But you see, that's the problem Peggy, you (and at least one of your sources) are trying to tie her comments into the one thing that most people know about Paul Revere, his famous Midnight Ride. But the fact is, Revere did a little more during his lifetime than Longfellow gave him credit for in the poem.
Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_Alarm for a little background on the events Palin was talking about.
After the Powder Alarm, militia forces throughout New England were more cautious with their supplies and more intent on gaining information about Gage's plans and troop movements. Paul Revere played a significant role in distributing this information due to his geographical position in Boston, his social position as a middle-class craftsman in contact with all social classes, and his political position as a well-known Patriot propagandist and organizer.[18]
[edit] The colonists organize
On September 21, 1774, Patriot leaders met in Worcester and urged town meetings to organize a third of the militias into special companies of minutemen in constant readiness to march.[19] They also instituted the system of express riders and alarms that would prove to be critical at Lexington and Concord.[18] In October, the former legislature of Massachusetts met in defiance of the Massachusetts Government Act and declared itself to be the First Provincial Congress. It created a Committee of Safety modeled after a body with the same name during the English Civil War and it recommended that a quarter of the militia be designated as minutemen.[16] Military stores were to be stockpiled away from the coast (more than a convenient day's march), to make attempts to seize them more difficult. The largest stockpiles were located at Concord and Worcester.[20]
[edit] Portsmouth Alarm
Early in December, British military command voted to prohibit the export of arms and powder to North America, and to secure all remaining stores. On December 12, intelligence received by Paul Revere indicated that a seizure of stores at Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth, New Hampshire was imminent. He rode from Boston to Portsmouth the next day to notify the local Patriots, who quickly raided the fort on the 14th and removed its supplies. Revere's intelligence had been incorrect; while a British operation had been contemplated, it had not been ordered. The British did eventually send ships carrying troops to Portsmouth, but they arrived long after the event. The first arrived on the 17th, and was directed into shallows at high tide by a local Patriot pilot, much to the captain's anger.[17]
Stores of gunpowder—typically referred to by Loyalists as "the King's powder" and by Patriots as "the militia's powder"—were also carried off from forts in Newport, Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island, and New London, Connecticut and distributed to the militias in towns away from the coast.[21] Cannon and other supplies were smuggled out of Boston and Charlestown.[22]
My apologies to everyone else for helping this thread get off track, but some things just need to be disputed.
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Originally Posted by alan
