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Oct. 7, 1999 - Bill Cooper
59:28
Paul Revere's Ride #2
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Once upon a time, there was a time, and a time.
I am so happy to be with you. I am so happy to see you.
I am so happy to be with you.
Hmm You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, I've been working on our local television station, putting the transmitter together and doing a lot of soldering.
And now I'm testing certain components of it.
So far, everything works fine.
Hope to be... I'm not going to say it, just in case something goes wrong.
But so far, I'm pleased with that.
How do you like our book report ongoing?
I'm going to tell you the name of the book because I want you to buy it.
Every American home should have a copy of this book and every American should read it.
From the tiniest child who's able to read to the oldest American, even if they're going to die tomorrow and they're 126 years old, they need to read this book.
The title is Paul Revere's Ride.
Paul Revere's Ride.
By David Hackett Fisher.
Spelled F-I-S-C-H-E-R.
F-I-S-C-H-E-R.
I want you to make this book the best selling book in America.
It should be, you know.
It should have been a long time ago, but most people don't even know about it.
Only a very few, very lucky, very clued-in people ever knew about this book.
This is one of my prized possessions.
It holds an honored place in my library.
It's a book that every time that I have loaned it out to a good friend, and I only loaned this book to my best friends, it doesn't come back for months.
Months.
The last time I loaned it out, it didn't come back for almost a year.
And that was to a peace officer, in every sense of the word.
Good man.
The copyright date is 1994.
Paul Revere's ride.
David Hackett Fisher.
Hackett is spelled H-A-C-K-E-T-T.
Fisher is F-I-S-C-H-E-R.
And it's printed by the Oxford University Press.
You should be able to go to any bookstore and order this book.
It's been in print for five years now.
It is probably the best book I've ever read.
about the beginnings of the American Revolution.
What started it all?
How did it happen?
Who fired the first shot and why?
It's all right here.
And it dispels a lot of myths, such as Paul Revere rode through the countryside warning the colonists that the Redcoats were coming, or the British are coming.
Depends upon who's telling the story.
From some you will hear, The Redcoats are coming!
The Redcoats are coming!
And from others you'll hear, The British are coming!
The British are coming!
But nobody ever said either one of those things.
And Paul Revere did not ride through the countryside yelling anything.
As a matter of fact, his mission was to warn two of America's greatest patriots and leaders of the move toward independence at that time, John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
And so he rode straight there, quietly, very fast, but avoiding detection, because the British had officers patrolling the roads to stop Anyone who might go ahead and warn the colonists that they
were coming to seize the stores at Concord The reason they never yelled either of those things was you
see all of those people Thought that they were British
They were British.
They were subjects of His Majesty King George.
They were English.
They were citizens of King George's colonies.
The so-called Redcoats were their soldiers.
Thank you.
Now, knowing that there might be some kind of conflict because of the tension in the air, so to speak, and some of the things that the Crown had done, and that the King had done, to the colonies and the colonists, and to protect themselves from wild Indian attacks, as they called them back in those days, and all kinds of other things.
They had a war with the French and the Indians.
They were always at war with somebody, it The colonists had their own militias.
The militias were frowned upon by King George.
He didn't like that.
Neither did General Gage, who was in charge of the English troops in the Thirteen Colonies.
But nevertheless, the colonists had their militias.
Americans have always had militias.
We have militias today.
Militia, militia, militia drives the socialist Stupid idiots who don't know anything in history about this country, or why a militia should exist, or why we have the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Article and Amendment right through the roof every time I say that.
Militia, militia, militia, militia, militia, militia.
I love to drive them wild.
If they don't change their ways someday, they may be facing those militias.
I'm sure of it.
There was, in fact, over 60.
Over 60 or 65.
It was in the 60s.
And that's just a count that people know about.
It's probably a lot more than that.
Because, you know, Paul Revere and Dr. Warren and all of those people are not the only ones who knew that the regulars had left their barracks and were on the march at night.
Which meant they were up to something.
So there were well over 60 riders riding through the countryside who really were warning the militias and the colonists that the regulars were on the march.
And for those who weren't warned as the regulars marched by, as they saw them march by, they called out their militia and closed up behind them.
The British were really marching into a very bad situation.
Of course they didn't know that.
After all, the colonists were just peasants, you know?
No brains.
Couldn't possibly be any threat to the King's own, could they?
Well, of course not.
Absolutely, absolutely impossible.
To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America, to the Republic for which it
stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
A pledge of allegiance to the flag and a pledge to the ideals of our core values.
The men who fought and died in the building of this great nation.
It's a pledge to fulfill our duties and obligations as citizens of the United States,
and to uphold the principles of our Constitution.
And last but not least, it's a pledge to maintain the four great freedoms cherished by all Americans.
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from war, and freedom from fear.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, If we're miserable, with liberty and justice for all.
We continue, ladies and gentlemen, with our book report, Paul Revere's Ride, by David Hackett Fisher.
Bye.
I want everyone listening to this broadcast to rush out and purchase this book, and if your bookstore doesn't have it, order it.
Order it.
You must have this book.
We left off where Paul Revere And Dawes rode off from Adams and Hancock to rush ahead to Lexington and Concord and warned them that the British regiment was on the march.
They were not riding on their horse through villages and towns yelling anything.
They stopped at each house and each farm and woke people up and told them what was happening and told them to wake their neighbors and warn them.
That's the way it happened.
On the way, Dawes and Revere met a young Dr. Prescott and he rode off with them to help them warn the colonists.
As the riders approached the Nelson farms, Dawes and Prescott left the road to awaken a family while Revere rode several hundred yards ahead, perhaps intending to stop at the next farm.
But suddenly, in the bright moonlight, he saw two horsemen lurking under a tree.
In nearly the same situation as those officers were near Charleston, Revere turned in his saddle and shouted a warning to his companions.
They came riding up to him.
Revere instantly proposed to attack, saying, There are two, and we will have them.
Dr. Preston turned the butt-end of his riding whip and gamely prepared to give battle.
As they advanced, the two horsemen suddenly multiplied into four British regulars in full regimentals with swords and pistols in their hands.
One shouted, God damn you!
If you go an inch further, you are a dead man!"
The New England men spurred their horses forward, trying to force a passage.
We attempted to get through them, Revere wrote, but they kept before us.
The ambush site had been chosen with cunning.
Revere remembered that the shoulders of the narrow road inclined each way and left little room for maneuver.
The armed British officers herded them at pistol point toward a pasture north of the Great Road.
The bars across the entrance to the pasture had been taken down.
The officers swore if we did not turn into that pasture, they would blow our brains out.
The New England men left the highway, with the British officers hovering about their flanks and rear.
As they entered the pasture, Dr. Prescott saw an opportunity.
He turned to Paul Revere, who was riding beside him, and whispered urgently in the old Yankee dialect, Put on!
Both men dug their heels into their horses' sides and galloped for their lives.
Prescott turned left, jumped a low stone wall, and disappeared on a dark and narrow path that ran through woods and swamps.
Several British officers gave chase, but Prescott knew the countryside, and his horse was strong and fresh.
He vanished into the night.
When Prescott turned left, Paul Revere headed to the right toward a tree line at the bottom of the pasture, hoping to escape into the woods.
His splendid animal was very, very tired, but responded nobly to urgent command.
Revere surged ahead of his captors, but just as he reached the trees, six more horsemen suddenly appeared.
Now ten British regulars surrounded him.
They pointed their pistols at his heart, seized his bridle, tore his reins from his grasp, and held him firmly in their grasp.
In that moment of confusion, William Dawes got away.
When the officers went after Revere and Prescott, Dawes turned back into the highway.
He tried to confuse his captors by shouting, Hello, my boys!
I've got two of them!"
As the officers went after Revere, Dawes galloped away in the opposite direction to what appeared to be the safety of a nearby farm.
As he approached the house in the darkness, his horse took fright and stopped so abruptly that Dawes pitched forward out of his seat.
He tumbled to the ground, losing his watch, his horse, and what remained of his composure.
His frightened animal ran away.
With empty stirrups banging crazily on the long letters that were then in use.
The dark house that Dawes took to be a place of refuge turned out to be an abandoned building, perhaps inhabited by wild animals that had frightened his horse.
Badly shaken, William Dawes decided that enough was enough.
He went limping back toward Lexington in the moonlight, keeping in the shadows and out of sight.
The British regulars gathered around their prisoner.
They were angry men.
Ten of the king's officers had failed to snare two out of three suspicious countrymen who had ridden straight into their trap.
They turned their hostility toward the one who remained in their hands.
Revere was ordered to dismount, and some of the regulars began to abuse him.
Suddenly another officer intervened.
Paul Revere thought him Much of a gentleman."
The officer dressed his captive as a gentleman, too, with the elaborate courtesy of that distant age.
"'Sir,' the British officer said politely, "'may I crave your name?' "'My name is Revere,' the captive answered.
"'What?' the officer exclaimed in surprise.
"'Paul Revere?' "'Yes,' came the reply.
Paul Revere was well known to these British officers.
They began to talk among themselves with high excitement, then angrily turned back toward their captive.
The others abused me much, Paul Revere remembered, but their leader continued to treat him correctly.
He told me not to be afraid.
They should not hurt me.
Paul Revere began to look around him.
He discovered that he was not the only prisoner.
the officers had been stopping every suspicious rider who passed them on the road.
They had caught Elijah Sanderson and Jonathan Loring, who had been sent from Lexington to
watch them, and had also bagged Solomon Brown, a messenger who had been dispatched to Concord.
Along the way they also captured an innocent one-armed peddler named Allen, who had nothing
to do with either side.
All of the prisoners had been interrogated at length.
Thank you.
They asked as many questions as a Yankee could, Sanderson later testified.
He remembered that they put many questions to us, which I evaded.
They particularly inquired where Hancock and Adams were.
The officers turned to Revere and began to question him in the same way.
He answered truthfully, They demanded to know if he was in express, and were told yes.
The other captives were too far away to hear all of the questions, but close enough to make out Paul Revere's replies.
With six pistols pointed at him, Revere spoke with a spirit that the British officers found infuriating in a provincial prisoner who seemed not to know his place or to care about the danger he faced.
One of the prisoners, Elijah Sanderson, listened at a distance and later remembered, I heard him speak up with energy to them.
Gentlemen, Revere told them, you've missed your aim.
What of our aim?
one answered in a hard tone.
Another insisted that they were out after deserters, a frequent employment of British officers in America.
I know better, Paul Revere boldly replied.
I know what you are after and have alarmed the country all the way up."
Even as the British officers posed the questions, Paul Revere began to control the interrogation.
Before the regulars realized what had happened, the prisoner himself became the inquisitor.
Paul Revere proceeded to tell his astonished captors more than they knew about their own mission.
He informed them that Colonel Smith's expedition had left Boston by boat across the Back Bay, and that their boats had catched aground at Lechmere Point, and that the regulars had come ashore in Cambridge.
He also told them what he had been doing that night, and warned that he had alarmed the militia at Lexington, and their lives would be at risk if they lingered near that town.
I should have five hundred men there soon," he said, adding, if I had not known people had been sent out to give information to the country and time enough to get fifty miles, I would have entered one shot from you before I would have suffered you to have stopped me.
As the conversation continued, the British officers grew more and more agitated.
They were outraged by the frontery of this infernal Yankee scoundrel who dared to threaten the King's officers, even while their pistols were pointed at his breast.
They were also increasingly disturbed by the unwelcome news that he brought them.
After Paul Revere had spoken, one of the Regners rode off some distance to the highway and came back at full gallop with his commander, Major Edward Mitchell of the Fifth Foot.
The Major was an excitable man, and not in a happy frame of mind.
He ordered that Revere be searched for weapons.
None were found.
Had he been carrying arms, the story of the midnight ride might have ended differently.
Then Major Mitchell himself came up to Paul Revere in a high temper.
He clapped a pistol to my head, Revere remembered, and said he was a-goin' to ask me some questions, and if I did not tell the truth, he would blow my brains out.
Paul Revere was angered by those words and told the Major that he did not need a threat to make him speak the truth.
He added contemptuously, I call myself a man of truth, and you have stopped me on the highway and made me a prisoner.
I knew not by what right.
I will tell the truth, for I am not afraid.
That is precisely what Paul Revere proceeded to do.
He told the truth without hesitation.
while surrounded by armed and hostile horsemen in that dark pasture on the Concord Road.
He spoke with a serene self-confidence, even to these armed and angry men who pointed their pistols at him and were not happy to hear what he had to say.
Later, Paul Revere remembered that, The officer who led me said I was in a damned critical situation.
I told him I was sensible of it.
But even at this moment of mortal peril he spoke boldly to the British officers with the courage of an urgent purpose.
Paul Revere, you see, had a particular object in mind.
Everything, without exception, that he said and did to his captors was consistent with a single goal.
He was trying to move these men away from Lexington, away from Hancock and Adams.
Revere had reason to believe that the mission of the patrol was to arrest those two Whig leaders.
He warned the British officers that if they remained in the vicinity of Lexington Green, they also would be in extreme danger, and he hinted that the expedition coming after them could start a war unless it was warned of the trouble that awaited them at Lexington Center.
In fact, trouble was gathering for them in many places that night.
But Revere stressed only one place in particular, Lexington, where he had left Hancock and Adams.
It was a remarkable performance.
The soldiers listened carefully to Paul Revere, increasingly quiet and pensive.
Then they withdrew a little way and began to talk among themselves.
Suddenly they returned to Revere and ordered him to mount.
Another officer went to the captive Sanderson, who remembered that they ordered me to untie my horse, which was tied to a little birch and mount.
The party left the pasture, entered the road, and turned east toward Boston.
They kept us in the middle of the road, and rode on each side of us, Sanderson recalled.
They took all of us—Revere, Loring, Brown, and myself.
One of the officers took out his watch and looked at it.
Sanderson asked him the time and was told it was a quarter past two.
Paul Revere's words had worked brilliantly.
The regulars were increasingly tense and nervous.
For many hours they had loitered on the road.
Now they were in a hurry to ride east and impatient of every delay.
Sanderson was badly mounted on a slow horse.
One officer struck the animal with the flat of his sword and sent it skittering ahead.
The ten British regulars and their four or five prisoners rode down toward Lexington.
When we got on to the road, Revere remembered, they formed a circle and ordered the prisoners in the center and to lead me in the front.
The captives remembered that the pace was pretty smart.
With Paul Revere, the officers took special measures.
He was made to mount with the others, but his reins were taken from him.
Revere asked if he might hold the reins himself, and received a rude reply.
The polished manners of these English gentlemen were beginning to wear thin.
"'God damn you, sir!' an officer said to him.
"'You are not to ride with reins, I assure you!' Major Mitchell, in particular, was showing the strain.
He told Paul Revere, We are now going towards your friends, and if you attempt to run or we are insulted, we will blow your brains out."
"You may do as you please," Revere answered.
Revere's reins were given to a sergeant who was ordered to draw his pistol and use it to execute the major's sentence if the captive tried to bolt.
The anger and frustration of the British regulars were growing dangerously.
Revere remembered that I was often insulted by the officers, calling me damned rebel, etc., etc.
They were now about half a mile from Lexington Green.
Suddenly they heard a gunshot.
Major Mitchell turned in fury to his prisoner and demanded an explanation.
Revere told him that it was a signal to alarm the country.
A few minutes later the riders were startled to hear the heavy crash of an entire volley of musketry from the direction of Lexington's Meeting House.
Probably it came from a party of militiamen who were clearing their weapons before they entered the Buckman Tavern for a bit of cheer.
The regulars were appalled to hear it.
Revere remembered that the volley appeared to alarm them very much.
At last the officers began to feel the full import of what Paul Revere had been telling them.
His words of warning took on stronger meaning when punctuated by gunfire.
The sound of a single shot had suggested to them that surprise was lost.
The crash of a volley appeared evidence that the country was rising against them.
As they came closer to the common They began to hear Lexington's town bell clanging rapidly.
The captive, luring, picking up Revere's spirit, turned to the officers and said, The bells are ringing, the town's alarmed, and you're all dead men!
The officers halted, rode apart from their captives, and once again talked urgently among themselves.
They decided that they must gallop back to warn the commanders of the marching column.
To travel faster, they resolved to release their captives.
A young subaltern went over to Sanderson, ordered him to dismount, drew a sword, and said apologetically, I must do you an injury.
As the officer brandished his weapon, Sanderson wondered, What injury?
The regulars had already made him a prisoner, taken his property, and threatened his life.
What further injury remained?
I asked what he was going to do to me now, Sanderson later wrote.
The officer made no reply, but with his hanger cut my bridle and girth and then mounted.
Sanderson, to his amazement, found himself a free man.
Major Mitchell released the other prisoners.
He ordered his men to cut their bridles and girths and drive the horses away.
Then the Major rode over to Paul Revere's guard, a sergeant of Grenadiers, a big man on a little horse.
The Major asked if the sergeant's mount was fatigued, then gestured toward Revere and ordered, Take that man's horse.
Paul Revere was told to dismount.
Brown beauty was given to the sergeant, who mounted quickly.
Then the regulars turned their horses and rode off to the east at what Sanderson called a good smart trot.
The liberated prisoners headed directly for Lexington Green.
Paul Revere instantly began to think of capturing the men who had captured him.
Sanderson remembered that they waded through the swamp, through the mud and water, intending to arrive at the meeting house before they, the British officers, could pass to give information to our people.
But the regulars were moving too fast to be caught.
The former captives watched as they stopped briefly near the meeting-house, talked among themselves, then started at full gallop toward Cambridge.
We saw no more of them, Sanderson remembered.
It was also the last that Paul Revere saw of Brown Beauty.
Deacon Larkin's splendid horse had served him nobly that night.
He watched her disappear into the night with a sergeant of grenadiers and bouncing on her The Larkin family were later told that she was driven until she dropped to her knees and died in the night.
Whatever happened, Brown Beauty was never seen by her owners again.
The released captives were exhausted by their ordeal.
Sanderson headed straight for the beckoning lights of Buckman's Tavern on Lexington Green.
I went to the tavern, he recalled later.
The citizens were coming and going.
Some went down to find whether the British were coming.
Some came back and said there was no truth in it.
I went into the tavern and, after a while, went to sleep in my chair by the fire.
While Sanderson dozed in the warm tavern, Paul Revere remained outside, still on his feet.
Suddenly he thought of one more urgent task that needed to be done.
Revere turned away from the tavern lights left the main road and strode north across the countryside on yet
another mission to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
My country is a beast.
Sweet land of liberty.
Of the United States.
Land where my father died.
Land of the Pilgrim's pride.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
My native country's redeemed.
Land of the noble free.
Land of the noble free, thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templet hills.
you My heart is after doomed like that of a...
Let music swell the breeze And breathe from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that grief partake,
Let's rock this silent race of sounds.
Hold on.
Our Father God redeemed.
Author of liberty.
God's Redeemer, author of liberty, to Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light.
O take us by Thy might, great God our King.
.
In the time that Paul Revere remained a prisoner, the message traveled rapidly across the countryside.
To many Americans, the legend of the Lexington alarm conjures up the image of a solitary
rider galloping bravely in the darkness from one lonely farmstead to the next, yelling,
"'The Redcoats are coming!' or, "'The British are coming!' This romantic idea is etched indelibly upon the national
memory.
But it is not what happened that night.
It is not what happened that night.
Many other writers helped Paul Revere to carry the alarm.
Their participation did not in any way diminish his role, but actually enlarged it.
Most of those writing knew nothing about the others, nothing whatsoever.
The more we learn about these messengers, the more interesting Paul Revere's part becomes,
not merely as a solitary courier, but as an organizer and promoter of the common effort
in the cause of freedom.
Thank you.
Earlier that evening, while Paul Revere was making ready for his own midnight ride, he and his Whig friends began the work of dispatching other couriers with news of the British march While he was still in Charlestown, preparing to travel west to Lexington, arrangements were made for another express to gallop north with the news that he had brought from Boston.
The identity of this other courier is not known.
Many people heard him in the dark, but few actually saw him, and nobody recorded his name.
He set out from Charlestown at about the same hour as Paul Revere himself.
his route took him north, through the present towns of Medford, Winchester,
Woburn, and Wilmington.
So swiftly did he gallop on dark and dangerous roads that by two o'clock in the morning he
was in the town of Tewksbury, on the Merrimack River, twenty-five
miles north of Boston.
Whoever he may have been, this messenger knew exactly where he was going and what he was
to do.
When he reached Tewksbury, he spurred his horse through the streets of the sleeping village and rode directly to the farm of Captain John Troll on Stickney Hill near the town's training field.
Training field, ladies and gentlemen, was where the militias drilled.
Captain Troll was the head of Tewksbury's militia And a pivotal figure in the alarm system that Whig leaders had organized during the past few months.
He was awakened by the courier who told him, I have alarmed all the towns from Charleston to here.
Charles rose from his bed and took up his musket.
Still in his nightdress, he fired three times from his bedroom window.
This was a signal previously arranged with the militia commander in the neighboring town of Drackett, north of Tewksbury, on the New Hampshire border.
The sharp report of Captain Troll's alarm gun carried across the Merrimack River, and the militia company of Dracut instantly began to muster.
The hour was a little after two o'clock in the morning.
At the moment when General Gage's regulars were still in the marshes of the East Cambridge, the news of their secret mission had traveled thirty miles from Boston to the New Hampshire line.
Now these were 18th century distances.
30 miles was normally a long day's journey in that era.
You think of 25 or 30 miles as nothing.
15, 20 minute, 30 minute drive.
Not so.
Not so in 1775.
The astonishing speed of this communication did not occur by accident.
It was the result of careful preparation and something else as well.
Paul Revere and the other messengers did not spread the alarm merely by knocking on individual farmhouse doors.
They also awakened the institutions of New England.
The Midnight Riders went systematically about the task of engaging town leaders and military commanders of their region.
They enlisted its churches and ministers, its physicians and lawyers, and each in their turn sent out other writers to warn the population, its family networks and voluntary associations.
Paul Revere and his fellow Whigs of Massachusetts understood more clearly than Americans of later generations that political institutions are instruments of human will and amplifiers of individual action.
They knew from long experience That successful effort requires sustaining planning and careful organization.
The way they went about their work made a major difference that night.
While the Tewksbury Rider was galloping north, Paul Revere himself was on the road, traveling northeast from Charlestown to Medford.
As we have seen, he had not planned to go that way.
But once in the village of Medford, he went quickly about the task of awakening that community with remarkable economy of effort.
He rode directly to the house of Captain Isaac Hall, commander of Medford's Minutemen, who instantly triggered the town's alarm system.
A townsman remembered that repeated gunshots, the beating of drums, and the ringing of bells filled the air.
From Medford, Paul Revere's friends started yet another express rider galloping to the northeast.
He was Dr. Martin Herrick, a young Harvard graduate who studied in Medford and worked in the town of Linfield, fifteen miles to the north.
Several rigged messengers that night were physicians, doctors.
In that far distant era, when American physicians made house calls, a country doctor was apt to own the best saddle horse in town and be a highly experienced rider.
He also tended to be a high-toned son of liberty.
So it was with Martin Herrick.
He carried Paul Revere's message of alarm northeast from Medford to the village of Stoneham, then turned east toward Reading, where he roused the militia officers in the south precinct of that town.
From Reading, he rode to Lynn End, alarmed the militia company, and later joined it as a volunteer on the march.
A busy night for young Dr. Herrick.
Within a few hours, Dr. Herrick awakened a large area on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay.
He also set other riders in motion.
One express was in Lynn by early morn.
Another galloped from Reading, fifteen miles east, to Danvers.
A third rode fourteen miles north to Andover, where militiaman Thomas Moynton noted that, about the sun rising, the town was alarmed with the news that the regulars were on their march to Concord.
Another resident of Andover slower to get the word, wrote in his diary.
About seven o'clock we had alarm that the Regulars was gone to Concord.
We gathered at the Meaton House and then started for Concord.
Along the north shore of Massachusetts, church bells began to toll, and the heavy beat of drums could be heard for many, many miles in the night air.
Some towns responded to these warnings before a courier reached them.
North Reading was awakened by alarm guns before sunrise.
The first messenger appeared a little later.
While the alarm was spreading rapidly to the north, Paul Revere and his fellow Whigs started yet another courier in a different direction, east from Medford to the town of Malden.
This express rider delivered the alarm to a Whig leader who went to an outcropping called Bell Rock and rang the town bell.
That prearranged signal summoned the men of Malden with their weapons to a meeting place at Tettle's Cavern.
From Malden the alarm was carried east to Chelsea on the Atlantic coast.
Meanwhile, Paul Revere himself was carrying the same message west from Medford to the village of Monotony.
There again he started other messengers in motion.
Thank you.
This was the part of his journey of which he later wrote, I alarmed almost every house till I got to Lexington.
From some of those houses, men rode north and northwest to the precincts above Cambridge in monotony.
Captain Ebenezer Steadman, a prominent Whig leader, was awakened at an early hour.
He sent an express rider to Captain Joshua Walker and Major Laumie Baldwin in Woburn, north of Menominee.
From Woburn Village, Captain Walker sent a messenger riding west to Jonathan Proctor in the Second Parish, now the town of Burlington.
The alarm was also carried to the northwest in the same way.
All along Paul Revere's route, Town leaders and militia commanders were systematically engaged, a fact of vital importance for the events that followed.
Much of what happened that night was cloaked in secrecy, but repeated evidence indicates that Paul Revere played a unique role.
From long association, he was acquainted with leaders throughout the province.
He knew who they were and where to find them, even in towns that he had not expected to visit.
They knew him, as well.
It is instructive in that regard to compare the conduct of Paul Revere and William Dawes, who went about their work in very different ways.
Revere's ride to Lexington covered nearly thirteen miles in less than two hours.
His circuit was broad, with a broad arc north and west of Boston.
In every town along that route, Paul Revere met with Whig leaders.
Richard Devins in Charlestown, Isaac Hall in Medford, probably Ebenezer Stedman in Cambridge, Benjamin Locke and Solomon Bowman in Monotony.
William Dobbs traveled a longer distance on a slower horse, nearly seventeen miles in about three hours.
His route took him in a different direction, south across Boston Neck to Roxbury.
Then west and north through Brookline, Brighton, Cambridge, Monotony and Lexington.
No evidence exists that he spoke with anyone before he reached the Clark House in Lexington.
It is difficult to believe that he did not talk with at least a few people on the road.
But in many hundreds of accounts of the Lexington Alarm, only one person remembered meeting him that night—Lexington's Sergeant Monroe, who was unable to recollect his name and called him Mr. Lincoln.
Along Paul Revere's northern route, the town leaders and company captains instantly triggered the alarm system.
On the southerly circuit of William Dawes, that did not happen until later.
In at least one town it did not happen at all.
Dawes did not awaken the town fathers or militia commanders in the towns of Roxbury, Brookline, Watertown or Waltham.
Probably he did not know them.
As we shall see, Roxbury and Brookline and Watertown would receive the alarm in other ways.
Long after Dawes had passed, Waltham never received it at all.
The town of Waltham lay just west of Watertown and south of Lexington.
This northern border was only two miles from Lexington Green.
Closer than any other community.
But the alarm system was not triggered in Waltham until much later the next morning.
Too late for its militia companies to join the fighting.
Only a few farmers in the neighborhood called Waltham Farms at the north end of town heard the alarm.
Some of these men would see action.
But no company of militia from Waltham fought that day.
Several historians have suspected that the community was Tory in its sympathies, which certainly was not the case.
For those of you who do not know what Tory means, it was a term for those who sided with King George against the colonists.
Two days later, more than two hundred Waltham men were in the field with the New England Army.
Many would fight bravely at Bunker Hill and on other fields.
But on the 19th of April they mustered too late through no fault of their own.
Anyone with experience of military service will understand what happened.
In the jargon of another war, Waltham was among the ten percent who never got the word.
The dogs that did not bark in Waltham and other southern towns were an important clue to the working of the alarm system and of Paul Revere's role that night.
In North Waltham we find evidence that a knock on a farmhouse door was not enough to set the process in motion.
Scattered homes received the warning, but military officers and town fathers were not notified, and the militia failed to muster in time.
Here was further proof that Paul Revere and his fellow riders on his northern route succeeded in spreading the alarm by engaging the institutions of these rural communities in a way that William Dawes did not.
None of this is meant to deny William Dawes his role in the Lexington Alarm.
His ride was firmly documented, most of all by Paul Revere himself, who was always careful to give Dawes a share of the credit.
And after all, his mission was to go straight, straight to Lexington, to the Clark family residence, and warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of their impending arrest.
On other occasions, before and afterward, Dawes proved himself to be a brave and resourceful man who believed deeply in the Whig cause and served it faithfully.
He carried his message to Lexington just as Dr. Warren had requested in the face of many dangers, but Paul Revere did that and more.
When Dawes and Revere came together in Lexington, they began to work as a team, and Revere...
lost my place.
When Dawes and Revere came together at Lexington, they began to work as a team.
While they were at the Clark House and the Buckman Tavern, other messengers were dispatched from Lexington Center.
Some rode east in the parts of Cambridge that Revere had skirted in his detour to Medford.
Lexington's minister remembered that between twelve o'clock and one o'clock, two persons were sent express to Cambridge.
The houses clustered around Harvard College received the news from the West at about two o'clock in the morning.
Hannah Winthrop, who lived near Harvard Yard, remembered that she was awakened by a beat of drum and ringing of bell a few hours before dawn.
These were the drums and bells that the British regulars themselves had begun to hear with growing concern as they hurried on their way.
Two other Lexington men, Nathan Monroe and Benjamin Tidd, rode north from Lexington to warn the town of Bedford.
They called at the house of Cornet Nathaniel Page, the color-bearer of the Bedford militia, and shouted, Get up, Nat Page!
The regulars are out!
Then they galloped west as far as Merriam's Corner in Concord, delivered their news, and trotted back to Lexington by side roads, while Page spread the alarm to his Bedford company.
By that hour, so many couriers were riding from Lexington Common across the countryside that Paul Revere and William Dawes were unable to find fresh horses for their trip to Concord.
As they set out on their weary mounts, we have seen how they recruited Dr. Samuel Prescott to help them with his fresh animal.
Here again, Revere and Dawes prepared carefully for contingencies and worked out a plan in case they were captured.
That act of individual foresight and collective effort made a vital difference.
So let us pick up Dr. Prescott's trail.
He was well mounted and master of the ground.
When Dawes was stopped and Revere was captured, Prescott put heel to his horse and disappeared into the countryside that he knew so well.
Revere remembered that the doctor jumped his horse over a low stone wall and got away.
Prescott picked his way in the darkness through woods and swamps until he had eluded his English pursuers, then returned to the main road and galloped on alone.
As he had promised, Prescott spread the word through Lincoln and Concord, making an effort to awaken ministers, militia officers, and the family networks of outlying Hamlets.
He also recruited other couriers, in the same way that Revere and Dawes had recruited him.
On the road in North Lincoln, Dr. Prescott came upon a young man named Nathaniel Baker, who, like Prescott himself, had been out courting his fiancée, Elizabeth Taylor, at her house near the present Lexington-Lincoln line.
A good many travelers that spring night were young men on errands of love.
Nathaniel Baker received the alarm from Dr. Prescott and carried it to his kinsman, Amos Baker, who awakened his father, four brothers, and brother-in-law.
They, in turn, went to warn others throughout the town of Lincoln.
Still in Lincoln, Prescott also stopped at a blacksmith's shop close to the road where one or two African slaves lay sleeping.
The slaves carried the alarm to their mistress, Mary Hartwell, who was in a nearby house with her newborn infant.
So urgent, did she think the news, that she left her baby and ran across the fields to the home of militia captain William Smith and told him what she had heard.
While Mary Hartwell hurried home to her baby, Captain Smith began to ring Lincolnstown bell and mustered his company.
The time?
About two o'clock in the morning.
From Lincoln the news was also carried south to Weston.
In that country town, Boston Whig leader Samuel Cooper had found refuge with the family of Samuel Savage near Daggett's Corner in the north part of Weston, near the Lincoln line.
He was awakened with the alarm by Mrs. Savage at about three o'clock in the morning.
While the warning was spreading to the south, Dr. Prescott galloped west into Concord Center and arrived there before two o'clock in the morning.
He found someone to ring the Concord bell, then rode off to find the town's minister, William Emerson, and the militia leaders.
The militia leaders.
The militia leaders.
Do you have any militia leaders in your city or town?
If not, you are hereby appointed.
Form a militia.
Now.
Instantly.
Do it.
Do it."
Emerson noted in his diary, "'This morning, between one and two o'clock, we were alarmed
by the ringing of the bell, and upon examination found that the troops to the number of
eight hundred had stole their march from Boston in boats and barges.
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, crossed several walls and fences, arrived at Concord
at the time aforementioned.
We will continue this, ladies and gentlemen.
Remember the name of the book, Paul Revere's Ride, by David Hackett Fisher?
Printed by Oxford University Press, 1994.
If you don't have this book in your library, you don't have a library.
.
Good night.
And God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night, Annie.
Good night, Allison.
Good night, Pooh.
You're in my prayers and in my heart every moment and every night of every day of every week of every month.
If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd work for all my life and I had to start again.
Just my children and my wife.
It's like my lucky star to be living here today.
But the flag still stands for freedom, and they can't take that away.
And I'm proud to be an American wearing these flags over my grave.
And I won't forget the men who died, Can I have this chance?
I'm standing up next to you, can you take her through today?
But there ain't no doubt I love this land, God bless the USA.
From the plains of Minnesota Through the hills of Tennessee, across the plains, from sea to shining sea.
From Detroit down to Houston, and New York to L.A.
We're the pride in every American heart, and it's time we stand and say...
Ladies and gentlemen, speak out and join a militia or a foreign one in your community.
And I won't forget the men who died who gave that price to me.
And I'd rather stand up next to you and defend her than to be...
Ladies and gentlemen, seek out and join a militia, or a foreign one, in your community.
Today, Einhol regains.
And I'm proud to be an American.
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