The ride itself, I mean, not the poem. What I’m finding out, reading about both things, is that Longfellow was inspired to write about the American Revolution in 1860, when the USA was on the brink of civil war. This wasn’t the first time he tried to romanticize American history (Hiawatha, Miles Standish), but knowing this, I can see parallels with the Gettysburg Address.
“Hardly a man is now alive” – because it had been eighty-five years (or four score and five!). “The fate of a nation was riding that night” – so do we really want to split that nation, before we’ve even reached the century mark? Anyway, it’s worth reading. Compelling, even if not 100% historically accurate.
And now I’m flashing back to the Bicentennial, and all that hoopla. I was only six years old, but IIRC, things started ramping up in 1975, because there were significant events, such as Lexington and Concord, that happened in 1775. I daresay the Bicentennial hype was largely driven by an urge to counteract Watergate’s effect on national pride. What especially saddens me is knowing that the ::googles:: semiquincentennial or bisesquicentennial will probably not be a thing. Partly because those words don’t sell soap the way Bicentennial did, but mainly because the way things are now, any celebration that involves American flags and Founding Fathers and the Declaration and Bill of Rights is likely to turn into a brawl.
Anyway, on a lighter note, “Listen, my children, don’t crack your jaws/When I tell of the ride of William Dawes.” He was the other midnight rider; Revere didn’t cover all that ground on his own.
Could be worse, could be William Dawes. He’s also the ancestor of Coolidge’s Veep, Charles G. Dawes. He also shared a Nobel Peace Prize for, wait for it, the Dawes plan for sorting out German WWI reparations once and for all. (Yeah, about that.)
Some bank is running a commercial referencing this…and the first time I saw the commercial I realized I wasn’t completely sure if the message was one lantern or two!
Shockingly, I did my elementary schooling in Concord MA AND for a couple of years I lived in a pre-Revolutionary War house directly on Paul Revere’s route (a couple of ;miles down from the “Little Women” house and a few more miles from the “rude bridge that arched the flood”) and yet nobody had emphasized what the message was exactly enough to have made an impression on me! Land or sea? Beats me.
According to Wikipedia, history itself has mostly forgotten Samuel Prescott. A perfect opportunity to write some time travel fiction about dropping in, doing some riding and yelling, and then disappearing again.
Details relating to Prescott’s life after the ride are scant and inconclusive. According to historian D. Michael Ryan, a record of a “Dr. Sall Prescott” serving as a surgeon at Fort Ticonderoga in 1776 has led many historians to conclude that Prescott served the Continental Army in a medical capacity. A Revolutionary War veteran from Ashburnham, Massachusetts, recorded in his memoir that he had been imprisoned by the British in a prison in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a Dr. Prescott. According to this account, Prescott died in prison in 1777. Although corroborating evidence that this was Dr. Samuel Prescott of Concord is lacking, these details are most often accepted as fact.
I was in Charlestown last night. I missed all the hoopla of the reenactment, but found a few guys playing music on a boat in the marina. I always kinda wondered if you really could see two separate lights in the church steeple from that distance. Now I know; yes, you can.
