Paul Revere's Ride (23 page)

Self-portrait of Captain William Glanville Evelyn, commander of No. 7 company, 4th (King’s Own) Foot. Evelyn marched with Percy’s Brigade to the relief of Smith’s force, and was in the thick of the fighting from Lexington to Charlestown. ~e’survived that day unscathed, but six weeks after inscribing this portrait to his mother he was mortally wounded at a small skirmish in Westchester County, New York. He was thirty-four years old. Evelyn left his estate to Peggie Wright, his servant who was with him in Boston. (Author’s Collection)

The leaders of the British expedition were increasingly concerned. They had been driving their men, hoping to make up the vital hours that had been lost in the Cambridge marshes. The column made remarkable time—a mile every sixteen minutes, a rapid clip for a night march in close order on a dark and muddy road. An officer noted that the pace was “hasty and fatiguing.”
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But their commander was not pleased with their progress. Colonel Francis Smith was by nature a worrying sort of man. He worried about the late start and the early dawn that was now only a few hours away. Most of all, he worried about the bridges at Concord. What if the New England militia reached the bridges first? He might have to fight the “peasants” as he called them, or retreat as Colonel Leslie had done at Salem.

As the main body of the column moved into the village of Menotomy, Smith’s worries got the better of him. He halted his command, gave the men a short rest, and summoned his second-in-command, Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines. Pitcairn was ordered to take the six leading companies of light infantry and advance at the quick march to Concord. There he was told to seize the bridges north and south of the town, and hold them until the grenadiers came up.

Pitcairn set off instantly, leading his six light companies at a rapid rate. To set the pace, he put one of his best men at the head of the column—Lieutenant Jesse Adair, a hard-charging young Marine who could be trusted to keep the column moving.
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With Adair in the van was a New England Tory named Daniel Murray, who had graduated from Harvard only three years before. He often tramped the roads between the college in Cambridge and his home in Worcester County, where his prominent family was much hated for their Loyalist sympathies; later his three brothers would take up arms for King and Empire. Also at the head of the column were several unattached officers: Lieutenant William Sutherland of the 38th Foot and Surgeon’s Mate Simms of the 43rd Foot. Behind them came an advance party of eight light infantrymen, among them Private James Marr of the King’s Own, a Scot whose speech carried a strong Aberdeen burr.

The hour was now near 4 a.m. Suddenly, the quiet of the night was broken by the heavy sound of hoofbeats from the west. In the vanguard of Pitcairn’s advance force, Adair whispered to Lieutenant Sutherland and the Tory guide Daniel Murray, “Here are two fellows, galloping express to alarm the country!” As the horsemen approached, Sutherland leaped out of the shadows and seized the bridle of one horse while Murray grabbed the other. Both riders were turned out of their saddles, and their horses were taken by the officers. The captives were Asahel Porter and Josiah Richardson of Woburn. They were made to march with the column on pain of death.
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The Regulars became highly skilled at the art of snaring Yankees
on the road. Two light infantrymen were posted well ahead in the shadows on either side of the highway. When a rider approached they allowed him to pass, then rose and closed upon him from the rear while others stopped him from the front. Two and a half miles east of Lexington the British vanguard captured an angry young man named Simon Winship. He was returning to his father’s house, “peaceable and unarmed,” and was ordered to dismount. At four o’clock in the morning he gave the Regulars a defiant lecture on liberty, demanding to know by what right they had stopped him in the public road. At gunpoint, he was pulled off his horse and put with the other prisoners.
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The column met more horsemen. It began to hear signal guns and alarm bells ahead and even behind. Colonel Smith halted the grenadiers, and ordered an aide to ride back to Boston with a message that surprise had been lost and reinforcements might be necessary. The British courier galloped away into the night. The column resumed its long march, moving deeper into the dark and hostile countryside.

A British Patrol Takes Paul Revere, and Is Taken by Him

After they had taken Revere, they brought him within half a rod of me, and I heard him speak up with energy to them.”

—Elijah Sanderson, Deposition, December 17, 1824

WHILE THE BRITISH COLUMN was beginning its march through Cambridge, Paul Revere and William Dawes traveled out of Lexington on their second mission of the night. As they headed west toward Concord, they were overtaken on the road by a handsome young country gentleman, splendidly mounted and elegantly dressed. He introduced himself as Doctor Samuel Prescott, a physician of Concord.

Young Doctor Prescott had other things on his mind than politics or war that night. He had been in Lexington courting Miss Lydia Mulliken, a young woman much celebrated in Middlesex County for her grace and beauty. Many a hopeful swain had beaten a path to the Mulliken door, but Miss Lydia had pledged herself to Doctor Prescott, and they had agreed to be married.

It was about one o’clock in the morning when Doctor Prescott said farewell to his fiancee and started home to Concord. He met Paul Revere and William Dawes, and rode along beside them. They found the congenial young doctor to be a “high son of liberty,” and explained their mission to him. He instantly offered to help alarm the countryside.
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Paul Revere proposed a plan. As always he was thinking several steps ahead, and preparing for the worst case. He told Dawes
and Prescott about the roving British patrols, and warned them that they might expect to be captured. “I told them of the ten officers that Mr. Devens met,” he wrote later, “and that it was probable we might be stopped before we got to Concord … I likewise mentioned that we had better alarm all the inhabitants till we got to Concord.”
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The others accepted his plan. Revere remembered that “the young doctor much approved of it, and said, he would stop with either of us, for the people between that [place] and Concord knew him, and would give the more credit to what we said,” The three riders decided to alarm every house, taking turns from one farmstead to the next. Knowing that British patrols were abroad in the night, they urged others to help spread the warning. Working together, they made rapid progress through the western part of Lexington.

Two miles beyond Lexington Green, they entered the town of Lincoln, a new community that had been created only twenty years before. Paul Revere reckoned they had come “about half way from Lexington to Concord.” Here the Great Road curved westward through open fields and pastures, interspersed with patches of swamp and woodland.
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Very near the boundary between Lincoln and Lexington, the road ran past a little cluster of farmsteads, three or four of them, a few hundred feet apart. Each house was set only a few feet from the north edge of the highway, facing south toward the warmth of the sun, according to the Yankee custom. All were occupied by families called Nelson. This pattern of settlement was typical of old New England. It was the custom for sons to settle close to their fathers’ land, while the daughters moved away. As a consequence, many town centers in Massachusetts were surrounded by small hamlets of households with the same surname.
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As the riders approached the Nelson farms, Dawes and Prescott left the road to awaken a family while Revere rode several hundred yards ahead, perhaps intending to stop at the next farm.
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Suddenly in the bright moonlight he saw two horsemen lurking under a tree, “in nearly the same situation as those officers were, near Charlestown.” Revere turned in his saddle and shouted a warning to his companions. They came riding up to him. Revere instantly proposed to attack, saying “There are two, and we will have them.” Dr. Prescott turned the butt end of his riding whip and gamely prepared to give battle.
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As they advanced, the two horsemen suddenly multiplied into
four British Regulars in full regimentals, with swords and pistols in their hands. One shouted, “God damn you! Stop! If you go an inch further you are a dead man!”
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The New England men spurred their horses forward, trying to force a passage. “We attempted to git through them,” Revere wrote, “but they kept before us.” The ambush site had been chosen with cunning. Revere remembered that the shoulders of the narrow road “inclined each way,” and left little room for maneuver. The armed British officers herded them at pistol-point toward a pasture north of the Great Road. The bars across the entrance to the pasture had been taken down. The officers “swore if we did not turn into that pasture they would blow our brains out.”
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The New England men left the highway, with the British officers hovering about their flanks and rear. As they entered the pasture, Doctor Prescott saw an opportunity. He turned to Paul Revere who was riding beside him, and whispered urgently in the old Yankee dialect, “Put on!” Both men dug their heels into their horses’ sides and galloped for their lives. Prescott turned left, jumped a low stone wall, and disappeared on a dark and narrow path that ran through woods and swamps. Several British officers gave chase, but Prescott knew the countryside, and his horse was strong and fresh. He vanished into the night.
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When Prescott turned left, Paul Revere headed to the right toward a tree line at the bottom of the pasture, hoping to escape into the woods. His splendid animal was very tired, but responded nobly to urgent command. Revere surged ahead of his captors. But just as he reached the trees, six more horsemen suddenly appeared. Now ten British Regulars surrounded him. They pointed their pistols at his heart, seized his bridle, tore his reins from his grasp, and held him firmly in their grasp.

In that moment of confusion, William Dawes got away. When the officers went after Revere and Prescott, Dawes turned back into the highway. He tried to confuse his captors by shouting “Halloo, my boys, I’ve got two of ’em!” As the officers went after Revere, Dawes galloped away in the opposite direction, to what appeared to be the safety of a nearby farm. As he approached the house in the darkness, his horse took fright and stopped so abruptly that Dawes pitched forward, out of his seat. He tumbled to the ground, losing his watch, his horse, and what remained of his composure. His frightened animal ran away, with empty stirrups banging crazily on the long leathers that were then in use.

The dark house that Dawes took to be a place of refuge turned
out to be an abandoned building, perhaps inhabited by wild animals that had frightened his horse. Badly shaken, William Dawes decided that enough was enough. He went limping back toward Lexington in the moonlight, keeping in the shadows and out of sight.
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Meanwhile the British Regulars gathered around their prisoner. They were angry men. Ten of the King’s officers had failed to snare two out of three suspicious countrymen who had ridden straight into their trap. They turned their hostility toward the one who remained in their hands. Revere was ordered to dismount. Some of the Regulars began to abuse him.

Suddenly another officer intervened. Paul Revere thought him “much of a gentleman.” The officer addressed his captive as a gentleman too, with the elaborate courtesy of that distant age.

“Sir,” the British officer said politely, “may I crave your name?”

“My name is Revere,” the captive answered.

“What?” the officer exclaimed in surprise, “Paul Revere!”

“Yes,” came the reply.
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Paul Revere was well known to these British officers. They began to talk among themselves with high excitement, then angrily turned back toward their captive. “The others abused me much,” Paul Revere remembered, but their leader continued to treat him correctly. “He told me not to be afraid; they should not hurt me.”
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