For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

The weekend just passed has been packed with reminders of the series of incredible events that happened in America 250 years ago in April, 1775, sparking one of the great revolutions in history that would not just see the overthrow of a governing power and bloodshed, but the birth of new freedoms that had not been acknowledged in government before.

The quote above is from the famous poem written by Henry Longfellow in 1860 as America was on the edge of plunging into the worst war in its history. Longfellow, like most Americans, was fearful of what would happen to his nation, but as an ardent abolitionist he saw a fight coming that could not be avoided and he wanted to strengthen American spirits by calling to their past. The poem was first published in the January 1861, issue of The Atlantic and was once required reading for American school children.

In fact there was more than one messenger on the night of Tuesday, April 18, 1775 delivering the alarm that British troops were coming. Paul Revere, William Dawes, Samuel Prescott and others all galloped to warn Sam Adams and other Patriot leaders, as well as volunteer militia, that the British soldiers were coming to seize both them and their weapons. The next day, the militia were ready and waiting when the Redcoats arrived.

That militia included people like Samuel Whittemore, then 80 years old. who had been in the military in his younger days – the British Army – as he served in King George’s War (1744-1748) and possibly (he would have then been in his 60’s) also in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). What he did on April 19, 1775 still astounds:

In the afternoon of April 19th, the 78-year-old Whittemore was tending his fields in Menotomy when he spotted a column of British soldiers heading west[—]this was the relief force under command of Earl Percy. As the story goes, Whittemore armed up with his musket, two dueling pistols, and a sword. From behind a stone wall (the tactic of the day), Whittemore fired and killed one grenadier of the 47th Regiment of Foot, fired a second round and killed another, and mortally wounded a third before his position was overrun. Whittemore was bayoneted multiple times and even shot in the face, left in a pool of his own blood.

Incredibly the tough old bastard survived, lived to see America gain her independence, before finally dying in 1793.

As to the why’s and how’s of the American Revolution starting, there are countless books and articles that delve back decades before the events of the early 1770’s, but this article – Echoes of Lexington and Concord – is a good history that focuses specifically on Massachusetts, since it was the first colony to rebel:

To put the question in its starkest terms, what persuaded thousands of Massachusetts farmers to risk their own lives, and the lives and security of their families and communities, by silently protesting and then violently attacking the incursion into their rural world of several hundred heavily armed and highly trained soldiers who were commanded by a King and Parliament that these same farmers had long accepted as their own legitimate government?

The article asks three questions that address that larger one and I’ll give the potted answers here but, as usual, I strongly urge you to read it all. One thing the article does not point out is that about one third of Americans were in support of the British (many would flee to Canada after 1781), while another third were indifferent. Nevertheless, the third that were strongly opposed to British control still added up to substantial numbers of men.

First, how did many thousands of British North Americans come to believe that they had a right to stage an armed rebellion against a government that they had regarded as legitimate since their youth, and to which many had even pledged their loyalty with pride and defended as provincial soldiers in Britain’s wars with France?

Because such rebellion had been part of that British system, although a lot of Englishmen seemed to have forgotten the lessons of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, as well as Magna Carta, their civil wars, the execution of their King, the rise of Cromwell and an elected parliament, and the expulsion of another King – with taxation often at the heart of the matter. The resulting government was replicated in Britain’s North American colonies and there were any number of thinkers in America who reached back further in time than most Englishmen to the lessons of government (good and bad) from Greece and Rome.

Second, why did these convictions—the right to rebellion, and finally the absolute rightness of rebellion in 1775—become stronger in Massachusetts than in any other British North American colony?

Massachusetts was founded by religious dissenters, did not even submit to royal authority until 1691, received in turn a charter that gave it an unusual degree of autonomy, had one of the two largest legislative assemblies in America, the largest and most independent governor’s council and the fewest British-born officials of any colony. As a result they had an exceptionally confident and assertive political culture that didn’t take kindly to being told what to do on taxes or anything else by far-off Britain, starting with the Stamp Act crisis in 1765 and escalating every year from then.

Third, why did so many colonists, first in Massachusetts and then in nearly all these colonies, become convinced that they could rebel successfully against Great Britain, commonly regarded in the late eighteenth century as the strongest imperial nation in the world?

Because all those experiences over the previous decade led to their conviction that they were in the right, which emboldened them in their cause. In addition a lot of them had combat experience fighting for the British in the French and Indian Wars a decade or more earlier, and as they counted up their numbers they realised they could put tens of thousands of men into the field, in an extensive interior territory that would be hostile to the British Army in every respect (food, shelter, supply). Add to this the challenge the British faced in supporting that Army in those circumstances across the Atlantic – though not beyond the Royal Navy’s abilities of course it would be difficult to sustain if the war raged for a long time (which it did).

All that added up to the idea that the Americans could win such a fight, and while they certainly underestimated their own abilities in supplying an army – which cost them on many occasions – the bottom line was exactly that; the fight would be more expensive for the British than for the Patriots.