Paul Revere's Ride (88 page)

42
. “A Letter from a Gentleman of Rank in New England April 25, 1775,” (London)
Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle,
June 17—21, 1775.

43
. Isaiah Thomas,
The History of Printing in America,
2 vols. (1810, 1874; New York, 1970), x, I, 168—69; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain 1764-1776
(New York, 1958), 236-37.

44
. Peter Edes, “Diary Kept in Boston Gaol,” June 19, 1775, MHS.

45
. Frank Luther Mott, “The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington and Concord,”
NEQ
(1944), 489-504.

46
. Emerson,
Diaries and Letters,
61, 76.

47
. On April 24, 1775, Jonas Clarke wrote in his Lexington diary, “committee taking depositions concerning the fatal action at Lexington,” Jonas Clarke Diary, MHS.

48
. Robert S. Rantoul, “The Cruise of the ‘Quero’: How We Carried the News to the King,”
EIHC
36 (1900): 5—13; Cary,
Joseph Warren,
191.

49
. Gage’s courier Lieutenant Nunn did his best. He left
Sukey
twelve leagues at sea, boarded a faster vessel, landed at Portland, and raced to London, but the damage had been done. Gage was sharply reprimanded and instructed not to use a merchant ship for his dispatches, but one of the “light vessels” of the Royal Navy. See Dartmouth to Gage, June 10, 1775, CO5/92, PRO Kew; for the impact of the news in London, see Fred J. Hinkhouse,
The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as Seen in the English Press, 1763-1775
(1926, New York, 1969), 183-97.

50
. Hutchinson,
Diary,
I, 454—63;
London Packet,
June 7,1775; Hinkhouse,
Preliminaries of the American Revolution,
188. Some accounts have represented British opinion as hostile to the American cause. This was true of Parliament, the Universities, the Church of England, and fashionable London, but not of the nation at large.

51
. Lord George Germain to John Irwin, May 30, 1775, add ms. 42666, BL.

52
. Suffolk to Germain, June 15, 1775; Germain to Suffolk, June 15, 1775, add. ms. 42266, BL.

53
.
AA4,
II, 786; copies of this resolution were quickly sent to London; see ADM1/293, PRO, Kew.

54
. Gage to Dartmouth, May 13, 1775,
Gage Correspondence,
I, 398.

55
. Gage to Colden, May 4, 1775,
Golden Papers, 1765-1775,
VII, 291.

56
.
Ibid.

57
.
Boston News-Letter,
April 20, 1775; Mott, “The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington and Concord,” 493-94; Schlesinger,
Prelude to Independence,
233.

58
. Gage to Dartmouth, May 13, 1775,
Gage Correspondence,
I, 398.

59
. Thomas Gage to Cadwallader Colden, April 29, May 4, 1775,
Colden Papers,
VII, 283-91.

60
.
John Adams,
Diary and Autobiography,
ed. Lyman Butterfield, 4 vols. (1961; New York, 1964), III, 314.

61
. David Freeman Hawke,
Paine
(New York, 1974), 20, 29, 32, 35; Thomas Paine,
Common Sense
ed. Nelson F. Adkins (1776; New York, 1953), 27.

62
. Washington to George William Fairfax, May 31, 1775, Fitzpatrick (ed.),
Writings of George Washington,
III, 291—92.

63
. Wheeler,
Concord,
131.

17.
Epilogue

1
. “Return of Officers, Noncommissioned Officers and Privates killed and wounded of His Majesty’s Troops at the Attack of the Redoubts and Entrenchments on the Heights of Charlestown, June 17,1775,” WO1/2/241—42; Muster Rolls of the 23rd Foot or Royal Welch Fusiliers, Jan. 24, 1775, Sept. 24, 1775, WO 12/3960.

These data correct estimates in Harold Murdock, “The Myth of the Royal Welch Fusiliers,” in
Bunker Hill; Notes and Queries on a Famous Battle
(Boston, 1927), 142—43; and Ralph Ketchum,
Decisive Day, the Battle for Bunker Hill
(New York, 1962; rpt. 1974), 190. In general, pay lists and muster rolls understate casualties in these battles as many wounded men continued to be listed as “effectives” and others returned to active duty before the next roster was compiled in September. Most seriously wounded men were described as “sick,” and officers were recorded as on “King’s leave.”

2
. “Return of Officers, Noncommissioned Officers and Privates killed and wounded of His Majesty’s Troops at the Attack of the Redoubts and Entrenchments on the Heights of Charlestown, June 17, 1775,” WO1/2/241-42; Muster Rolls of the 4th Foot, Jan. 15, 1775, Sept. 14, 1775; WO12/2194, PRO.

For the use of the “ten eldest compys” of grenadiers and light infantry, that is, the ten regiments with the lowest numbers on the army list, see Barker,
British in Boston,
60. The attrition of these units may be observed in Muster Rolls of W012/2194, 2289, 2750, 3960, 5171, 5561, 5871, 6240, 6786, PRO, Kew; also “Present State of His Majesty’s Forces at Boston,” July 21, 1775, Haldimand Papers, add. ms 21687, BL.

3
. Harold Murdock,
The Nineteenth of April, 1775
(Boston, 1925), 30, 35-38; Ezra Stiles,
Literary Diary,
I, 604; Samuel Adams Drake,
Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston
(1872; rev. ed., 1906, rpt. Rutland, Vt., 1971), 217.

4
. General Sir Martin Hunter,
Journal
(Edinburgh, 1894), 15; Frothingham,
Siege of Boston,
310; French,
First Year of the American Revolution,
670;
A List of the Officers of His Majesty’s Marine Forces
… (London, 1777), PRO; ADM 192/2;
Army List
(London, 1775), 180; (1781), 292; (1782), 292; (1783), appendix, 15; (1784), appendix, 12; (1785), 361.

5
. Mackenzie,
Diary,
I, 49; French,
First Year of the American Revolution,
660; Ketchum,
Bunker Hill,
217.

6
. General Sir Martin Hunter,
Journal
(Edinburgh, 1894).

7
. Marjorie Hubbell Gibson,
H.M.S. Somerset, 1746—1778; The Life and Times of an Eighteenth Century Man-o-War and Her Impact on North America
(Cotuit, Mass., 1992).

8
. Hudson,
Lexington,
94-96.

9
. Wheeler,
Concord,
135.

10
.
Ibid.,
113; Hudson,
Lexington,
142-43.

11
. Wheeler,
Concord.
115.

12
.
Ibid.,
228.

13
. Robert Newman Sheets,
Robert Newman; His Life and Letters in Celebration of the Bicentennial of His Showing of Two Lanterns in Christ Church, Boston, April 18,1775
(Denver: Newman Family Society, 1975), 13.

14
. Church’s intercepted letter is in the George Washington Papers, LC.

15
. Ulysses P. Hedrick,
Cyclopedia of Hardy Fruits
(New York, 1922), 17.

16
.
Memoirs of the Social Circle in Concord,
second series, 78.

17
.
Samuel Flagg Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
(New York, 1965), 6.

18
.
Annual Register
(1775), 157; French,
First Year of the American Revolution,
324.

19
. Revere to Lamb, April 5, 1777, Goss,
Revere,
I, 279-81.

20
. The Penobscot Expedition was the low point of his career. The American commanders were unable to act decisively, and unwilling to withdraw. Revere urged repeatedly that the mission be abandoned. Overruled, he decided to take his men home, and was accused of insubordination and cowardice. A court-martial (convened at his request) cleared his name in 1782. Many of the of relevant documents are reprinted in C. B. Kevitt,
General Solomon Lovell and the Penobscot Expedition
(Weymouth, Mass., 1976), and Goss,
Revere,
II, 317—97.

21
. Skerry, “The Revolutionary Revere,” 58.

22
. Revere to Dr. Lettsom, Dec. 3, 1791, RFP, MHS.

23
. Forbes,
Revere,
388.

24
. Renee L. Ernay, “The Revere Furnace, 1787-1800,” unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1989.

25
. Paul Revere to Thomas Ramsden, Aug. 4, 1804, RFP, MHS.

26
. Hurd,
Middlesex County,
II, 283.

27
. Wayland’s bell appears in Edward and Evelyn Stickney,
The Bells of Paul Revere
(Bedford, 1976), 18. There can be no doubt about its authenticity. The original bill and receipt, dated Oct. 24, 1814, is in the Wayland Historical Society: “bo’t of Paul Revere and Son a Church Bell $509.50; credit by the old bell, $43.75; $465.75 received payment Paul Revere and son.” I owe this document to the kindness of Elizabeth Garside Goeselt, curator of the Wayland Historical Society.

Historiography

1
. (New York)
Weekly Gazette and Mercury,
May 1775.

2
. Ann Hulton to Mrs. Adam Lightbody, n.d. [April 1775]; Harold Murdock
et al.
(eds.),
Letters of a Loyalist Lady
(Cambridge, Mass., 1927), 77. The letter is undated, but from internal evidence (“the 18th inst”) was written before the end of April.

3
. William Gordon, “An Account of the Commencement of Hostilities Between Great Britain and America, in the Province of Massachusetts-Bay. By the Reverend Mr. William Gordon of Roxbury, in a letter to a Gentleman in England, dated May 17, 1775.” This essay was published in the (Philadelphia)
Pennsylvania Gazette,
June 1775; and reprinted in
AA4,
II, 626—31. Gordon later published
The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America,
4 vols. (London, 1788). The first American edition of this work was issued in three volumes at New York in 1789. Gordon mentioned Revere by name, and referred specifically to having interviewed him.

4
. Joshua B. Fowle to Samuel H. Newman, July 28, 1875, in Wheildon,
Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns,
34—35.

5
. The second draft of the deposition was reproduced in facsimile by E. H. Goss in his
The Life of Colonel Paul Revere,
2 vols. (Boston, 1891), I, 214-20. Members of the Revere family donated the second draft to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1956, and added the rough draft in i960. They were published with Revere’s letter to Belknap by the MHS in Edmund S. Morgan (ed.),
Paul Revere’s Three Accounts of His Famous Ride
(Boston, 1961).

6
. Ralph Earl, “Four Different Views of the Battle of Lexington, Concord, etc.,” engraved by Amos Doolittle (New Haven, 1775), and advertised for sale in the
Connecticut Journal,
Dec. 13, 1775. A similar interpretation appears in another drawing for John W. Barber’s
History of New Haven.
This pattern was first observed by Harold Murdock in
The Nineteenth of April,
1775 (Boston, 1925), 3—9; at least one early illustration does not fit this frame, but in general Murdock’s interpretation appears correct. A facsimile edition,
“Famous Doolittle Prints of Concord and Lexington, April 19, 1775” (Concord, Minute Man Printing Corporation, n.d.), is available at Minute Man National Historical Park, Concord.

7
. Pamela Brown Fiske, narrative, in Kehoe, “We Were There!” I, 270. Pamela Fiske’s grandfather, Francis Brown, mustered on the morning of April 19, fought through the day, and was severely wounded during the afternoon in the granite field at the Lincoln line by a British musket ball that entered his cheek and lodged in the back of his neck. The bullet was removed in 1776 and he succeeded Parker as captain of the Lexington militia.

Pamela Fiske, at the age of ninety-four, recalled that as a little girl she was taught to trace the history of the Revolution with her fingertip, on the wound scars that her grandfather wore as proudly as a decoration. “I used to put my finger on these scars as he told me just how the ball went,” she remembered,
ca.
1894. The memory is so vivid, and told with such sincerity, that one thinks it must have been true. I was very sorry to discover in the genealogical records that Francis Brown died April 21, 1800, and Pamela was born on July 29 of the same year—a caution to uncritical users of grandfathers’ tales. Cf. Hudson,
Lexington,
genealogical appendix, 29.

8
. Wheildon,
History of Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns.

9
. A manuscript copy of the poem is in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Much poetry was inspired by the ride. John Pierpont composed a six-page epic for the dedication of Acton’s revolutionary monument:

… the foremost Paul Revere