I'm going to sneak a midnight ride in on my boss on this, of all evenings, because it is a special night.

A legendary one in the annals of our, by European and Mediterranean standards, relatively brief but completely bad ass American history.

From 1773 to 1775, a Boston silversmith and local community rabble-rouser named Paul Revere had been a courier for the Boston Committee of Public Safety, and from 1774 to 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Revere as an express rider. Revere was a member of the Sons of Liberty group and had stood watch on The Dartmouth as chests went over the side when a band of anti-tea Indians struck one night.

It was a most peculiar thing and particularly vexing to the British.

And tensions were high.

High enough that, when British troop activity began to significantly increase during the first week of April 1775, Dr Joseph Warren (the voice of the Continental Congress in New England and who would later be mortally wounded at Bunker Hill) sent Revere to Concord, Massachusetts to warn the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the militia there to move their stores.

The British General, Sir Thomas Gage, received orders on the 14th of April to disarm the colonials and ordered his subordinate Lt Col Francis to hie thee hence to Concord to do it as quietly and neatly as humanly possible.

"with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy... all Military stores.... But you will take care that the soldiers do not pl, who was also American born.under the inhabitants or hurt private property." 

No one wanted the colonials pissed off. They wanted them unarmed.

Joseph Warren was Boston's preeminent physician in an age when that counted for a lot, and his door was open to all. One of his most devoted patients was General Gage's wife, Margaret Kemble Gage.

To this day, no one knows how much information came from Margaret, but what Dr Warren knew of unfolding events was enough to have him summon Paul Revere and another trusted Sons of Liberty brother named William Dawes in the gloaming of April 18, 1775, and task them with a mission for the ages.

The rest is history. Our history.

THE BRITISH ARE COMING

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren summoned Paul Revere and gave him the task of riding to Lexington, Massachusetts, with the news that British soldiers stationed in Boston were about to march into the countryside northwest of the town. According to Warren, these troops planned to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two leaders of the Sons of Liberty, who were staying at a house in Lexington. It was thought they would then continue on to the town of Concord, to capture or destroy military stores — gunpowder, ammunition, and several cannon — that had been stockpiled there. In fact, the British troops had no orders to arrest anyone — Dr. Warren’s intelligence on this point was faulty — but they were very much on a major mission out of Boston. Revere contacted an unidentified friend (probably Robert Newman, the sexton of Christ Church in Boston’s North End) and instructed him to hold two lit lanterns in the tower of Christ Church (now called the Old North Church) as a signal to fellow Sons of Liberty across the Charles River in case Revere was unable to leave town.

The two lanterns were a predetermined signal stating that the British troops planned to row “by sea” across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than march “by land” out Boston Neck.

Revere then stopped by his own house to pick up his boots and overcoat, and proceeded the short distance to Boston’s North End waterfront. There two friends rowed him across the river to Charlestown. Slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset in the darkness, Revere landed safely. After informing Colonel Conant and other local Sons of Liberty about recent events in Boston and verifying that they had seen his signals in the North Church tower, Revere borrowed a horse from John Larkin, a Charlestown merchant and a patriot sympathizer. While there, a member of the Committee of Safety named Richard Devens warned Revere that there were a number of British patrols in the area who might try to intercept him. 

At about eleven o’clock Revere set off on horseback. After narrowly avoiding capture just outside of Charlestown, Revere changed his planned route and rode through Medford, where he alarmed Isaac Hall, the captain of the local militia, informing him of the British movements. He then alarmed almost all the houses from Medford, through Menotomy (today’s Arlington) — carefully avoiding the Royall Mansion whose property he rode through (Isaac Royall was a well-known Loyalist) — and arrived in Lexington sometime after midnight.

William Dawes was headed out on a longer route carrying the same message.

When Revere finally hit the house in Lexington where John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying, the sentry shushed him and told him not to make so much noise.

...“Noise!” cried Revere, “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!” According to tradition, John Hancock, who was still awake, heard Revere’s voice and said “Come in, Revere! We’re not afraid of you”. He entered the house and delivered his message.

Dawes, Revere, and another rider, Samuel Prescott, all met up in Lexington, 'refreshed themselves,' and were headed on to Concord, but were stopped by a British patrol. Revere didn't manage to get away with the other two, and was held and questioned for some time before being allowed to leave...without a horse.

A footsore Revere said he got back to Lexington in time to see the latter stages of the action on Lexington Green.

It is said by the end of the night, thanks to his ride, there were more than forty riders pounding through the countryside raising the alarm that 'The regulars are out!' And utilized a colonial system developed and tweaked after years of Indian raids to respond to movements of the British Army.

...The ride of the three men triggered a flexible system of "alarm and muster" that had been carefully developed months before, in reaction to the colonists' impotent response to the Powder Alarm of September 1774. This system was an improved version of an old network of widespread notification and fast deployment of local militia forces in times of emergency. The colonists had periodically used this system all the way back to the early years of Indian wars in the colony, before it fell into disuse in the French and Indian War. For rapid communication from town to town—in addition to other express riders delivering messages—bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires, and a trumpet were used, notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages that they should muster their militias because the regulars in numbers greater than 500 were leaving Boston with possible hostile intentions. This system was so effective that people in towns 25 miles (40 km) from Boston were aware of the army's movements while it was still unloading boats in Cambridge.^[18] Unlike in the Powder Alarm, the alarm raised by the three riders successfully allowed the militia to confront the British troops in Concord, and then harry them all the way back to Boston.

Americans. We always adapt.

And overcome.

Revere's ride would allow sufficient militia to gather on the greens of Lexington and Concord that next day for when 'The Shot Heard 'Round the World' burst forth from someone's gun.

And then it was on for real.

All thanks to 'one if by land, two if by sea,' a midnight ride, and the hand of Providence.