Demonic (22 page)

The spark that ignited the first battles of the Revolution was the news that British troops—who were under constant surveillance by Paul Revere and others—were on the move, planning to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock that night in Lexington.

Luckily, the Minutemen had planned ahead and were not lunatics running around in a burst of manic energy guillotining people, like the
French. Because the Minutemen had been watching and waiting, they knew exactly what the British were up to. Indeed, Paul Revere knew more about the Redcoats’ plans that night than the British soldiers themselves did.

Although most Whig leaders had fled Boston to avoid arrest, a few remained, including Doctor Joseph Warren. Through his confidential source—probably the American wife of British general Thomas Gage—Warren confirmed the British plans to arrest the two revolutionary leaders. By prearrangement, Warren contacted Paul Revere.
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Warren had already sent two other messengers to warn Adams and Hancock. One was William Dawes; the other is unknown to history. All three men took different routes to Lexington in order to increase the odds that at least one of them would make it. (Why? Yes, that is correct: because they had planned ahead.)

Fearing that none of them would make it past the British across the Charles River out of Boston, Revere had arranged with the sexton of a Boston church to signal the countryside with lanterns in the steeple window. The British were going by sea, so the sexton sneaked past the British regulars in Boston, climbed the 154 steps of the Anglican Christ Church—whose minister was a Loyalist—and held two lanterns outside the steeple window. The Charlestown Whigs, waiting and watching, saw the brief flicker of two lights in the distance and knew the British were leaving by boat. They sprang to action, preparing to receive Revere and provide him with a horse.
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It is precisely this advance preparation that is celebrated in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea.”
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By contrast, the French Revolutionary ditty “It Shall Be” includes the line “Take the aristocrats to the lantern and hang them.”

Every detail of Paul Revere’s ride had been meticulously arranged with scores of other American patriots. Even the horse Revere rode, Brown Beauty, had been carefully chosen by the Whigs as the best horse for the job. And indeed, Brown Beauty was so sure-footed, she allowed Revere to escape his first British ambush that night.

Revere alerted Whig leaders in towns all along his ride, setting off a chain of communication to the Minutemen throughout the countryside. The town leaders—doctors, lawyers, and ministers—spread the
alarm with bells, drums, cannon, and musket fire. “The astonishing speed of this communication,” historian David Hackett Fischer writes, “did not occur by accident. It was the result of careful preparation.”
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At around midnight, Revere arrived at the house where Adams and Hancock were staying and was promptly rebuffed by the Lexington militiaman standing guard, who told Revere to stop making so much noise or he’d wake up everyone. “Noise?” Revere replied. “You’ll have noise enough before long! The Regulars are coming!”
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With Adams and Hancock awake, and Dawes arriving half an hour later, the men went to a tavern to talk things over with the Lexington militia. (The third man, whoever he was, never arrived.) Wondering why the British were mobilizing so many troops for a simple arrest, they soon realized the British were planning to seize the Americans’ artillery in Concord that night, too.

Once again, Revere and Dawes mounted their horses and took off for Concord, planning to wake up the surrounding towns. They immediately ran into a young, wealthy doctor from Concord, Samuel Prescott. A “high son of liberty,” Prescott offered to ride with them, since he knew the terrain and he knew the people.
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Halfway to Concord, they ran into some Redcoats. Outnumbered, they insanely tried to bolt past the Regulars. The British didn’t shoot, but didn’t let Revere’s group pass either, shouting, “God damn you! Stop! If you go an inch further, you are a dead man!”
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They were taken prisoner and brought to join other American prisoners captured that night. While being led off the path, Prescott and Revere spurred their horses, taking off in different directions. Revere’s route took him straight into a group of Redcoats, but by distracting their captors, he allowed Prescott to escape—across a wall and into the backwoods he knew so well. As Revere had done before him, Prescott would set off a chain of warnings to the militias in the towns all around Concord.

As the Redcoats surrounded Revere, Dawes escaped, pretending to be one of the Regulars in pursuit of a fleeing rebel—“Halloo, my boys I’ve got two of ’em!”
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He got away, but his horse soon threw him and his journey was over.

Both the Redcoats and their famous prisoner were remarkably polite
to each other, with Revere later recalling that the British officer in command was “much of a gentleman.” Surprised to have captured the well-known rebel leader Paul Revere, the British began interrogating him and were stunned by his candor.

Revere openly told them about British plans that night—of which they were unaware. Hoping to keep them away from Hancock and Adams, he warned the British soldiers that they would be killed if they went anywhere near Lexington Green, where up to five hundred militiamen were mobilizing. The other prisoners listening to Revere were astonished at how boldly he spoke to his captors. When one captain put a gun to Revere’s head and demanded that he tell the truth, an indignant Revere said he didn’t need to be threatened. “I call myself a man of truth,” he said, “and you have stopped me on the highway, and made me a prisoner I knew not by what right. I will tell the truth for I am not afraid.”
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The rattled Redcoats began to ride their prisoners toward Lexington, but when they heard gunfire on the outskirts of town, seeming to confirm Revere’s warnings of an armed militia, they released their prisoners and hurried back to Boston.
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They weren’t going to start a war without clearer orders.

Hancock and Adams were safe, the rebels’ military supplies hidden, and the British about to be amazed.
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The face-off in Lexington would not have given Americans much hope that day. British troops blew past the disorganized and outnumbered militia without much difficulty.

But Concord was a different story. By the time the British reached Concord, militias from dozens of towns had received the call and were ready for battle. The Americans punched back so hard that the British retreated all the way back to Boston. The British fought bravely, but the Americans overwhelmed them.

Shell-shocked and bleeding, Redcoats began surrendering on the trek back to Boston. An old American woman picking weeds accepted the surrender of six British soldiers that day, telling them, “If you ever live to get back, you tell King George that an old woman took six of his grenadiers prisoner.”
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(That woman, of course, was TV’s Betty White.) About a hundred British were killed in the Battle of Concord, many of
them officers, and another hundred were wounded. Only fifty Americans were killed and thirty-nine wounded.

Having seen the Minutemen fight, even Lord Percy, who had been disgusted by the Boston mobs, had a new view of the rebels. He said they had attacked “with perseverance and resolution,” adding “Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself very much mistaken.”
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If the American rebels had not planned every detail in advance—practicing, training, mapping strategies, gathering information, preparing a vast network of patriots to spread the warning, and employing endless contingency plans—the British might have crushed the incipient rebel forces on April 19, 1775. Instead, victory belonged to the Americans in the first battle of the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere’s ride is the seminal event of our Revolutionary War. It bears no resemblance to screeching washerwomen beheading guards at the Bastille.

The American Revolution was unique not only for the strategy and planning involved, but also for the explosion of literature explaining the reasons for the Revolution. Perhaps foremost among the pamphlets defending the war was Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
, in which Paine methodically addressed each of the arguments against rebellion, point by point, for all to see and critique.

In addition to Paine’s
Common Sense
, there are virtual encyclopedias of erudite, Christian sermons given on behalf of the American Revolution. Christian ministers were a crucial part of the war effort, inspiring the local militias. Before the battle of Concord, the town’s minister, William Emerson, urged on the outnumbered rebels as the Redcoats approached, saying, “Let us stand our ground. If we die, let us die here!” He slapped one terrified young soldier on the back and said, “Stand your ground, Harry! Your cause is just and God will bless you!” Harry fought bravely for the rest of the day.
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This was a revolution waged by thinkers and debaters constantly prattling about the reasons for the war. Although they were “rebels,” the Americans were very chatty about their revolution. By contrast, mob uprisings like the French Revolution are sparked by tumult, pandemonium, and violence, not thoughtful sermons and pamphlets.

There wasn’t much literature explaining the French Revolution—apart
from Paine’s hapless attempts (which would nearly lead to his beheading). The revolutionaries were too busy rushing out to desecrate Notre Dame, murder a priest, or do some other new wild thing to have the time to read or think. Bernardine Dohrn and the rest of the SDS would have fit right in with the filthy Jacobins, without even having to change clothes.

In contrast to the French, who celebrate the spontaneous emotion of their revolution—the storming of the Bastille, the storming of Versailles, the storming of the Tuileries—Americans celebrate the Minutemen’s preparedness, Paul Revere’s methodically planned ride, and the vast literature arguing America’s case, especially the specific demand for separation from the British in the Declaration of Independence.

The reason our revolution was the opposite of a directionless, violent mob running wild in the streets is that the dominant American culture was Anglo-Saxon and Christian. Even while fighting “the British,” as we now call them, Americans considered themselves British with the rights of Englishmen, who bore the tradition of the Magna Carta. In fact, one rebel explained that he was fighting the Redcoats to protect his house by saying, “An Englishman’s home is his castle.”
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They just wanted to be free of meddling from the Crown. Having been born and raised in the distant and expansive American colonies, Americans objected to the high-handed way King George was dealing with them. They didn’t hate the king—to the contrary, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton dispassionately acknowledged that the English political system was better than most others in the world.

Our revolutionary document, the Declaration of Independence, is a religious document through and through, with the colonies demanding rights entitled to them by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” As founding father James Wilson put it, the “will of God” was the supreme law of nations.
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Consequently, the Declaration cites “certain unalienable rights” given to men “by their Creator.” For the “rectitude” of their intentions, the drafters appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the world.” The Declaration reads like a legal brief, with causes of action and prior attempts at resolution enumerated, and a specific demand for relief:
We’d like to go our own way please, Supreme Judge of the World
. One can read the Declaration of Independence centuries later and understand the whole point.

Admitting that “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes,” our Declaration sets forth “a long train of abuses and usurpations” by the Crown. The purpose of the document was to explain America’s case to the world, because “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Manifestly, the French couldn’t care less that the rest of the world was appalled by them.

Stating that facts “submitted to a candid world” would prove that the king was attempting to create “an absolute Tyranny over these States,” the Declaration concisely listed abuse after abuse, including the Crown’s quartering soldiers, protecting the king’s soldiers from charges of murder, and depriving Americans “in many cases” of trial by jury. These were rights well familiar to the British, inasmuch as they came from English common law and were enjoyed by British citizens.

Significantly, among the Declaration’s enumerated grievances was that the king had encouraged mobs. As the document puts it, the king had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us,” including uprisings by “merciless Indian Savages” whose idea of warfare was “an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The Americans’ complaints were clear, as was their objective: separation from the British Crown in order to establish their own government. This was not a rash decision. As the authors explained, they had tried other approaches: “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms,” but those requests were “answered only by repeated injury.”

Fifty-two of the fifty-six signers of the American Declaration were orthodox Christians who believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or as they would be known today, “an extremist Fundamentalist hate group.”
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