Paul Revere's Midnight Ride

None were found.

Had he been carrying arms, the story of the midnight ride might have ended differently.

Then Major Mitchell himself came up to Paul Revere in a high temper.

"He clapped a pistol to my head," Revere remembered, "and said he was a-going to ask me some questions, and if I did not tell the truth, he would blow my brains out." Paul Revere was angered by those words and told the major that he did not need a threat to make him speak the truth.

Their participation did not in any way diminish his role, but actually enlarged it Most of those riding knew nothing about the others, nothing whatsoever.

The more we learn about these messengers, the more interesting Paul Revere's part becomes, not merely as a solitary courier, but as an organizer and promoter of a common effort in the cause of freedom.

Earlier that evening, while Paul Revere was making ready for his own midnight ride, he and his Whig friends began the work of dispatching other couriers with news of the British march.

While he was still in Charlestown, preparing to travel west to Lexington, arrangements were made for another express to gallop north with the news that he had brought from Boston.