{"id":10260,"date":"2015-04-18T20:55:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T20:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=10260"},"modified":"2015-04-18T21:00:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T21:00:13","slug":"regulars-coming-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/regulars-coming-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Regulars Coming Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul
\n(Radical Activist and silversmith Paul Revere. Portrait by John Singleton Copley)<\/p>\n

It is a grand day in Washington, with multiple events happening downtown as disparate as Earth Day (huge concert on the Mall) and the tightly-buttoned IMF\/World Bank Spring Meetings.<\/p>\n

There have been some anniversaries of momentous events over the last couple weeks. I think associating a particular date with an event on the calendar helps us to imagine it- bring life from dust- by comparing the weather now as it might have been then. The feel of the breeze against skin, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Actually, anniversaries mean nothing except we like round numbers. Interest in the epic poems of the past has waned for the most part. We are too busy playing \u201cAngry Birds\u201d on our hand-held devices, or increasingly on our wrist computers. I am going to subject you to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow\u2019s epic poem since we have another round number today. It is the 240th anniversary of Paul Revere\u2019s grand adventure, and the outbreak of open warfare in the British North American colonies.<\/p>\n

Revere was still alive when Longfellow was a boy, and the poet lived (and died) in Cambridge, so the memories were still fresh.<\/p>\n

Paul Revere was an interesting man. He was, by turns, an expert silversmith, father of 16 kids by two wives, early industrialist, soldier and political radical. He was an engraver, propagandist and occasional dentist, too. His greatest contribution to the nation might have been inventing the process to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as anti-fouling sheathing for naval vessels, a technology that is used today to produce Revere Cookware. But of course, Longfellow made him famous for the ride, and that is what we go with.<\/p>\n

It certainly beats being remembered for the disastrous 1779 Penobscot Expedition, an amphibious assault conducted by a Colonial 44-ship flotilla with 1,000 Marines and militiamen against British fortifications on the coast of Maine. The Brits had renamed the territory \u201cNew Ireland\u201d for the occasion, and the result of three weeks of fighting was one of the biggest victories of the war for the King\u2019s men. It was also the most humiliating defeat the American Navy would suffer until Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n

Paul Revere was a light Colonel in the deployment, commanding a hundred militiamen, but he was exonerated of responsibility in the ensuing investigation, and Longfellow (and history) had pretty much succeeded in forgetting about the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Boston is a great town on foot, and I enjoyed living there briefly a couple times. I have visited one of the houses where he lived in Boston, viewed the historic Old North Church and traced the route of part of the ride to Lexington and Concord. It is hard not to imagine men concealing themselves behind the stone walls, and popping off rounds at the Red Coats with their muskets.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s set the scene. Tensions in the Bay Colony were high. In response to the insolence displayed to the King\u2019s lawful direction, troops had been dispatched to the Massachusetts Colony, and residents were afraid the Red Coats might take action to disarm them and arrest their leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock. Between 2100 and 2200 on the night of April 18, 1775, Physician and Sons of Liberty leader Joseph Warren got the \u201cOne if by land, two if by sea\u201d signal from the lights placed in the window of the steeple of the Old North Church. He saw two. Warren told Revere and co-conspirator William Dawes that the King’s troops were about to embark in boats from Boston up the Charles River to Cambridge. Disembarking there, they would march to Lexington and Concord.<\/p>\n

Warren believed that the munitions stored at the latter village were safe, but that Adams and Hancock had to be warned in Lexington. He dispatched Revere and Dawes to warn them and to alert colonial militias in nearby towns. The ride would trigger the “alarm and muster” system that had been carefully developed months before after the British forces successfully confiscated stores of gunpowder from the radials. This system was an improved version of an old network of widespread notification and fast deployment of local militia forces in times of emergency that dated to the times of strife with local Indians.<\/p>\n

Revere started by crossing the Charles River by rowboat, slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset in the process. He landed in Charlestown and rode through the hamlets of Somerville, Medford and Arlington (as we know them now), avoiding a British patrol and shouting the news to each house along the way. The radicals in Charlestown also sent riders to the north. By the end of the night, there were as many as forty riders spreading the alarm in Middlesex County.<\/p>\n

According to people who ought to know this, the words that Revere shouted were \u201cThe Regulars are coming out!\u201d
\n\ufffc
\n\"Paul<\/p>\n

Revere got to Lexington around midnight, with Dawes a half hour behind. They conferred by candlelight with Adams and Hancock about the intent of the British troops. The force was estimated at more than five hundred men, and seemed excessive for a mission to arrest just two men, disobedient rabble-rousers though they might be. Perhaps instead they intended to seize military supplies stock-piled in Concord after all. The word needed to get there. Dawes and Revere mounted up and were joined by Doctor Samuel Prescott, who happened to be in Lexington \u201creturning from a lady friend\u2019s house at the awkward hour\u201d of 0100. They rode toward Concord, but were stopped by a patrol of the King\u2019s men at the village of Lincoln.<\/p>\n

Prescott jumped his steed over a fence and got away to spread the warning. Dawes eluded the soldiers but was dismounted and failed to complete the ride. Revere was busted, and his mount was seized. The British forced him to accompany them on foot as they advanced, but released him when shots were heard ahead.<\/p>\n

The militiamen were waiting. In addition to express riders fanning out across the County, bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires, and trumpets were used for rapid communication from town to town, notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages that they should muster their militias to respond to the body of British troops. The system was so effective that villages 25 miles from Cambridge were aware of what was coming before the Regulars could even disembark from their boats.<\/p>\n

The alarm raised by the three riders successfully allowed the militia to confront the British troops in Concord, and then harry them all the way back to Boston. North America was never going to be quite the same ever again.<\/p>\n

Paul Revere’s Ride<\/p>\n

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
\n\"longfellow-041815\"
\n(H. W. Longfellow, 1807-1882)<\/p>\n

Listen my children and you shall hear
\nOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
\nOn the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
\nHardly a man is now alive
\nWho remembers that famous day and year.<\/p>\n

He said to his friend, “If the British march
\nBy land or sea from the town to-night,
\nHang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
\nOf the North Church tower as a signal light,–
\nOne if by land, and two if by sea;<\/p>\n

And I on the opposite shore will be,
\nReady to ride and spread the alarm
\nThrough every Middlesex village and farm,
\nFor the country folk to be up and to arm.”
\nThen he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
\nSilently rowed to the Charlestown shore,<\/p>\n

Just as the moon rose over the bay,
\nWhere swinging wide at her moorings lay
\nThe Somerset, British man-of-war;
\nA phantom ship, with each mast and spar
\nAcross the moon like a prison bar,
\nAnd a huge black hulk, that was magnified
\nBy its own reflection in the tide.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
\nWanders and watches, with eager ears,
\nTill in the silence around him he hears
\nThe muster of men at the barrack door,
\nThe sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
\nAnd the measured tread of the grenadiers,
\nMarching down to their boats on the shore.
\nThen he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
\nBy the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
\nTo the belfry chamber overhead,<\/p>\n

And startled the pigeons from their perch
\nOn the sombre rafters, that round him made
\nMasses and moving shapes of shade,–
\nBy the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
\nTo the highest window in the wall,
\nWhere he paused to listen and look down
\nA moment on the roofs of the town
\nAnd the moonlight flowing over all.<\/p>\n

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
\nIn their night encampment on the hill,
\nWrapped in silence so deep and still
\nThat he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
\nThe watchful night-wind, as it went
\nCreeping along from tent to tent,
\nAnd seeming to whisper, “All is well!”<\/p>\n

A moment only he feels the spell
\nOf the place and the hour, and the secret dread
\nOf the lonely belfry and the dead;
\nFor suddenly all his thoughts are bent
\nOn a shadowy something far away,
\nWhere the river widens to meet the bay,–
\nA line of black that bends and floats
\nOn the rising tide like a bridge of boats.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
\nBooted and spurred, with a heavy stride
\nOn the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
\nNow he patted his horse’s side,
\nNow he gazed at the landscape far and near,
\nThen, impetuous, stamped the earth,
\nAnd turned and tightened his saddle girth;
\nBut mostly he watched with eager search
\nThe belfry tower of the Old North Church,<\/p>\n

As it rose above the graves on the hill,
\nLonely and spectral and sombre and still.
\nAnd lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
\nA glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
\nHe springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
\nBut lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
\nA second lamp in the belfry burns.
\nA hurry of hoofs in a village street,
\nA shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,<\/p>\n

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
\nStruck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
\nThat was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
\nThe fate of a nation was riding that night;
\nAnd the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
\nKindled the land into flame with its heat.
\nHe has left the village and mounted the steep,
\nAnd beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
\nIs the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
\nAnd under the alders that skirt its edge,
\nNow soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
\nIs heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.<\/p>\n

It was twelve by the village clock
\nWhen he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
\nHe heard the crowing of the cock,
\nAnd the barking of the farmer’s dog,
\nAnd felt the damp of the river fog,
\nThat rises after the sun goes down.
\nIt was one by the village clock,
\nWhen he galloped into Lexington.<\/p>\n

He saw the gilded weathercock
\nSwim in the moonlight as he passed,
\nAnd the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
\nGaze at him with a spectral glare,
\nAs if they already stood aghast
\nAt the bloody work they would look upon.
\nIt was two by the village clock,
\nWhen he came to the bridge in Concord town.
\nHe heard the bleating of the flock,
\nAnd the twitter of birds among the trees,
\nAnd felt the breath of the morning breeze
\nBlowing over the meadow brown.<\/p>\n

And one was safe and asleep in his bed
\nWho at the bridge would be first to fall,
\nWho that day would be lying dead,
\nPierced by a British musket ball.
\nYou know the rest. In the books you have read
\nHow the British Regulars fired and fled,—
\nHow the farmers gave them ball for ball,
\nFrom behind each fence and farmyard wall,
\nChasing the redcoats down the lane,
\nThen crossing the fields to emerge again
\nUnder the trees at the turn of the road,
\nAnd only pausing to fire and load.<\/p>\n

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
\nAnd so through the night went his cry of alarm
\nTo every Middlesex village and farm,—
\nA cry of defiance, and not of fear,
\nA voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
\nAnd a word that shall echo for evermore!
\nFor, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
\nThrough all our history, to the last,
\nIn the hour of darkness and peril and need,
\nThe people will waken and listen to hear
\nThe hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
\nAnd the midnight message of Paul Revere<\/p>\n

\"statue-041815\"
\n(This Paul Revere Statue in Boston\u2019s historic North End. Cast by Cyrus Dallin, it was unveiled on Prince Spaghetti Day September 22, 1940. Just kidding, but I best someone was boiling noodles not far away. Image Wikipedia).<\/p>\n

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
\nPoem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- rights reserved.
\nwww.vicsocotra.com
\nTwitter: @jayare303<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Radical Activist and silversmith Paul Revere. Portrait by John Singleton Copley) It is a grand day in Washington, with multiple events happening downtown as disparate as Earth Day (huge concert on the Mall) and the tightly-buttoned IMF\/World Bank Spring Meetings. There have been some anniversaries of momentous events over the last couple weeks. I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10267,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions\/10267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}