Paul Revere's Ride, David Hackett Fischer

The dis-oriented author is a history buff. I of course knew many of the lines from Henry Wordswoth Longfellow's famous poem. David Hacket Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride transformed my image for Paul Revere from a 2-dimensional caricature to a 3-dimensional figure who played an important role in the founding of our nation.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Like most Americans my knowledge of Paul Revere comes mostly from the famous Longfellow poem:

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.
. . .

I know that the Longfellow poem paints an overly romanticized view of Paul Revere and the events of that day. The poem was written in 1860 to stir up patriotism in a country on the verge of civil war. The poem pictures Revere as a lone rider awakening the countryside and single handedly bringing the militia to the field at Lexington and Concord. Longfellow gives  Revere both too much and too little credit.

Fischer's book describes Paul Revere and the world in which he lived. As everyone knows Revere was a  silversmith, he was not an educated man of letters. He was however, well connected with the various societies and guilds in British Boston.

Revere's midnight ride was not the first time he carried a revolutionary message. He had made several rides to carry messages to the various Committees of Correspondence in the other colonies.

While Revere was not one of the philosophers of the Revolution, he was one of the actors. There was a midnight ride. Revere was one of the riders. And while he did not do it alone, he was instrumental in setting up the network that brought out the militias to the battles at Lexington and Concord.

The British governor, General Gage was a whig and concerned with the rule of law. He refused to arrest the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Boston. Fischer notes that among those he considered leaders of the nascent revolutionary movement were Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.

This book covers the battles of Lexington and Concord in great detail. Fisher describes the British retreat to Boston. The book continues through the British withdrawal from Boston after Henry Knox's expedition to capture the guns of Fort Ticonderoga.

This is an important book for any student of American history.

Paul Revere's Ride gets 5 of 5 dis-oriented smileys

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