A Story For Patriots' Day
By Nicholas C. Arguimbau
22 April, 2012
Countercurrents.org
This is a story about Patriots' Day, April 19, and Patriot Day, September 11, and is about better days in the United States, when a man could be known and elected President even with truly "gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions" lurking in his past. It is also a story about Paul Revere.
*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."1
And so it was that Paul Revere, his father nez Apollos Rivoire,2 galloped from town to town in the wee hours of the morning of April 19, 1775, warning the townspeople in Eastern Massachusetts that British Regulars were planning to stage surprise raid on the towns for guns and gunpowder. Instead, the Redcoats were surprised by local militia defending their homeland security. That morning took place the battles of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, first battles of the American Revolution, and the date became a much-honored state holiday in Massachusetts, Patriots' Day, not to be confused with Patriot Day, September 11, officially marking the first day of the first decade of the War Against Terror.
Paul Revere was a man of many talents. On the date of his ride he was described in a British "who'who" of American rebels as a "silver smith."3 His silver "is regarded as one of the outstanding achievements in American decorative arts." 4 His copper cooking ware has been known for centuries as "Revere Ware" although with the loss of 500 American jobs in the nineties,it is now manufactured in India. He was a dentist, although the story that he made George Washington's falsies, is disputed. He was one of the instigators of the Boston Tea Party, although he also served to protect the ship against vandals after that event. And he was a skilled engraver of copper plates. He is said to have been present at the Boston Massacre, and his engraving of the events there brought folks to a fever pitch, about ready to organize a lynch mob against the British Regulars who shot five Boston citizens at the Massacre.
The British had quartered regiments equal to approximately one fourth of the population in
Boston to enforce the taxes that were to be the subject of the Tea Party, and relations were, to say the least, strained. British soldiers were regularly pelted with stones and snowballs. As depicted in Revere's engraving, the Massacre took place, appropriately enough, in front of the Old State House,
which has been the site of as many significant events in American history over the last two and a half centuries as the Capitol itself. Take a good look, for instance, at the balcony, which you can see above the gun smoke in Revere's engraving. That's one of two spots where the Declaration of Independence was read to the assembled masses on July 4, 1776, and again by British Queen Elizabeth on July 4, 1976.
But Paul Revere's depiction of a defenseless and unarmed gathering being shot at by a line of red-coated marksmen, is said to have been better politics than reporting. What apparently occurred was that a British soldier was doing sentry duty when a boy taunted him with something like, "Why won't you pay the bill for your wig?" whereupon the soldier belted the boy, whereupon the boy recruited help and so did the soldier, whereupon a crowd gathered who began pelting the soldiers with stones and snowballs and someone, either a soldier or someone from the crowd, yelled "Shoot them," whereupon the soldiers began shooting, leaving five dead. One man taunts another over a wig, and five men end up dead. "When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?"5 One of the five, a leader of the crowd, Crispus Attucks, an African-American who has subsequently been considered one of the heroes of colonial American history, was depicted by Revere as white.
Revere's engraving circulated in Boston and its surroundings, and the public became incensed at the British soldiers who had shot five citizens dead.
Fearful for their careers and even their lives, all the lawyers approached to defend the soldiers refused. John Adams was, like Barack Obama a Harvard-educated lawyer who would later be President, but there, apparently, the similarities end, Adams stepped forth, declared that the Redcoats had the right to a fair trial and that he would defend them. He did so, and well. Most of the British soldiers were acquitted, based essentially on self-defense. For many months Adams was treated as a traitor. His legal business dropped by half. A few months after the trial, there is the notation in his journal, "Never in more misery my whole life." But in his old age, the retired President was able to look back at his defense of the British soldiers in 1770 as "one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country."7 ] And so it was.
If the Revolution had its Boston Massacre, then the War on Terror had its 9/11. But Patriots' Day is not to be confused with Patriot Day. Barrack Obama did not perceive things as had John Adams. When the alleged perpetrators of the killings in Boston were arrested, they received a fair trial and were even acquitted. When the alleged mastermind of 9/11was caught, he was summarily shot dead, apparently on orders of President Obama. No arrest, no trial, no opportunity to give his side of what actually occurred.. And now the
President's "right" to have the country's perceived enemies shot on sight, even on American soil - no arrest, no trial - has been established by law.
John Adams, where are you when we need you?
######################
1 The full text of the poem, required of many a
school child in Massachusetts to be put to memory, is:
Paul Revere's Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
>From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
http://poetry.eserver.org/paul-revere.html
2. Like many an American patriot,
Paul was born of political refugees from Europe.
http://legacy.mckinneyisd.net/Campuses/school_websites/glenoaks/Library/Resources/RachelWa
lkerRevere.htm
3 "Tory Account of Whig Leaders Before the
Revolutionary War,"
http://www.revolutionarywararchives.org/life-times-link/191-tory-account-of-whig-leaders-befor
e-the-revolutionary-war ]
4 History of American Women,
http://legacy.mckinneyisd.net/Campuses/school_websites/glenoaks/Library/Resources/RachelWa
lkerRevere.htm ]
5 WHERE HAVE ALL THE
FLOWERS GONE
words and music by Pete Seeger
performed by Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
1961 (Renewed) Fall River Music Inc
All Rights Reserved.
http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/flowers-gone.shtml
6 "Biography of John Adams: Education and early career (1745 - 1758),"
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/ja2/about/bio/adams02.htm
7 "Key Figures in the Boston Massacre Trials,"
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/bostonmassacre/keyfigures.html
[Key Words. Patriots' Day, Patriot Day, Paul Revere, Paul Revere's Ride, John Adams, Barack Obama, Boston Massacre, Pete Seeger, George Washington's teeth]
The author is a California-licensed attorney residing in Massachusetts, whose writings on other subjects may be accessed by "Googling" his full name.
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