For his earliest work he used large plates to print notes for Massachusetts’s bills of credit. In May 1775 the Provincial Congress decided to borrow 100,000 pounds by printing and selling a large number of colony notes to individuals, who could redeem them in June 1777 with 6 percent interest added for each year the bearer held the note. Loan and currency notes typically featured an elaborate title, one or more images such as a seal, standard text explaining the terms of the note, and blanks to be filled in with specifics such as the due date, note number, loan amount, and name of the recipient. These early notes had relatively high face values of 4 pounds or more apiece, and a second printing commissioned later in May featured several “soldier’s notes” holding values between 4 and 20 shillings. The importance of these notes became evident on June 3, when the Provincial Congress asked Revere to print the soldier’s notes overnight if at all possible, making two officers available to help him night and day until they could be distributed to the militia. The soldier’s notes served an interesting role: in exchange for their services, each soldier chose whether to receive 20 shillings of salary immediately, or 40 shillings of currency notes payable in one year. The creation of these notes kept the Patriots afloat: they depended upon loans and paper currency for the payment of all of the expenses of waging war and running a government. Following the initial 100,000 pounds of loan notes and soldier’s notes totaling 30,000 pounds, Massachusetts placed orders to print additional bills of credit to serve as currency, totaling 100,000 pounds (released in August 1775) and 75,000 pounds (released in December 1775).41
Revere’s relationship with the Massachusetts interim government for these engraving contracts foreshadowed the rewards and headaches that accompanied his career-long transactions with government officials. He immediately discovered that government engraving provided steady and lucrative commissions: Massachusetts paid him more than 240 pounds in 1775 and more than 81 pounds in January 1776 for printing 100,000 extra bills of credit. His engraving work continued at least to the end of 1776, when the government asked him to replace the word Colony with State on new notes. But even this profitable employment could not compete with his desire to serve in the army, and Revere focused exclusively upon military matters from 1776 until November 1778, when he began a final engraving project that earned him more than 700 pounds. This early government work also carried occasional downsides. Revere received one embarrassing rebuke when the Provincial Congress refused to pay his bill for 64 pounds and instead paid what they considered the fair price of 50 pounds for his services. He also had to face the security concerns of the supervisory committee, which asked Revere to guard his press at all times, and which promptly relieved him of all plates as soon as he printed each set of notes. These interactions reflected reasonable concerns of frugality and security, but did infringe on Revere’s methods of running a business.42
Revere put aside his engraving and printing work several times when other pressing concerns arose. The Continental Congress asked him to travel to Philadelphia in November 1775 to learn how to manufacture gunpowder, as mentioned at the start of this chapter. The Patriot leaders believed that creating additional gunpowder mills in New England represented an absolute necessity for their cause. In December 1774, well before the shot heard round the world, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress appointed a committee to look into the state of manufactures, and their report indicated “That gunpowder is also an article of such importance, that every man among us who loves his country, must wish the establishment of manufactories for that purpose; and as there are the ruins of several powder mills, and sundry persons among us who are acquainted with that business, we do heartily recommend its encouragement by repairing one or more of said mills, or erecting others, and renewing said business as soon as possible.”43 In the first months of hostilities, Patriot forces in different colonies scraped together all the gunpowder they could find, much of which came from captured British stockpiles or stores remaining from the Seven Years’ War. The Continental army almost completely exhausted this initial supply, estimated at eighty thousand pounds of powder, within a few months. The shortage reached crisis proportions in early engagements such as the Battle of Bunker Hill, which the Patriots might have won if they had had access to more gunpowder. As George Washington wrote on Christmas Day of 1775, “Our want of powder is inconceivable. A daily waste and no supply administers a gloomy prospect.” The Second Continental Congress discussed this emergency, but decided that individual colonies should take the lead in manufacturing large quantities of gunpowder. Some colonial governments took the hint, offering financial support and bounties to manufacturers willing to learn the process.44
In November 1775 the Massachusetts Provisional Congress contacted Revere and asked him, while in Philadelphia on his next courier run, to study a gunpowder mill and learn how to reproduce and run one in Massachusetts. The specific mill, run by Oswell Eve, was probably the first operational gunpowder manufactory in Pennsylvania, certainly one of the first in America.45 His specific instructions outlined several of the established steps in any successful technology transfer: “Obtain an Exact plan of the best Constructed powder mill, the Quantity of powder that may be made in One day in said mill, the Expence of the powder mill, & Whether a person Can be Obtained who is well skilled in manufacturing powder, and the Expense of said man pr anno.”46 The Provincial Congress had to quickly meet the gunpowder shortfall while also setting up a sustainable operation that would not unduly strain the government’s meager finances. The emphasis upon hiring someone “well skilled in manufacturing powder” also reflects the preeminent method of technology transfer at the time, that is, the emigration of skilled labor. Paul Revere’s involvement, on the other hand, signaled a different strategy in which an interested individual visited the state-of-the-art facility and learned its operations well enough to reproduce them. Successful technology transfer depended upon two factors: a quick technical learner and an environment fostering the free exchange of knowledge. In this case the Provincial Congress had to settle for one out of two.
Revere had practical, social, and technical qualifications for this mission. His impending visit to Philadelphia on a courier mission may have proved the overriding factor due to the sheer convenience of the trip. But the Provincial Congress could not entrust this job to anyone who just happened to be passing through Philadelphia; it needed someone trustworthy, capable, and technically proficient enough to do the job right. Gunpowder manufacture carried notorious risks, and the government had to ensure that this powder mill followed the proper guidelines in order to prevent injuries or deaths. The qualities that made Revere a successful courier and silversmith overlapped nicely in this case because he could use discretion, act with some diplomacy, and relate his existing technical knowledge to this new task.
Of these skills, Revere’s technical acuity made by far the largest contribution to his success. In spite of a letter of access intended to gain him passage through the plant, Oswell Eve only allowed him a quick walking tour of the building due to his suspicion and competitiveness. But once Samuel Adams passed along some gunpowder mill plans, Revere’s experience and intuitive grasp of different production processes enabled him to use this limited information to help design a powder mill in Canton. As a silversmith he understood heat treatments, the operation and combination of certain chemicals, and other processes that, while not directly tied to gunpowder manufacture, related to the general activities and pace of a shop floor. He also worked on two engraving projects before the war that applied more closely to the task at hand. He engraved the first, Plan of a Hemp Mill, in 1765 on behalf of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to accompany a published “Treatise of Hemp-Husbandry.” This engraving depicts a scaled blueprint of a manufactory, including front, side, and overhead views of water-powered machinery. At a minimum, the engraving illustrates Revere’s familiarity with mill layouts and the use of blueprints. He also engraved a plate in 1774 titled The Method of Refining Salt-
Petre for the August issue of the Royal American Magazine. This illustration portrays two men employing sieves, skimmers, ladles, vats, and a hearth to boil down and filter a nitrate-rich material, remove impurities, and produce a more concentrated form of nitre that eventually yielded saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the critical component of gunpowder. While Revere certainly did not claim expertise in this area, the fact that he produced this engraving less than two years prior to his mission illustrates some familiarity with the principles at work. He returned to Massachusetts and produced his designs, culminating in a successful gunpowder mill in Stoughton that began operating by May 1776.47
In addition to his engraving and gunpowder-factory-designing services, Revere soon served his Commonwealth by working in a cannon forge. Americans’ almost total lack of experience in cannon casting in 1775 posed a huge problem for the rebels, who captured some cannon but needed to learn to cast their own as soon as possible. The Massachusetts Board of War decided to set up and operate a cannon-casting furnace at Titicut (Bridgewater, Connecticut) in December 1776, and asked newly arrived French engineer Louis de Maresquelle, also known as Lewis Ansart, to serve as state superintendent of furnaces with aid from Colonel Hugh Orr. The Board of War immediately asked them to seek Revere’s advice concerning the best manner of brass cannon casting, in one case even using the phrase “under the Direction of Colo. Revere.”48 This request seems peculiar, considering that Revere had not previously cast any large copper objects, although he could draw upon his artillery company experience and his knowledge of silver casting. In contrast, Maresquelle came from a proud tradition of French cannon casting and could be considered one of the finest metalworkers on the American continent. Revere’s silverworking experience may or may not have aided the experimentation process, but he certainly helped cast and test four cannon by March, and he undoubtedly learned much about working with metals other than silver on a large scale. For example, he had the firsthand opportunity to witness Maresquelle’s innovative technique of casting the cannon as one solid piece and then boring a chamber in the center, a method that eventually became the industry standard. Revere successfully duplicated the cannon-casting process in his own forge seventeen years later.
In addition to the specific skills Revere contributed to the Patriot cause, his repeated technical services illustrated his great ability to learn new procedures. Others clearly recognized his technological competence, since Revere’s name always seemed to come up whenever the Massachusetts Patriots quickly needed to learn or implement a cutting-edge manufacturing process.
Following Gage’s exit from Boston, New England’s role in the Revolutionary War became more marginal. The main theater of war first shifted to New York and the Atlantic states and then to the South, where Washington had his final victory over Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 thanks in no small part to French assistance. Hostilities more or less ceased after that point, although the war technically continued until the Treaty of Paris laid out the terms of peace between America and Britain in 1783.
The Revolutionary War produced economic impacts on a scale impossible to imagine at the time. Lasting for eight years, the war put at least one hundred thousand men—close to 10 percent of the male population—into military service, and destroyed or dislocated large amounts of property. The war overturned all preexisting market patterns: armies and navies effectively acted as a protective tariff by temporarily removing most British competition, state and federal governments purchased enormous quantities of goods, and ongoing shortages of weapons or other products focused attention upon America’s manufacturing shortfalls. The money supply also changed as a result of the war: state and federal governments issued more than $400 million of paper money to pay expenses, total quantities of gold and silver coin also increased due to purchases by foreign troops, and changing local conditions led to variable price increases and a pronounced inflationary spiral. These impacts touched all producers and consumers in America, providing a massive boost to the advance of capitalism until the war ended. In addition, as many as eighty thousand Loyalists, who generally occupied the highest rungs of the social and economic ladder, left America during the Revolution. The removal of a large segment of well-to-do citizens left a void in the economy and shattered many existing social networks, leaving openings for some of the newly rising entrepreneurs who improved their prospects during the war.49 Most observers saw postwar America as a brave new world, even if few of them could explain the full depth of these changes.
The war also produced vast ideological impacts that, while less tangible than the economic changes, proved no less important. Following years of resistance and Revolutionary rhetoric, Americans had no shortage of ills they could blame upon Britain’s overly restrictive policies, including unjust taxation, harsh legal traditions, discriminatory trade policies, suppressive actions against manufacturers, and many others. Victorious Revolutionaries equated their political victory with a newfound economic and social freedom. Americans often cited their new country’s numerous real or imagined gifts, such as its seemingly boundless natural resources or the perceived virtue of its people, as heralds of impending national greatness. Even though many Loyalists still lived in America, the war gave rise to an American identity, with nationalist sentiments beginning to appear in art and literature as citizens reflected upon the triumphant shared endeavor they had so recently undertaken. The excited writers of the postwar republic produced an outpouring of optimistic predictions, and many Americans responded to this rhetoric by directing their energies into new political and entrepreneurial ventures.50
And what of Revere? His selection as a midnight rider and his success at that task resulted from the combination of his personal connections, overall competence, and position in society, factors that also explain his success or failure in many other endeavors during and after the Revolutionary years. Personal connections proved invaluable to Revere throughout his career, and Joseph Warren’s position as one of Boston’s highest-ranking Patriot leaders may have had the greatest influence upon his selection as a midnight rider. Revere’s reputation improved his interactions with peers and clients, but patrons or friends in high places created the most dramatic opportunities. Warren knew Revere through numerous social and patriotic activities and even considered him a friend, someone he could summon and trust in a moment of need. While powerful connections opened doors, Revere had to depend on his own skills to succeed. A responsible professional with good judgment and a sharp intellect, he overcame all challenges in the rush of events on the 18th of April, beginning with a flawless escape from Boston and ending with a shrewd and courageous bluff delivered at gunpoint. And finally, his success also drew upon his place in society and his ability to connect to fellow Patriots from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy. While Revere could not lay claim to being a “leader” in any official sense, the effectiveness of his midnight ride shows that he functioned well as a de facto field commander: he knew how working men operated and they listened to him. He also appealed to gentleman leaders such as Hancock and Adams who appreciated the judgment and responsibility demonstrated in his successful craft practices, shop management, and community service. Trusted by those above him and respected by fellow artisans and the working strata of society, Revere represented the perfect intermediary who strengthened the Patriot network by carrying messages, exercising limited authority, and rallying support. The networking abilities that served him so well in his search for customers came into play during the Midnight Ride, as he knew which people to wake and which houses to visit, lighting sparks in just the right way to ignite a firestorm of popular resistance.
At the end of the war he had mixed feelings about his experiences. The Midnight Ride placed him briefly in the center of events, but soon became eclipsed by a frustrating and eventually disgraceful militia career. Looking back, he could juxtapose military failures with his admittedly less glamorous technical work, accomplished by using his ingenuity and practical skill
s in ways that others, particularly the leaders of society, could not. Tension between his hopes for a high-profile societal leadership position and the reality of a pragmatic manufacturing career played out in the ensuing years. Revere’s attempts to reconcile productive merit-based technical work and patronage-influenced political, military, and social hierarchies foreshadowed larger questions that soon concerned artisans across the nation. As social and economic intermediaries, artisans were among the first to chart pathways through untested waters.
Revere faced difficult and intriguing choices in 1783. He could return to his trade, but so much had changed since he had last practiced his silverworking that everything from his town’s political structure to its physical landscape looked different. Such society-wide upheavals did not occur every day, and a sufficiently entrepreneurial approach might yield exciting rewards. Perhaps it was time to aspire to something more.
CHAPTER THREE
Mercantile Ambitions and a New Look at Silver (1783–1789)
In October 1781 Revere penned a letter to his cousin John Rivoire in France. As their correspondence had only recently begun, he brought his cousin up to date on the details of his life, in the process offering what might be the most revealing self-analysis contained in the entire Revere Family Papers. He began:
My father was a Gold-smith. He died in the year 1754, he left no Estate but he left a good name and seven children, 3 sons & 4 daughters. I was the Eldest Son. I learned the trade of him and have carried on the business ever since till the year 1775 when the American Revolution began. From that time till May 1780 I have been in the Goverments service as the Lieu’t Col of an Artillery Regt, the time for which that was raised, then expired, I thought it best to go to my business again, which I now carry on, besides which, I trade some to Holland.1
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