Welcome to Prime Factors where we review each UK Prime Minister from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer. We discuss their biography, highs and lows, and then rate them on a scale designed by a 10-year old before awarding the ultimate prize: Are they ”Known” or an ”Ice Cream Cone”?
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere - The Real One (Boston Bedtime #1)
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The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere - The Real One (Boston Bedtime #1)
Episode Transcript
Joe: Psst! Hello, and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Joe, and I'm being very, very quiet because it is bedtime, and I'm gonna surprise Abram with a little bit of a history bedtime story, and I wanted to share it with you. This one's gonna be about the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. The real one. I hope you enjoy these little minisodes covering the bits of the American Revolution that I wasn't able to cover. I know Abram didn't want any more specials, but I'm kind of cheating. Sorry. So I came up to tell you a bedtime story.
Abram: Why are you recording this?
Joe: I don't know.
Abram: Hehe, okay, okay. What's the bedtime story?
Joe: Okay, I'm gonna try to do this correctly. All right, so Abram, once upon a time, there was a guy named William Legg.
Abram: Ha! William Legg! William Legg!
Joe: Your mother is asleep, so you should probably not do that. And he had sent a message off to Boston and General Gage, who was there, to say, hey, why don't you destroy all of the provincial arms?
Abram: William Legg. Don't you mean provincial legs?
Joe: No, I mean provincial arms, guns. And so he sent this message off, but it was intercepted by the Patriots who learned of this.
Abram: Okay. William Legg.
Joe: Correct.
Abram: Is he actually involved?
Joe: Yes, this is a true story. I'm telling you a history bedtime story.
Abram: Okay, continue.
Joe: So the Patriots had discovered this and thought, quite correctly, that the British were going to capture their stores of weapons, which they had kept in Concord. And one person in particular, a very famous person you might have heard of — Paul Revere.
Abram: They named a town after him.
Joe: Is Revere named for him?
Abram: But it's probably much older than him, so I guess not.
Joe: I have no idea. The point is that Paul Revere had set up a system where, when they discovered that the British were going to do this, they weren't sure if the British were going to do it by land or by sea. And so they set a signal in a Charlestown church steeple that would be one if by land and two if by sea.
Abram: But won't they be far enough away that they just blur together?
Joe: You know, it's a very interesting question. And in fact, they were only up there for a few minutes, and they were to be seen by the Charlestown militia so they could go inform other people. But the point is that Paul Revere now had to get a very special message out to the towns west of Boston to tell them that—
Abram: I have a question. What if there are two British forces, one by land and another by sea?
Joe: I don't think they coded all the potential possibilities.
Abram: What if William Legg came on a boat with North tied up in a bag while dancing and singing about how he's invading France while drunk?
Joe: I am fairly certain they did not come up with a number of lanterns for that one, but it would have been up there. So the point is that Paul Revere — right, what does Paul Revere do? He has his famous ride. He rows across the Charles River.
Abram: He rows across the Charles River?
Joe: In a boat, to land on the North Shore, because Boston was pretty locked down at that point. He couldn't leave. But he rows silently across the river.
Abram: Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Joe: He gets a horse and then he races off towards Lexington and Concord, not shouting, "The British are coming," because that would have given it all away, but more quietly letting everyone along the way know that in fact the British might be trying to seize the stores of goods and weapons in Concord. And he proceeds west through the Massachusetts countryside notifying people. And in fact, as he was notifying people, other people went to go on and tell other people, and there was another person doing another ride. And the point was that they were making sure to inform lots and lots of people. He gets to Lexington, where John Hancock and a few others were. They stopped, they had a meeting. He went off to continue to Concord. But guess what happened?
Abram: William Legg came on a boat dancing and singing, "Frederick North in a bag," while drunk.
Joe: No. Close, though. Close. Close. You got zero pieces of that. But close. So he got arrested. So Paul Revere never finished his ride all the way to Concord.
Abram: Is that like a well-known fact?
Joe: It is a well-known fact of people that don't read the poem. "Listen, my children, and you shall hear about the midnight ride of Paul Revere."
Abram: It didn't even finish.
Joe: Didn't finish it. But other people finished it for him.
Abram: How nice of them.
Joe: By the time the British did arrive and they started marching through Lexington, before they could get to Concord, they were met by a group of militia people who had a skirmish. Ultimately, the Patriots lost. So the British troops continued on their way to Concord, were met by an even larger force — because all of these messengers that had gone around, including Paul Revere, had gathered up the militiamen. And ultimately, the British were repelled, and they fled back to Boston, or limped back to Boston, or went back to Boston. They did not manage to get the cache of weapons that had been stored at Concord. They did not manage—
Abram: So does money equal weapons?
Joe: Uh, closely related word. The point is that — listen, my Abram, and you shall hear. That was the true story of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. And that is your bedtime story for this evening.
Abram: Hooray! Sleepy time soon. What even was that? And why did you record it?
Joe: Because I decided—
Abram: We're releasing a special!
Joe: No, listen, listen, listen. It's not that way. There's a couple more Boston stories that I was going to tell you, and I just decided I would tell them to you as bedtime stories. And maybe if I was going to tell you them, that I could record them and they would just be very fast. But that is your first Boston bedtime story. And there's two more, for another day.
Abram: Okay.
Joe: I love you, Abram. Good night.