PASSAGE
One version of what happened that day in April was made famous 75 years later, in 1861, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (left) published "Paul Revere's Ride" in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. The poem immortalized the feats of one particular Bostonian on the eve of the American Revolution. Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, wrote Longfellow. In April 1775, Revere said to a 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."

In Longfellow's telling, Revere waited on the opposite shore, Ready to ride and spread the alarm/Through every Middlesex village and farm/For the country folk to be up and to arm. The signal came -- two lights. Revere sprang into action on his horse, fearless and fleet. The fate of a nation was riding that night;/And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,/Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

The Paul Revere of Longfellow's poem spread the word to the communities outside of Boston. And so through the night went his cry of alarm/To every Middlesex village and far.../ A Cry of defiance, and not of fear. Revere reached the towns of Lexington and Concord after midnight. "Through all our history, to the last," wrote Longfellow, "In the hour of darkness and peril and need, /The people will waken and listen to hear...the midnight message of Paul Revere."

**The Truth Comes Out**

As it turns out, Longfellow's poem contained a good deal of fiction. Paul Revere, the son of a French immigrant and a prominent Boston silversmith, was not the single hero of Longfellow's imagination. Paul Revere's ride "was truly a collective effort," Revere's recent biographer, David Hackett Fischer, tells us. Revere "would be very much surprised by his modern image as the lone rider of the Revolution." Not only did many other messengers travel by horse to warn neighboring towns, Revere's actual assignment had been to warn two prominent colonists -- Samuel Adams and John Hancock -- that the British military was on its way. Further, after successfully warning Adams and Hancock, Revere was temporarily taken prisoner by the British. (He then escaped.)

The Battle of Concord and Lexington that followed the ride of the many messengers was the beginning of the American War for Independence. Longfellow may have created the legend of Paul Revere, but the credit for alerting the colonists to the coming of British troops deserves to be shared by the many colonists who risked their lives on that night -- and on many that followed.

QUESTION
How have personal opinions and beliefs shaped the myth of Paul Revere's ride?