Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [67]
The Minutemen were called that because they could be ready for battle in a minute, having been preparing for years to launch a disciplined military response. They were not a rabid mob, full of festering hatreds, ready to dash out and impale their fellow citizens. (And virtually none of these brave men under arms, I might add, were dating one another.) They were a citizen army with ranks, subordination, coordination, drills, and supplies.
The spark that ignited the first battles of the Revolution was the news that British troops—who were under constant surveillance by Paul Revere and others—were on the move, planning to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock that night in Lexington.
Luckily, the Minutemen had planned ahead and were not lunatics running around in a burst of manic energy guillotining people, like the French. Because the Minutemen had been watching and waiting, they knew exactly what the British were up to. Indeed, Paul Revere knew more about the Redcoats’ plans that night than the British soldiers themselves did.
Although most Whig leaders had fled Boston to avoid arrest, a few remained, including Doctor Joseph Warren. Through his confidential source—probably the American wife of British general Thomas Gage—Warren confirmed the British plans to arrest the two revolutionary leaders. By prearrangement, Warren contacted Paul Revere.12
Warren had already sent two other messengers to warn Adams and Hancock. One was William Dawes; the other is unknown to history. All three men took different routes to Lexington in order to increase the odds that at least one of them would make it. (Why? Yes, that is correct: because they had planned ahead.)
Fearing that none of them would make it past the British across the Charles River out of Boston, Revere had arranged with the sexton of a Boston church to signal the countryside with lanterns in the steeple window. The British were going by sea, so the sexton sneaked past the British regulars in Boston, climbed the 154 steps of the Anglican Christ Church—whose minister was a Loyalist—and held two lanterns outside the steeple window. The Charlestown Whigs, waiting and watching, saw the brief flicker of two lights in the distance and knew the British were leaving by boat. They sprang to action, preparing to receive Revere and provide him with a horse.13
It is precisely this advance preparation that is celebrated in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea.”14 By contrast, the French Revolutionary ditty “It Shall Be” includes the line “Take the aristocrats to the lantern and hang them.”
Every detail of Paul Revere’s ride had been meticulously arranged with scores of other American patriots. Even the horse Revere rode, Brown Beauty, had been carefully chosen by the Whigs as the best horse for the job. And indeed, Brown Beauty was so sure-footed, she allowed Revere to escape his first British ambush that night.
Revere alerted Whig leaders in towns all along his ride, setting off a chain of communication to the Minutemen throughout the countryside. The town leaders—doctors, lawyers, and ministers—spread the alarm with bells, drums, cannon, and musket fire. “The astonishing speed of this communication,” historian David Hackett Fischer writes, “did not occur by accident. It was the result of careful preparation.”15
At around midnight, Revere arrived at the house where Adams and Hancock were staying and was promptly rebuffed by the Lexington militiaman standing guard, who told Revere to stop making so much noise or he’d wake up everyone. “Noise?” Revere replied. “You’ll have noise enough before long! The Regulars are coming!”16
With Adams and Hancock awake, and Dawes arriving half an hour later, the men went to a tavern to talk things over with the Lexington militia. (The third man, whoever he was, never arrived.) Wondering why the British were mobilizing so many troops for a simple arrest, they soon realized the British were planning to seize the Americans’ artillery