Listen My Children and You Shall Hear

In December 1860, as the United States stared at the prospect of Civil War, one of her greatest poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, put pen to paper to retell a tale of one of the events that had forged the nation. Dismayed at the prospect of his great country being torn apart, Longfellow set out to make a hero out of a minor character in the Revolution by the name of Paul Revere in order to remind his fellow citizens of their noble past.

Revere was a silversmith who lived in Boston. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty and had participated in the Boston Tea Party. Around midnight on April 18, 1775, he took his horse in a small boat across Boston Harbor to Charles Town. Secrecy was paramount as British patrols roamed the streets. The word was out, there would be a troop movement, but where and when? While Revere waited a fellow patriot climbed the steps to the steeple of the Old North Church. Finally a messenger, sneaking stealthily through the streets arrived. The movement was this night.

One if by land, and two if by sea. Revere stood by watching when out of the darkness a lantern light shown in the steeple tower. And then a second. The British were about to cross over to Charles Town and invade the interior looking to destroy a cache of arms, and to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Revere leaped to the back of his steed and spurred the animal on. The fate of a nation rode that night.

Longfellow's poem brought national attention to Paul Revere, but he wasn't the only rider on the roads that night. Billy Dawes risked riding through the blockade at the neck of the Boston isthmus, and when the two riders met at Lexington, a third joined them, Dr. Samuel Prescott. As they continued on to Concord a British patrol blocked the road capturing Revere. Dawes turned to flee, but his horse stumbled and he escaped on foot. Prescott leaped a stone wall and rode on to Concord to warn the colonists.

By morning eighty Minutemen, led by Captain Jonas Parker, stood on the Lexington Green, a triangular shaped park in the center of the town, and faced 700 British Regulars. The British opened fire and eight militia men fell dead, and ten others were wounded.

The Regulars pressed on to Concord town where another poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, immortalized the bridge in his poem, The Concord Hymn. By the rude bridge that arched the flood their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world. The ever growing militiaman army turned the Regulars back and chased them all the way to Boston. By the end of the day 73 British troops had been killed with 174 more wounded. The patriots lost 49 killed, and 39 more wounded.

It's a story that stirs the heart. What brave and bold men our Founders were who risked everything for freedom. Unafraid of the consequences and willing to give their all, a ragtag army of colonial militiamen went on to defeat the greatest army in the world. What an example to spur us on in our own day to cry out a warning against the enemies who would deprive us of our liberties.

Paul Revere was virtually unknown after the Revolution. He had served on the Penobscot Expedition in the war with Longfellow's maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth. Young Henry probably heard the story many times. Revere was a family friend as well as a family man, having eight children with his first wife, and after her death, remarrying and having eight more. But for Longfellow's poem Revere would probably be forgotten, and what a shame that would have been.

At a time when our history is being denigrated by our phony leadership it is good to remember that there were and are heroes. There were great men and women who suffered and sacrificed for a cause greater than themselves, and there are many serving in our military today doing the same. We often think of our Founding Fathers as the great statesmen that they were, and rightfully so. Paul Revere, however, was not a politician, not an eloquent speaker or writer. He was simply an everyday man who loved his country and became an integral part of the events that built a nation out of a wilderness. He was a hero, and a great American patriot.