Paul Revere’s Ride

April 16, 2026

This excerpt is from Eric Metaxas’s new book REVOLUTION: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, available for pre-order NOW!

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We now know that on April 19th, the “shot heard round the world” changed everything. But we also know that it need not have happened precisely as it did. When Lord Dartmouth on January 27th wrote to Governor Gage in Boston, he never thought his letter would trigger what we now call the American Revolution. The whole point was to end the rebellion before it could start. But just as Franklin had wittily warned in his 1766 testimony regarding the Stamp Act—when he said certain actions might end up creating a rebellion—these events would now do precisely that.

On April 14th, Thomas Gage in Boston read the letter from Lord Dartmouth instructing him “to arrest the principal actors and abettors in the Provincial Congress whose proceedings appear in every light to be acts of treason and rebellion.” The letter stressed that whatever was done must be done with the greatest secrecy. But this would not be so easy. Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, and the other Sons of Liberty had developed an extraordinary network of spies, who were keeping the closest of tabs on their would-be overseers. But Gage himself had at least one spy among the rebels. This was Dr. Benjamin Church, who had been one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, but who for some reason had recently changed sides. So in early 1775, he had begun supplying Gage with privileged information [FOOTNOTE: We know that Church was not a man of great character, if only because he was eventually caught when a coded letter he entrusted to one of his former mistresses, “a very lusty woman much pitted with smallpox,” unwisely passed it to someone who wisely passed it to Nathanael Greene.].

And April 15th, the day after Gage received Dartmouth’s instructions, Church told him of inside information that things were likely to change soon, and suggested to Gage that “a sudden blow struck now would overset all their plans.” Gage had been planning to send troops to seize the gunpowder at Concord and knew the time to act had arrived. He chose 750 of the most elite troops available to him, composed of light infantry and grenadiers [FOOTNOTE: the term grenadier originated in the 17th century, describing men strong and powerful enough to hurl heavy grenades a great distance.], who were physically the largest and most fearsome troops, both qualities of which were augmented by the tall, furred caps they wore, resembling a bishop’s mitre. But in doing this he scrambled things somewhat, since these men were not all under the commandersthey were used to. Gage obviously had no idea what lay ahead and didn’t think mixing the companies as he did would have the effect of disorder that it would on the unimaginable events of the next day.

Revere returned to Boston the same day and arranged the famous signal: if the troops marched via the land on Boston Neck, one lantern would be hung in the 191-foot steeple of the Old North Church; if they were taking boats across the Back Bay, there would be two. The idea was that the moment the troops made their move, Revere would row across the bay to Charlestown, and ride from there to warn everyone on the road to Lexington and Concord. But if he was intercepted—since the HMS Somerset, a seventy-gun man-of-war sat in the harbor—the lanterns would alert other patriots across the bay, in Charlestown, who would make the ride in his stead. As another safety precaution, William Dawes—a Boston tanner—would ride the other way, across Boston Neck. The vital thing was that at least one of the riders make it to Lexington and Concord to warn everyone to grab their guns. Just as in Salem two months earlier, the patriots only wanted to stop the British from achieving whatever aims they had and were resolutely determined not to fire unless fired upon.

Gage’s plan was for the troops to begin the journey to Concord on the night of April 18th, after dark. That morning, he sent a mounted patrol of twenty men into the countryside to intercept any messengers who might be relaying any vital information. But this only alerted everyone to the fact that something was happening. At nine thirty that night the British troops were shaken awake by their sergeants, rather than by shouted commands, so as not to alert anyone unnecessarily. Most of them hadn’t slept at all since waking up that morning and would not be sleeping again until the night of April 19th, assuming they survived the next day, which many of them would not. They then marched in the dark down to the boats at the foot of Boston Common. But Revere and the Sons of Liberty had spies everywhere, just as Longfellow tells us:

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, Paul Revere’s Ride
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

They knew that the time to make their ride had come. Revere and Dawes hustled on their separate ways. Revere got in a boat and rowed far enough downstream of the Somerset to elude detection. Once in Charlestown, he mounted “Brown Beauty”—lent to him by Charlestown Deacon John Larkin—and took off toward Lexington,  beginning his fabled ride through the dark. In no time, he was already miles ahead of the British, whose “tramping feet” wouldn’t get very far for several hours. Because there were not enough boats for the 750 troops, it took several trips for all of them to cross. And where the first troops landed across the bay was so shallow they were obliged to wade ashore and then wait for the other troops. In the end, they would not even begin their eighteen-mile march toward Concord until nearly two o’clock in the morning, after which they soon got wet again by fording another stream, ostensibly so their footfalls on a nearby wooden bridge would not alert the sleeping neighbors. Never had attempts at secrecy been less successful.

By this time, Revere had been alerting people all along his route for several hours. At one point he was nearly captured by a British patrol, but sped away just in time, reaching Lexington around midnight, where he roused Hancock and Adams. Dawes showed up soon afterward. The town’s church bells were rung, and by one o’clock in the morning, Lexington’s militia were mustered on the green: 130 of them, commanded by Captain John Parker. But since no one knew when the British troops would be passing through—in fact, they would not show up till four thirty—many of the men went to the local tavern, to warm up, drink flip, and wait [FOOTNOTE: a popular tavern drink of that era, typically combining ale or beer with rum or whiskey, as well as raw eggs and molasses or sugar, all of which is heated into a froth by the insertion into the tankard of a red-hot poker.]. Some even returned to their homes.

But it seemed clear 750 troops could not be coming simply to arrest two men, but were almost certainly headed to Concord to seize the gunpowder. So Dawes and Revere took off again, now accompanied by Dr. Samuel Prescott, whom they knew and had bumped into. About two miles from Concord, a group of British patrols intercepted the trio, and forced them into a pasture for questioning, but when Prescott whispered the words “put on” to Revere and Dawes, they blitzed away in opposite directions. Prescott escaped, leaping a stone wall to gallop to Concord, and Dawes rode to Lexington to tell Hancock and Adams. But Revere was caught, and years later wrote of it. One of the British officers, he said, “whom I afterwards found to be a Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name and told me he was going to ask me some questions, and if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out.” Revere did tell the truth. But he told it slant. He boldly told them that he and others had been abroad all that night warning the local militias and that if the British weren’t careful, they would start a war. He exaggerated the number of militia the British would find at Lexington, since one of his goals was to frighten them away from going there, where Hancock and Adams were.