July, the 4th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies from the British rule to form the United States of America. Noted people, like General George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, along with many others, signed this Declaration and are popularly known as the “Founding Fathers”. Skirmishes between both sides had started in late 1760’s, but in April 1775 it suddenly sprang up into a revolutionary war. But what exactly had happened in that month that suddenly aggravated the feeling of hatred in Americans against the British rule? This was the incident that tipped the revolutionists, that turned a storm into a fierce hurricane and that set off the American Revolution. It was the “Midnight Ride” by a man named Paul Revere; it was literally the Tipping Point of the American Revolution.
Paul Revere was a multi talented personality; he was a silversmith, engraver, writer, and a local politician. He had been assigned the task by the revolutionaries in Boston to convey messages of any imminent British activity to the neighborhood towns. On April 7th 1775, suspecting military activity, he was sent, by one of his friends, Joseph Warren, to warn the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Concord, of the impending danger and the suspicion that the British troops were coming to confiscate the ammunition from the revolutionaries in Concord. After receiving the warning, Concord residents duly began moving the military supplies away from the town.
11 days after, on the afternoon of April 18, 1775, a young boy who worked at a livery stable in Boston overheard one British army officer say to another something about “hell to pay tomorrow.” The stable boy ran with the news to Boston’s North End to the home of Paul Revere. Revere listened gravely; this was not the first rumor to come his way that day. Earlier, he had been told of an unusual number of British officers gathered on Boston’s Long Wharf, talking in low tones. British crewmen had been spotted scurrying about in the boats tethered beneath the HMS Somersetand the HMS Hoyne in Boston Harbor. Several other sailors were seen on shore that morning, running what appeared to be last-minute errands. As the afternoon wore on, Revere and his close friend Joseph Warren became more and more convinced that the British were about to make the major move that had long been rumored — to march to the town of Lexington, northwest of Boston, to arrest the colonial leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams, and then on to the town of Concord to seize the stores of guns and ammunition that some of the local colonial militia had stored there.
At ten o’clock that night, Warren and Revere met. They decided they had to warn the communities surrounding Boston that the British were on their way, so that local militia could be roused to meet them. Revere was spirited across Boston Harbor to the ferry landing at Charlestown. He jumped on a horse and began his “midnight ride” to Lexington. In two hours, he covered thirteen miles. In every town he passed through along the way — Charlestown, Mcdford, North Cambridge, Menotomy — he knocked on doors and spread the word, telling local colonial leaders of the oncoming British, and telling them to spread the word to others. Church bells started ringing. Drums started beating. The news spread like a virus as those informed by Paul Revere sent out riders of their own, until alarms were going off throughout the entire region. The word was in Lincoln, Massachusetts, by one A.M., in Sudbury by three, in Andover, forty miles northwest of Boston, by five A.M., and by nine in the morning had reached as far west as Ashby, near Worcester. When the British finally began their march toward Lexington on the morning of the nineteenth, their foray into the countryside was met — to their utter astonishment— with organized and fierce resistance. In Concord that day, the British were confronted and soundly beaten by the colonial militia.
There were other men too, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, who were assigned the task to spread the message to the neighborhood about the attack. But Paul Revere was a “connector”, i.e., he knew a lot of people in the neighboring towns, and he knew as to whom the message must be conveyed so that its effect would be widespread and every citizen would know of it till dawn. The other two didn’t convey the message properly and effectively. And that’s why Paul Revere is considered to be the pioneer, the man who successfully and efficiently implemented the sole purpose of the midnight ride.
After the British were bitterly disgraced in Concord, they sought to take revenge of the attack. With additional military and improved ammunition, they attacked the major cities in the colonies. Common people too, now wholeheartedly supported the revolutionaries and took up arms against the British. The war was fought for almost a year and a half, till Americans gained what they wanted – Liberty, Freedom and Enfranchisement.
Among the stalwartly presence of leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to name a few, the contributions of Paul Revere were forgotten for some years. But in 1861, over 40 years after Revere’s death, a poet of the name of Henry Longfellow made the famous ride the subject of his poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” and truly acknowledged the contributions of the man to the American Independence. The poem starts as:
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…
Since then, the Midnight Ride has become a part of curriculum for the subject of American history in schools in America. Truly, American Independence wouldn’t have been achieved if not for Revere and his horse, galloping in the darkest hours of the night, waking up the folks, warning them about the grave danger, and mutinying people to take up arms against the colonists, defend themselves to fight for their rights, which they were entitled to, by birth and most importantly, planting seeds of nationalism in them, which within a year and a half, became a colossal tree in the form of the American Independence Movement and bore the fruit called “The United States of America”.
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