Paul Revere's Ride
Page 36
American Casualties, April 19, 1775, by town:
Acton: killed (3) Isaac Davis, James Hayward, Abner Hosmer; wounded (1) Luther Blanchard.
Bedford: killed (1) Capt. Jonathan Wilson; wounded (1) Job Lane.
Beverly: killed (1) Reuben Kenyme; wounded (3) Nathaniel Cleves, William Dodge III, Samuel Woodbury.
Billerica: wounded (2) Timothy Blanchard, John Nichols.
Brookline: killed (1) Isaac Gardner.
Cambridge: killed (6) John Hicks, William Marcy (noncombatant?), Moses Richardson, Jason Russell, Jason Winship (noncombatant), Jabez Wyman (noncombatant); wounded (1), Samuel Whittemore; missing (2) Samuel Frost, Seth Russell.
Charlestown: killed (2) Edward Barber (a 14-year-old noncombatant), James Miller.
Chelmsford: wounded (2) Oliver Barron, Aaron Chamberlain.
Concord: killed (none); wounded (5) Nathan Barrett, Jonas Brown, Charles Miles, George Minot, Abel Prescott, Jr.
Danvers: killed (7) Samuel Cook, Benjamin Deland, Ebenezer Golwait, Henry Jacobs, Perley Putnam, George Southwick, Jothan Webb; wounded (2) Nathan Putnam, Dennis Wallace; missing (1) Joseph Bell.
Dedham: killed (1) Elias Haven; wounded (1) Israel Everett.
Framingham: wounded (1) Daniel Hemminway.
Lexington: killed (10) John Brown, Samuel Hadley, Caleb Harrington, Jonathan Harrington, Jr., Jonas Parker, Jedidiah Munroe, Robert Munroe, Isaac Muzzy, John Raymond, Nathaniel Wyman; wounded (10) Francis Brown, Joseph Comee, Prince Estabrook, Nathaniel Farmer, Ebenezer Munroe Jr., Jedidiah Munroe, Solomon Pierce, John Robbins, John Tidd, Thomas Winship.
Lynn: killed (4) William Flint, Thomas Hadley, Abednego Ramsdell, Daniel Townsend; wounded (2) Joseph Felt, Timothy Monroe; missing (1) Josiah Breed.
Medford: killed (2) Henry Putnam, William Holly.
Needham: killed (5) John Bacon, Nathaniel Chamberlain, Amos Mills, Elisha Mills, Jonathan Parker; wounded (2) Eleazer Kingsbury, Tolman.
Newton: wounded (1) Noah Wiswell.
Roxbury: missing (1) Elijah Seaver.
Salem: killed (1) Benjamin Pierce.
Stow: wounded (1) Daniel Conant.
Sudbury: killed (2) Deacon Josiah Haynes (aet. 80), Asahael Reed; died of wounds (1), Thomas Bent (1); wounded (1) Joshua Haynesjr.
Watertown: killed (1) Joseph Coolidge.
Woburn: killed (2) Daniel Thompson, Asahel Porter; wounded (3), Jacob Bacon, Johnson, George Reed.
TOTAL: killed and died of wounds, 50; wounded, 39; missing, 5; total casualties, 94; towns with casualties: 23
SOURCES: Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington… (Boston, 1825), 27-30; John Farmer in MHSC, XVIII; Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 80-81.
APPENDIX Q
British Casualties, April 19, 1775
Estimate by Stephen Kemble, Gage’s Intelligence [!] Officer: “We lost about 25 killed and about 150 wounded.” Kemble Journals, N-YHS, 42-43.
Estimate by John Pope, a British soldier: 90 killed, 181 wounded, total 271
Estimate by an anonymous British soldier: “might have amounted to 500 killed and wounded” (Kehoe, “We Were There!” I, 174).
Estimates of casualties by regiment:
4th Foot: “Our regiment had about four or five men killed, and about 25 wounded” (Evelyn); Gage reported 8 killed, 25 wounded, 8 missing.
5th Foot: Of the grenadiers, “half the company and Lt. Baker were killed or wounded.” For the entire regiment, Gage reported 5 killed, 18 wounded, 1 missing.
10th Foot: Of the light infantry, “A sergeant of the company came to me and inform’d me he had but 12 men and could not find any other officer [Kelly, Parsons and Lister all were casualties].” (Lister). For the entire regiment, Gage reported 1 killed, 17 wounded, 1 missing.
18th Foot: Of the grenadier company, the only unit engaged, 2 killed, 4 wounded (Gretton, Regimental History). Gage reported 1 killed 4 wounded, 1 missing.
23rd Foot: “our regt had 5 killed and 31 wounded.” (Mackenzie; aa4, 440); Gage reported 4 killed, 27 wounded and 6 missing.
38th Foot: Gage reported 4 killed, 12 wounded.
43rd Foot: Gage reported 4 killed, 6 wounded, 2 missing.
47th Foot: Gage reported 5 killed, 23 wounded.
52nd Foot: Gage reported 3 killed, 2 wounded, 1 missing.
59th Foot: Gage reported 3 killed, 3 wounded.
British Marines: Gage reported 27 killed, 40 wounded, 7 missing.
APPENDIX R
Casualties among British Officers on the Concord Mission, April 19 to June 17, 1775.
Commanders
Lt. Col. Francis Smith, 10th Foot, wounded in retreat from Concord Major John Pitcairn, British Marines; injured in retreat from Concord, mortally wounded at Bunker Hill
4th Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. Nesbit Balfour, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Edward Gould, wounded and captured on the Concord expedition
Lt. John Barker
4th Foot, Grenadier Company
Captain John West, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Edward Barron, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Leonard Brown, wounded at Bunker Hill
5th Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. John Battier
Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw, wounded on Concord expedition
Lt. Thomas Cox, wounded on Concord expedition
5th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. George Harris, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Thomas Baker, wounded on Concord Expedition
10th Foot, Light Infantry
Capt. Lawrence Parsons, wounded at Concord, and again at Bunker Hill
Lt. Waldron Kelly, wounded on Concord expedition
Ensign Jeremy Lister, volunteer, wounded on Concord expedition
10th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. Edward Fitzgerald, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. James Pettigrew, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Thomas Verner, died of wounds at Bunker Hill
18th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. John Shee
Lt. George Bruere
Lt. William Blackwood
23rd Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. Robert Donkin
Lt. Thomas Walsh
Lt. Onslow Beckwith, wounded at Bunker Hill
23rd Foot Grenadier Company
Capt. William Blakeney, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Thomas Gibbings
Lt. John Lenthall, wounded at Bunker Hill
38th Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. St. Lawrence Boyd, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. William Wade
Lt. Francis Johnstone
38th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. William Crosbie
Lt. John Howe
Lt. Robert Christie, wounded at Bunker Hill
43rd Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. Walter S. Laurie
Lt. Edward Hull, mortally wounded on the Concord Expedition
Lt. Alexander Robertson, wounded at Bunker Hill
43rd Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. John Hatfield
Lt. Charles McLean
Lt. William Gubbins
47th Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. Thomas Henry Craig, wounded at Bunker hill
Lt. John McKinnon
Lt. Thomas Storey
47th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. Richard England, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. Christ. Hilliard, died of wounds at Bunker Hill
Lt. Pook England, wounded at Bunker Hill
52nd Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. William Browne
Lt. George Hamilton
Lt. Eward Collier
52nd Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. William Davison, killed at Bunker Hill
Lt. John Thompson, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. William Gordon
59th Foot, Light Infantry Company
Capt. Narciss
us Huson
Lt. Ambrose Simpson
Lt. George Cumine
59th Foot, Grenadier Company
Capt. George Gray
Lt. Melton Woodward
Lt. Andrew Despard
British Marines, Light Infantry Company
Capt William Souter, wounded on retreat from Concord
Lt. William Pitcairn
Lt. Philip Howe
British Marines, Grenadier Company
Capt Thomas Averne, wounded at Bunker Hill
Lt. William Finney, killed at Bunker Hill
Lt. George Vevers
Advance Patrol, Volunteers and Officers on Special Assignments
Major Edward Mitchell, 5th Foot commanding
Capt. Charles Cochrane, 4th Foot
Capt. Charles Lumm, 38th Foot
Lt. William Grant, Royal Artillery
Lt. F. P. Thorne, 4th Foot
Lt. William Sutherland, 38th Foot, wounded on Concord expedition
Lt. Jesse Adair, British Marines
Lt. Hamilton, 64th Foot, captured on Concord expedition
Surgeon’s Mate Simms, 43rd Foot
SOURCE: Muster Rolls and Pay Lists, WO12, PRO
APPENDIX S
Spread of the News of the First Shots at Lexington
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Myths After the Midnight Ride
Seldom has fact supported legend, seldom has nature imitated art so successfully.
—Edmund S. Morgan
Even as the event was still happening, the legend began to grow. Long before Paul Revere reached home again, rumors of the midnight ride began to fly across the countryside. Returning British soldiers reported their encounter with “the noted Paul Revere” on the Concord Road. A newspaper in the city of New York informed its readers that Paul Revere was “missing and supposed to be waylaid and slain.” 1 In Boston, the story of the signals from the Old North Church made too good a story for Whig leaders to keep secret very long. Within days, a Tory refugee named Ann Hulton wrote to an English friend, “The people in the country … had a signal, it is supposed, by a light from one of the steeples in town, upon the troops embarking.” 2
By early June, the first report of Paul Revere’s ride appeared in print. Its author was William Gordon, Roxbury’s English-born Congregationalist minister, who appointed himself the first historian of the American Revolution. After the battle, Gordon rode to Concord and interviewed many participants, including Paul Revere himself. In the first week of June, he published an account of the battle which mentioned Revere by name, and briefly described the midnight ride, the capture, the rescue of John Hancock’s trunk, and Revere’s presence at the battle of Lexington. Gordon’s essay was very short, but remarkably full and accurate. Yet even as he wrote, the first of many myths was beginning to take form around the subject. Its inventors were the participants themselves. 3
Participant Historians: The Myth of Injured Innocence
While Gordon was publishing the first account, the Whig leaders themselves kept silent. Many had sworn a vow of secrecy about their activities, and were guarded even in conversation with one another. One of their sons remembered that as late as the early 19th century, the story of the signal lamps and the midnight ride was “common talk at my father’s, where they often met, although I can call to mind they were careful of calling names, having some fear of liability.” 4
Fear of liability was not the only factor. The silence of the Whigs also had another cause. The elaborate preparations that lay behind the midnight ride did not fit well with the Whig image of Lexington and Concord as an unprovoked attack upon an unresisting people. Here was the first of many myths that came to encrust the subject—the myth of injured American innocence, which the Whigs themselves actively propagated as an instrument of their cause.
To maintain that interpretation, the earliest written account of the midnight ride by Paul Revere himself appears to have been suppressed by Whig leaders. In the aftermath of the battles Revere and many other eyewitnesses were asked to draft a deposition about the first shot at Lexington. He produced a document that was doubly displeasing to those who requested it. Revere refused to testify unequivocally that the Regulars had fired first at Lexington Common. He also added an account of the midnight ride that suggested something of the American preparations that preceded the event.
Other depositions were rushed into print by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and circulated widely in Britain and America, but Revere’s testimony was not among them. It did not support the American claim that the Regulars had started the fighting, and revealed more about the revolutionary movement than Whig leaders wished to be known. Paul Revere’s deposition was returned to him. It remained among his private papers, unpublished until 1891. 5
The myth of wounded innocence was given wide currency by Whig leaders. It dominated the first American accounts of the battles of Lexington and Concord—and most graphically appeared in drawings that were commissioned by Whig leaders themselves. Two weeks after the battles, the artist Ralph Earl was relieved of duty as a Connecticut militiaman, and asked to make a set of sketches of the events at Lexington and Concord. Earl walked the ground, interviewed survivors, and met with Whig leaders. He prepared a series of four drawings. The first and most important represented the fighting at Lexington as a slaughter of American innocents, who appeared mainly to be trying to get out of the way. Earl showed a disciplined formation of Regulars firing a deliberate volley on command into the backs of the militia, who were dispersing peaceably and making no effort to resist. 6
This myth of American innocence became an instrument of high importance in the events that it purported to describe. It strengthened the moral foundations of the American side, and weakened the ethical underpinnings of the Imperial cause. There was little room in this interpretation for the careful preparation that lay behind the American alarm system, and even less for the elaborate efforts that set the machine in motion. Among Whig leaders, a conspiracy of silence surrounded the midnight ride for many years after the event.
Children of the Founders: The Myth of the Patriot Fathers
Despite the reticence of Whig leaders, oral reports of Paul Revere’s ride continued to spread through New England, and passed rapidly into the realm of regional folklore. A child of the Revolution remembered that “we needed no fairy tales in our youth. The real experiences of our own people were more fascinating than all the novels ever written.” 7 In that spirit, the children of Boston learned the story of the signal lanterns and the midnight ride as it passed from one person to another. “I have heard it told over many times, and never doubted,” recalled Joshua Fowle of his Boston boyhood, “I knew in my young days many of the prominent men who took an active part in the doings of those days. Paul Revere lived near me. … It was common talk.” 8
That common talk made Paul Revere a local hero throughout New England. After the Revolution was over, his exploits began to be set down on paper, sometimes in highly inflated ways. The growth of his reputation as a regional folk-hero was evident as early as 1795. To mark the twentieth anniversary of the event, a Yankee bard who signed himself Eb. Stiles composed an epic poem about the midnight ride that endowed the hero and his horse with more than mortal powers:
He raced his steed through field and wood
Nor turned to ford the river,
But faced his horse to the foaming flood
They swam across together.
He madly dashed o’er mountain and moor,
Never slackened spur nor rein
Until with shout he stood by the door
Of the Church on Concord green.
Never mind that the actual ride of Paul Revere ended short of Concord, or that the nearest equivalent to a foaming flood was a sluggish stream called the Mystick River, which he crossed without getting his feet wet. It was in the nature of a mythic hero to transcend the limits of mundane fact. So it was with Eb. Stiles’s poetic image of Paul Revere. 9
As the mythmaking grew more extravagant, the newly organized Massachusetts Historical Society decided to issue a documentary record of the event. Jeremy Belknap, corresponding secretary of the society, approached Paul Revere and asked him to contribute a history of the midnight ride for publication in its Proceedings. Revere’s account, which finally arrived in 1798, twenty-three years after the event, was brief, understated, and self-effacing. It also strongly supported the Whig interpretation. Before it went into print, Revere carefully deleted from his first draft an incautious phrase that described his attempt to attack the British patrol when he first sighted it—an aggressive impulse that was not consistent with the myth of American innocence. Revere intended his account to be anonymous. He signed it “A Son of Liberty in 1775,” and requested Belknap, “Do not print my name.” Belknap ignored the request, and identified Revere as the author without permission.
Through Paul Revere’s lifetime, the reticence of the revolutionary generation continued. It appeared even in his obituary, which abundantly praised his private life and public service, but made no mention of the midnight ride or any of his clandestine activities before the Revolution. The conspiracy of silence continued. 10
In the years after Revere’s death in 1818, however, attitudes began to change. Published accounts of the midnight ride began to multiply. Some came from surviving eyewitnesses who confirmed the factual accuracy of Paul Revere’s letter to Belknap, and added colorful details to his laconic interpretation of the event.
Several of these narratives emerged from a bizarre dispute between the towns of Lexington and Concord over the question of who fired the first shot. Immediately after the battles, as we have seen, Whig leaders had been at pains to demonstrate that the Regulars had fired first. Fifty years later, their descendants battled furiously over the question of which town deserved the honor of being first to fire back. Concord lawyer Samuel Hoar started the controversy in 1824. In a speech of welcome to the Marquis de Lafayette, Hoar claimed that his town was the scene of “the first forcible resistance” to British arms.