THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407010406
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JEFFREY H. RICHARDS
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE
DAVID HACKETT FISCHER
Oxford University Press. 445 pp. $27.50.
AS JULY 4 approaches, many Americans look forward to the one true national holiday; few, I would guess, think in terms of the specific individuals involved in the American Revolution. Fireworks displays - an 18th century form of celebration for Independence Day - still draw crowds; perhaps an orator or two will yet mount stage or stump to invoke the Founding Parents; but trips to the mall, the beach, the pigpickin', the outdoor concert, none attended for any greater purpose than personal or familial indulgence, will probably capture most people's interest. And anyway, celebrating the exploits of the old dead white guys like Paul Revere is just not cool.
None of this deters historian David Hackett Fischer. In one of the best recent books on the Revolution, Fischer takes what might be the most famous episode from the war and carefully sifts accumulating legend from a substantial body of fact heretofore little recognized about the famous ``midnight ride.''
Those of us old enough to have been inculturated with the Revolutionary heroes may think, however, that we remember a lot about the ride Paul Revere took on the night of April 18-19, 1775. He looked for the lantern code, ``One if by land and two if by sea''; he rode, with one or two others, whose names we forget, shouting, ``The British are coming, the British are coming''; and he inspired the stalwarts in Lexington and Concord to steel themselves for ``the shot heard round the world.'' Some time after this event, he must have returned to his silversmithing business and died.
The true story is much better than that. According to Fischer, Revere was not simply a one-night phenomenon, but an organizer of a communications network that reached past Concord, carrying north and south and west. He rode not alone, but as a part of a large number of people, many still anonymous, who carried the message that the British Regulars were on the way. He was captured, and though known already as a troublemaker from earlier rides, talked his way out of arrest; and while the Lexington fight was brewing, Revere (who personally never made it to Concord) was busy carrying a box of incriminating documents across the green to the woods before the shooting started. In short, from early in the Anglo-American conflict he was a busy man, fully connected to a group of associates and one who never would have separated his actions from those of others not quite as daring or as involved.
As exciting as Fischer makes the ride, he does as well with other personalities and events. Without succumbing to Tory apologetics, as many post-Revolutionary historians did, Fischer looks with understanding on the plight of the British officers and soldiers charged with suppressing the rebellion in Massachusetts. Centered in all this is Gen. Thomas Gage, a man of liberal sympathies who found his good will toward Americans steadily eroded by the widespread hostility to British policy in Boston.
Another prominent figure is Lord Percy, who saved the original mission from being completely destroyed by the American militia. Fischer's point is that all were English; but the gap between Massachusetts farmers, who wanted to run their own affairs, and the British Regulars, trained to regard their opponents as colonial rabble, could not have been greater.
There is no better account of the battles of Lexington and Concord and certainly no more accurate version of Paul Revere's ride than Fischer's. But his book provokes thought beyond antiquarian interest in past deeds. The author fully intends to offer an old hero as a new one, and the struggles that April day 219 years ago as events still worth celebrating in themselves. Rather than rely on myth to affirm Revere and the others, Fischer lets eyewitness accounts, memoirs and some good detective work do the job instead. As long as we are busy taking fresh looks at long-neglected people and groups in American history, there is no reason why we should not also rediscover Paul Revere. MEMO: Jeffrey H. Richards is an English professor at Old Dominion University
who specializes in 18th century American literature. by CNB