Comments on: Today's History Lesson Brought to You by Paul Revere

Today's History Lesson Brought to You by Paul Revere

vito90 — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 07:35:21 -0800

Directly from the Horse Rider's Mouth... Paul Revere's personal account of his 1775 ride through the countryside relates a tale less an individual effort than a team one. via Baseball Crank

By: yhbc

yhbc — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 07:59:46 -0800

Master Revere was duly and truly prepared, worthy and well qualified. Individual efforts or no, he certainly did his part.

By: norm

norm — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 09:31:18 -0800

Beyond that, the popular mythology that this page seems to try to debunk is largely absent in modern American life. What did you know prior to reading this? "One if by land, two if by sea" definitely indicates a larger support network, and the fact that he was going to tell other Patriots also shows his role in the organization, rather than an individual effort. Frankly, it sounds like a pathetic attempt to uncover some dirt for (dare I say it) revisionist history, but in reality it just makes Revere's actions more down to earth, and in my mind, more heroic. Go Paul!

By: aacheson

aacheson — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 10:26:38 -0800

A FABULOUS book about the beginning of the Revolutionary war is Paul Rever's Ride by David Hackett Fischer. Really good book. It is truly amazing that we ended up winning the Revolutionary war. We should have lost that war 100 ways from Sunday. It's really amazing that only because of the arrogance of the British crown and army and their constant mistakes, that we won.

By: vito90

vito90 — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 10:30:17 -0800

Here's Amazon's review of the book that aacheson mentioned. It got terrific reviews and sounds like a fantastic book. I'll be checking it out, thanks aacheson.

By: putzface_dickman

putzface_dickman — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 11:19:23 -0800

Thanks for this. A descendant of William Dawes was Vice President of the US and won the Nobel Peace prize in 1925 for devising the scheme through which Germany paid reparations. I'm glad that all worked out.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 11:52:58 -0800

We should have lost that war 100 ways from Sunday. You ain't kidding. This is another fascinating book on the early days of the US. Shows you how incredibly lucky we were to have such visionary founders, and just luck in general. It's easy to forget that nothing like this sort of government had ever been successful before, let alone conjured out of thin air, like this country basically was. There were a thousand ways it could have crashed and burned early on.

By: kablam

kablam — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 21:02:52 -0800

Among the other bizarre stories of the AmRev is George Washington as spymaster extraordinaire (who incidentally made inquiries about arming many soldiers with bows & arrows, arguably better ranged than muskets, but needing far more training for proficiency); and Benjamin Franklin, who some now suspect may have been a serial killer of teenage girls.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sat, 28 Jun 2003 08:02:50 -0800

how incredibly lucky we were to have such visionary founders Not to mention the support of the French, without which it wouldn't have mattered how visionary our founders are, they'd all have wound up swinging from ropes.