On April 18, 1775--two hundred and fifty years ago tonight--Paul Revere made his historic horseback ride, from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts.
He was instructed by Joseph Warren, a leader of the Patriots in Boston, to travel to both Lexington and Concord.
William Dawes, a Colonial soldier, was also sent to Lexington and Concord. Dawes and Revere's mission, in Lexington, was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were staying at a Lexington house, of the approach of British troops. Revere and Dawes took separate routes to Lexington. Revere arrived first, and was later joined by Dawes. They delivered the intended warnings to Hancock and Adams.
As a story in today's New York Times notes:
Soon after he left Lexington, around 1:30 a.m., and rode on toward Concord with [Dawes, and a doctor they encountered along the way], the danger that Revere had so far dodged caught up with him. Confronted by a British patrol about halfway to Concord, his companions escaped but Revere was captured, held and questioned. Unlikely as it seems, the soldiers let him go about an hour later, after being rattled by the sound of distant gunfire, Revere would later write.
Undaunted — but now without his [borrowed] horse, which the British had kept — Revere walked about three miles back to Lexington and rushed to complete his next assignment, rescuing a trunk full of Hancock’s papers from the Buckman Tavern, next to the town common, where the first battle of the war would soon erupt.
The opening battles of the Revolutionary War--at Lexington and then at Concord--began later that morning, April 19th.
The famous proclamation that Paul Revere is said to have made, during the course of his ride--"The British are coming!"--is evidently myth. Various accounts of his role indicate that he actually warned, during his ride, "The Regulars [the British soldiers] are coming out."
