Two hundred fifty-one years ago tonight Paul Revere rode into history, intent on warning John Hancock and Sam Adams of the British intent to arrest them.
Patriots’ Day, April 18/19 1775…
A friend once asked: “How do you celebrate Patriots’ Day?” Which, perhaps, should spur me to share my own thoughts on this day of consequence.
Many are familiar with the poem Paul Revere’s Ride, however, far fewer know that Paul Revere actually memorialized the events of the April 18 and 19, 1775, in an eight-page letter written several years later.
Each Patriots’ Day I remind myself to read his letter from a copy handed down, and I think about how Paul Revere was really just a common man of otherwise undue significance…. yet, capable to the task at hand.
To me everything about the heart of Revere, which you can identify within his own writing, is what defines an American ‘patriot’.
There is no grand prose, there is no outlook of being a person of historical significance, there is just a simple recollection of his involvement, an ordinary man in extraordinary times.
Unsure if anyone else would enjoy I have tracked down an on-line source for sharing and provide a transcript below (all misspelling is with the original).
Paul Revere personally recounts his famous ride. – In this undated letter, Paul Revere summarizes the activities surrounding his famous ride on 18 April 1775. He recounts how Dr. Joseph Warren urged him to ride to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of British troop movements. He arranged to signal the direction of the troops with lanterns from Old North Church, and then had friends row him across the Charles River borrowing a horse for his ride.
Revere wrote this letter at the request of Jeremy Belknap, corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Revere signed his name to the letter but then wrote above it, “A Son of Liberty of the year 1775”, and beside it, “do not print my name.” Nonetheless, the MHS included Revere’s name when it printed the letter in 1798.
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