James May-June 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 71
PUBLISHER’S NOTE Preparations across the country are already occurring to celebrate our nation’s
250th anniversary next year, “The United States Semiquincentennial.” Gov. Brian Kemp formed the
Georgia US250 Commission to work with state leaders and organizations on developing a celebration program— and one of those organizations is the Georgia Historical Society. We are pleased to
publish this essay by the Society’s senior historian, Stan Deaton, PhD.
ere’s how the news alert
might look today: “This
morning, members of our
armed forces were fired upon by a
group of protesters, with many casualties on both sides. Reports are sketchy,
with few details, but first reports say
possibly as many as 300 of
our soldiers killed or wounded. It was described by military personnel as a fierce, vicious, and prolonged firefight,
and the protesters, apparently
heavily armed, went out of
their way to target our officers. It is an unprecedented
uprising, and the violence has
erupted on a scale and to a
level that will require massive
force to put down. Incredibly
many people in this country
support these protesters.”
This would have been the
official British version of the
events of April 19, 1775, on that chilly
Wednesday morning 250 years ago
when the American Revolution began.
You’ve probably never heard those
events described this way, a tribute to
the Americans involved in that struggle
and their organizational, political, and
propaganda skills, their energy and resourcefulness in exploiting technology
and communication, and their unflinching resolve that their cause was right.
It should also make us pause for
a moment and reflect that history,
like the times in which we live, can
sometimes be a dark and bloody
ground where our assumptions and
values and what we think we know
can sometimes be tested. The events
of April 19, 1775, sent shockwaves
throughout the world and changed
it forever. It was the opening act in a
struggle that continues still.
Paul Revere. The midnight ride.
Minutemen. One if by land and two if
by sea. The British are coming. Many
of the terms and phrases that came
out of that day have long since entered
into American folklore, even if the
exact meanings are not always clear.
The events of the night of April 18 and
the next morning passed into legend,
thanks in part to this: “By the rude
bridge that arched the flood, their flag
to April’s breeze unfurled, here once
the embattled farmers stood, and fired
the shot heard round the world.” And
this: “Listen my Children and you shall
hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. On the 18th of April in ’75, hardly
a man is now alive who remembers
that famous day and year…. one if by
land and two if by sea, and I on the opposite shore will be, ready to ride and
spread the alarm, to every Middlesex
village and farm, for the country folk to be up and to arm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
are responsible for putting
the events of that day into the
mainstream of American culture. Longfellow’s poem “Paul
Revere’s Ride” was first published in The Atlantic in January 1861, an instant sensation,
capturing the imagination of
the reading public. It was also
a call to arms for a new American generation, in another
moment of crisis. It made dramatically clear, in the insistent
beat of Longfellow’s meter, that one
person could make a difference in a
great cause.
The people alive then would always remember where they were and
what they were doing when they first
heard the news of the events of April
19. It became known as the Lexington
Alarm, and it would have the same
power as December 7, November 22,
and September 11. It was America’s
first collective historical memory, and
its shock would be profound.
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