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.”

The poem was Longfellow’s embodiment of Revere as the courage and determination of the ordinary citizens in the Revolutionary War. Overall, Paul Revere was just a cog in an elaborate warning system.

In 1774 and 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Paul Revere as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

On the eve...