Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer

recite stanzas they learned in their youth, long after their memory of more recent events has faded. Whatever the failings of the poem as an historical account, it gave new life and symbolic meaning to its subject. It also elevated Paul Revere into figure of high national prominence, and made the midnight ride an important event in American history.
    Longfellow’s interpretation of Paul Revere was taken up by many popular writers who came after him. Several generations of American artists also borrowed Longfellow’s theme of the lone rider. Howard Laskey in 1891 did a drawing called “The Ride,” in which Paul Revere and his galloping horse appeared entirely alone, floating in an empty space with nothing in sight but their own shadow. 21 Grant Wood in 1931 did a striking painting of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” (1931), which gave the same interpretation a differenttwist. The midnight rider appeared as a dark, faceless, solitary figure, galloping alone through an eery New England townscape that appeared sterile and lifeless in the brilliant moonlight.

    Grant Wood,
Paul Revere’s Ride,
1931. The painter gives us a new version of Longfellow’s myth with a 20th-century twist. Paul Revere appears as a lone midnight rider, galloping across a sterile, soulless American landscape. (Courtesy, Metropolitan Museum of Art and VAGA, Inc.)
     
    Longfellow’s interpretation was given a new form in 1914 by Thomas Edison, who made a silent film called “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” Like many autodidacts, Edison was deeply contemptuous of schools and scholars. “I should say,” he wrote, “that on the average we only get about two percent efficiency out of school books as they are written today. The education of the future as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture, a visualized education, where it should be possible to obtain a one hundred percent efficiency.” To that end, Edison made a film of Paul Revere’s ride as a way of teaching American history through the camera. His interpretation closely followed Longfellow’s poem in substance and detail—myths, legends, errors, pigeons and all. 22
    Myths for Imperial America: Colonel Revere as a Man on Horseback
     
    Thanks largely to Longfellow’s poem, Paul Revere’s stature increased steadily during the late 19th century, and spread throughout the United States. Towns were named after him not merely in New England, but also in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Missouri.
    The centennial celebrations of the American Revolution that began in 1875 also inspired much popular interest in his life and work. Many celebrations were held in that year,when President Ulysses Grant himself came to Lexington and Concord. The Old North Church began to keep the custom of its annual “lantern ceremony.”
    The Paul Revere of the late 19th century began to be given a new persona, that was thought to be more meaningful in a different era of American history. During this period he was commonly called Colonel Revere, the military title that came to him later in the War of Independence. Increasingly he became a militant symbol of American strength, power and martial courage.
    In 1885 the city of Boston decided that this man on horseback needed an appropriate equestrian monument. It sponsored a prize competition that was won by an unknown young artist named Cyrus Dallin, an American sculptor who later came to be widely known for his muscular Puritans, melancholy Indians, heroic pioneers, and courageous soldiers of the Civil War. Dallin’s monumental Paul Revere was the proverbial man on horseback, a militant figure standing straight up in his long stirrup leathers, in a costume that was cut to resemble a Continental uniform. The midnight rider appeared as a strident symbol of American power, with bulging muscles, a military appearance, and a murderous expression. To complete the effect, even the horse was transformed. Deacon Larkin’s mare Brown Beauty