Ideals and Realities
Many think Paul Revere made his famous ride alone.
What is the reality?
Dr. Joseph Warren of Boston’s Committee of Correspondence assigned Revere and William Dawes to ride from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn of the advance of the British soldiers in 1775. Dawes’ particular mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Along the way, the two men enlisted Dr. Samuel Prescott in their mission. Revere is perhaps most famous for the ride because of the 1861 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which begins with these memorable lines:
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.