic myths. The local militia were elaborately organized and intelligently led, in a manner that had deep roots in New England. On the morning of April 19, they fought in fixed positions and close formation, twice breaking the British regulars. In the afternoon, the American officers switched tactics, forging a ring of fire around the retreating enemy which they maintained for several hours--an extraordinary feat of combat leadership. In the days that followed, Paul Revere led a new battle-- for public opinion--which proved even more decisive than the fighting itself.
When the alarm-riders of April 18 took to the streets, they did not cry, "the British are coming," for most of them still believed they were British. Within a day, many began to think differently. For George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, the news of Lexington was their revolutionary Rubicon. Paul Revere's Ride returns Paul Revere to center stage in these critical events, capturing both the drama and the underlying developments in a triumphant return to narrative history at its finest.
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