paul revere's ride...the eighteenth of april in seventy-five

Another nod to National Poetry Month and now 249 years later...

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch

Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—

One if by land, and two if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country-folk to be up and to arm....”

Paul Revere's ride occurred on the night of April 18, 1775, immediately before the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War. It has been commemorated in a range of cultural depictions, most notably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride", which has shaped popular memory of the event, despite its factual inaccuracies.

Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church and climbing its tower on April 5, 1860. "Paul Revere's Ride" was published in the January 1861 issue of “The Atlantic” magazine. Just before its publication, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the United States and the American Civil War began on April 12, 1861. America’s Revolutionary war ended in 1783. Just 78 years had passed from the war that created the United States to the war that divided the United States.