#180 Sidebar: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere 1: The Prelude

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

April 18, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s “Midnight Ride” to alarm the towns around Boston that the “Regulars” were marching out to capture artillery and ammunition at Concord, or perhaps to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock. This was but the last of a series of crises that rocked New England in the months before the midnight ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord the next day. This episode explores those crises, known as the “Powder Alarms,” and Paul Revere’s central role in the resistance movement among Boston Whigs – including the famous Sons of Liberty – during those fraught years before the shooting began.

[Errata: I implied that Dr. Benjamin Church’s betrayal of the Patriot cause wouldn’t be understood “for years,” but in fact it was uncovered during the summer of 1775, after the shooting had begun, when one of his letters to the British was intercepted. He was permitted to leave the country in lieu of imprisonment, and sailed for the West Indies. His ship disappeared at sea and Church was never seen again.]

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride

Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride”

Intolerable Acts

Thomas Gage

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 180.
0:10.8	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we're recording this episode on April 14, 2025 in New Orleans.
0:18.9	This episode's a sidebar, which is our term for an episode that's off the timeline of
0:24.1	the history of the Americans, as this one obviously is.
0:29.1	Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
0:35.4	On the 18th of April and 75, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous
0:43.3	day and year. So begins Paul Revere's ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. First published on the eve of the Civil War in the January 1861 issue
0:57.9	of the Atlantic Monthly. It was a time when American school children learned that poem,
1:05.0	and were often commanded to memorize it. If any of those older Americans are still alive and still compass menace,
1:13.5	they are no doubt well aware, even without the benefit of my Twitter feed, that Friday,
1:20.5	April 18th, 2025, four days from now, is the 250th anniversary of that fateful night.
1:30.1	I'm going to celebrate by putting two lights in the highest window of my house that evening.
1:35.6	If you listen to this episode by Friday night, consider doing the same,
1:41.0	especially if you have children around who should hear the story.
1:46.1	And please send me a picture at The History of the Americans at gmail.com. Longfellow is a descendant of one of the Massachusetts
1:54.3	militiamen who sent the British regulars fleeing back to Boston from Lexington and Concord the next day.
2:02.0	That is also a famous story, but I'm going to let other podcasters have a go at.
2:07.0	That is many have already done.
2:10.2	One mustn't rely on Longfellow for the history of the night, with the nature of Paul Revere,
2:16.7	with the scope of his achievement.
2:19.2	There are errors of history in it, or if you prefer, poetic license.
2:24.5	But Paul Revere's ride became so immensely popular that it shaped the American legend,
	...

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