How a Maine poet turned Paul Revere into a hero for the ages

Yahoo

18-04-2025

Apr. 18—Andrew Pal can't tell you how the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" goes, but he's quite clear on how it made him feel.
"As I kid, I just remember it as something that inspired," said Pal, 71, a retired radio advertising executive from Windham. "It's a critical part of our history. It's something that you've got to know."
Revere's famous ride on the night of April 18, 1775, warning Massachusetts colonists of advancing British soldiers, has become an enduring part of our country's history, a symbol of bravery and heroism from the earliest days of the American Revolution. Its 250th anniversary is being celebrated at events around the country this weekend.
But if not for Maine poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, writing some 85 years after Revere's ride, most Americans would likely know very little about the Boston silversmith or his mission. His poem about Revere's ride was meant as a call for unity and action among abolitionists on the eve of the Civil War. Longfellow picked Revere over William Dawes, Samuel Prescott or a dozen or so other riders who carried out similar warning missions that night, on the eve of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
In doing so, Longfellow got himself a great opening rhyme —"Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere" — and secured Revere's place in the collective national memory.
"When Revere died (in 1818), there's no mention of his ride in his obituary, or in his eulogy," said Tom Putnam, a former director of the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, who lives in Kennebunkport. "During his lifetime, it was somewhat suppressed. It wasn't what he was known for."
Longfellow was arguably the most popular poet of his day, at a time when poetry had the same sort of pop culture influence that TikTok and Netflix have today. His poem lived on long after the Civil War was over, recited by school children and made into songs. The opening number of the 1950s Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls," about lovable gamblers, features the rhyme: "I got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere."
The poem created such mythology around Revere that he's often remembered as an important actor in the American Revolution, alongside others from Massachusetts who played much bigger roles, like John Adams, Samuel Adams or John Hancock. More than 250,000 visitors annually journey to Revere's house, a major tourist attraction in Boston's North End.
On a recent Thursday afternoon a half dozen people walking or sitting near the Longfellow statue on Congress Street in Portland said they had heard of Revere. Some knew a couple of lines from the poem, including "One, if by land, and two, if by sea." House painter Rodney Nason of North Yarmouth, sipping a cup of coffee, said he remembered hearing about Revere in school, but didn't think he knew the poem. But when given a few lines from it, he said it rang a bell.
"I know he was a very popular poet, so the poem probably really helped spread the folklore about Revere," said Nason, 50, who himself writes poetry. "It's sort of like if Paul Revere showed up as a topic on (the HBO series) 'The White Lotus' and everybody started talking about him."
Kitty Gilbert, a nurse practitioner who lives near the Longfellow statue, said she remembers learning about Revere and the poem when she was a youngster. She didn't remember any lines, but remembered the story pretty vividly.
"I know it was about his ride, going through towns and alerting people that the British were on their way," said Gilbert, 63, a native of Washington, D.C. "And that was important because it was at the start of the Revolution."
SEEKING A UNIFYING SYMBOL
Longfellow lived much of his adult life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and so was familiar with Revolutionary War history around Boston, Putnam said. In 1842 he had taken British author Charles Dickens on a tour of the city's historic sites, including the Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung on the night of April 18, 1775. Years later, as an ardent abolitionist, he decided to write a poem with Revere as the hero. He thought the heroism shown at our country's birth would unify people about the country's future.
"Longfellow wrote it as a way of reminding people what it felt like to come together during the American Revolution in a bid to instill that unified spirit as the country was pulling apart over slavery, " said Larissa Vigue Picard, executive director of the Pejepscot History Center in Brunswick, where Longfellow attended and taught at Bowdoin College. "The depiction of this lone rider, even though he wasn't the only one, feels very superhero-like. I think that's one reason it has staying power. We are pulled in by the drama of the moment and this heroic person who's out to save us all from the encroaching enemy."
During the Revolution, the enemy was the British, said Picard, while at the start of the Civil War it was, in Longfellow's view, the South or anyone trying to dissolve the Union. Longfellow finished "Paul Revere's Ride" in October 1860 and it was published nationally in the January 1861 issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. The magazine arrived in Boston on Dec. 20, 1860, Putnam said, the very day that South Carolina seceded from the Union.
Revere was a prominent Boston citizen during Colonial times and into the early days of the United States, a noted silversmith whose work is collected in museums around the country. He was a businessman who supplied copper sheeting for American Navy ships, said Nina Zannieri, executive director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, which runs the Paul Revere House in Boston. He was also an accomplished horseman who had been asked several times before to deliver important news from Boston to other colonies, as tension between colonists and the British were escalating.
But would he have been so well-known nationally if not for Longfellow?
"We kiddingly say we don't need to hire a marketing person because we have Henry," said Zannieri. ""The downside of the poem for us is that it sort of makes Revere a disembodied hero. It sort of obscures all the other things that are important about him."
On April 18, 1775, Boston had already seen several years of skirmishes and tension between British soldiers and colonists, including the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. At that point, Boston leaders had learned the British army was planning to raid stockpiles of guns and ammunition in the Boston area.
Militias and local leaders knew of this plan and set up a network of riders to warn people in those locations as the British approached. Revere took a boat across the Charles River to Charlestown and then rode north to Medford, where other riders were waiting to bring warnings to towns north of Boston. He then continued on to Lexington, where he was captured and briefly held by the British, before being released.
Dawes had ridden through Cambridge to points west of Boston, while Prescott rode to towns even further west of the city. Historians estimate there may have been a dozen riders who helped spread the word of British attacks that night, but most of their names have been lost over time.
There were lanterns hung in the Old North Church tower, as Longfellow mentions, but they weren't there to let Revere and other riders know which way the British were coming, said Tiffany Link, collections curator at the Maine Historical Society. They were more of a back-up plan, a way to let people in nearby towns know the British route in case Revere or other riders couldn't get out of Boston.
Revere's ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord are the basis for celebrating Patriot's Day in Maine each year — Maine was part of the colony of Massachusetts at the time. Both states have celebrated the day for more than 100 years, and in the past decade or so a few other states, including Connecticut and North Dakota, have followed suit.
But Maine uses the spelling Patriot's Day, as if to denote one patriot, while in Massachusetts, it's Patriots' Day. So one might surmise the patriot in question is Revere. Or it could be Longfellow, whose poem has helped instill a sense of patriotism in people since 1860.
Either way, the two men are connected, and continue to help expand each other's legacy.
"When people visit his childhood home, we ask if they're a fan of Longfellow or his poetry," said Kathleen Neumann, curator of education and public programs at the Maine Historical Society, which manages the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street. "The answer is often no, or non-committal. But if we mention Paul Revere, that's when we get recognition. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's not a huge stretch to say that what Longfellow did for Revere a 150 years ago is like what Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of the Broadway musical 'Hamilton') has done for Alexander Hamilton today."
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