BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Ride’ reveals the real Paul Revere behind the midnight myth | Books

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BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Ride’ reveals the real Paul Revere behind the midnight myth | Books — 6824f1499a98f.preview.jpg

Call it the best branding to happen in the last 250 years.

Paul Revere has lived rent-free in the American collective consciousness since his fateful journey on the night of April 18, 1775. Or, at least since his midnight ride was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem. But how much do we really know about one of Massachusetts’ best-known patriots?

You may know him as a silversmith and a leader in the American Revolution, but did you know he also was a dentist? Or that he later made church bells? Or that he served as a second lieutenant in the provincial army during the French and Indian War?

Some 250 years later, most Americans only know of Revere as the man who sounded the alarm that the British were coming — and even that isn’t correct. Revere actually called out, “The Regulars are coming out.” (The colonists were British citizens.) Kostya Kennedy details this and more in “The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America.”

And while Revere’s historic ride is the focus of Kennedy’s work, the more interesting parts of his story (and the book) happen before and after the ride — his role in the Penobscot Bay disaster, his career as one of the country’s best-known bell casters and — often noted as his greatest achievement — being the first American (in 1800) to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.

So how did Revere happen to be in the position to send out the alarm that fateful night? It all comes down to an intersection of politics and business. Revere had seven children to feed and was not opposed to taking on jobs outside the family business to pay the bills. Luckily, his political interests provided an avenue to raise additional funds. One of the best Post Road riders employed by the Committee of Correspondence, Revere took as many jobs as he could and never failed to bill for his time. His side hustle paid him well, but his dedication to the cause made him a trusted emissary.

However, the reach of Revere’s patriotism wasn’t well known outside of certain circles until Longfellow’s poem. Interestingly, it was not the first written about the midnight ride. Sixty years before Longfellow, Ebenezer Stiles wrote the poem, “Story of the Battle of Concord and Lexington and Revere’s Ride Twenty Years Ago.” Stiles based his poem on Revere’s own account of the events, written in 1798, for the fledgling Massachusetts Historical Society. Like Longfellow, Stiles embellished Revere’s ride, stretching it all the way to Concord Green.

But what about the other riders — William Dawes, Israel Bissell and Samuel Prescott? Where do they fall into this story? (Sybil Ludington, 16, did not ride of this night. Known at the female Paul Revere, she sounded a similar alarm on April 26, 1777, helping her father, Col. Ludington, gather his disbanded troops.)

“With Revere as their progenitor, mounted messengers would over the next hours course across Middlesex County and into Essex County and Norfolk County, into the counties of Bristol and Worcester … Even then, many of the riders were shrouded in mystery and concealment, few of them wanting their names to be known, to be attached to a treason they could be hanged for,” Kennedy writes.

Dawes is perhaps the best known of the other riders because his family has kept his legacy alive. Dawes, who took the longer route out of Boston, arrived in Lexington about a half-hour after Revere. Dawes and Prescott escaped the British in Lexington, but it was only Prescott who made it on to Concord. Dawes was thrown from his horse and walked back to Lexington.

And what of Bissell, a long celebrated Berkshire patriot and post rider, whose identity has come into question in recent years? Kennedy handles the question of Bissell’s identity with grace, noting it could be the 23-year-old Watertown resident who would later come to reside in Hinsdale, his father, Israel Bissell Sr., or an Isaac Bissell who also was paid for rider services in April. What is known is a Bissell did ride, did spread the word of the British arriving and attacking.

“He drew notice wherever he came through. To the locals, he was sometimes nameless or was sometimes, in the messages that passed from place to place, called Trail or Train or Isaac. [A nod to copied documents left in communities being signed with different first names in front of Bissell].”

The truth has been lost to time, Kennedy says, noting “tales and conjectures would unfold in kitchens and taverns and meeting houses” adding to the legend of how far and fast Bissell rode. What’s important, he says, is that Revere and Dawes and many other riders bravely rode out into the darkness knowing they were carrying messages that could change their future.

“The Ride” is a great look at how important a single individual can be in the shaping of the future of an entire nation. It’s also a great introduction to the early events of the American Revolution as our country celebrates its 250th anniversary.