Paul O’Connor tells us of a new book about an old story, one we’ve probably heard many times before. But, as he discovered, there’s more to the story than the famous poem tells us.
Reviewed by Paul T. O’Connor
THE RIDE: PAUL REVERE AND THE NIGHT THAT SAVED AMERICA. By Kostya Kennedy. St. Martin’s Press 261 pages. $29, hardcover.
It’s hard to imagine an American child making it through elementary school without having read or heard Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.”
As secession was brewing in the South, Longfellow wrote the poem in hopes of rekindling a sense of liberty and unity in the country. While that didn’t work, it certainly made Revere a hero to generations of Americans to come.
But who was Paul Revere besides a good horseman who rode through the villages north of Boston on April 18, 1775, screaming that the British were coming?
It is to answer that question and to emphasize the importance of Revere’s famous ride that Kostya Kennedy wrote The Ride. It’s an entertaining, well-written and fast-moving story of a man who did much in the American revolution and after but who is known for little more than his few hours of fame, and maybe for being a master silversmith.
The Ride is not an academic history, nor is it even the kind of exhaustive popular history produced by American historians Steven Ambrose and David McCullough. It’s a story written by a journalist that is designed to teach and entertain. It does both.
Revere came from common stock, and he built a comfortable life through his craft and from taking extra work, such as long-haul horse rides to deliver news from and between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and New England colonies.
He was knee deep in the patriot cause when word reached Boston’s rebel leaders that the British, under Gen. Thomas Gage, planned to march north from Boston in the early morning of April 18 and seize militia arms and ammo depots in Lexington and Concord. If they could also seize rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock. that would be a bonus.
Rebel leaders learned of the march, quite possibly from Gage’s American wife, and made plans to warn the neighbors of the approaching British. It is here that Kennedy corrects two minor errors in Longfellow’s poem. First, Revere did not row himself across the Charles River. He lay in the bottom of a row boat that two others propelled. Second, he never saw the two lights that shone for about one minute from the steeple of the Old North Church.
“One if by land, two if by sea,” was a back-up measure patriots designed to alert other riders on the river’s north shore that the British were embarking on their crossing.
Longfellow, by highlighting Revere, is widely considered to have slighted those other riders who headed off to various towns and villages, especially William Dawes, who also left from Boston that night, but via land only. Dawes fooled British sentries who were guarding the town’s exits by playing drunk.
But Dawes, like the lights in the steeple, was never the primary plan for the warning. Revere was. And Kennedy argues that it was Revere who deserved the greatest praise because it was Revere who rallied the most minutemen to action, a mobilization that led to the great American victory over the redcoats at Lexington and then along the long road back to Boston.
Dawes and the other riders deserve to be remembered in our history, but Kennedy makes clear that the first star of the night was Revere.
If I have one criticism of the book it is that Kennedy tries too hard to explain why Revere’s ride was so important. Once for sure. Twice, OK. But we get it. He doesn’t have to keep explaining.
That aside, The Ride is a fun read about a patriot who risked his life for his country.