Media, Politics, Uncategorized

The Bells Are Ringing: Sarah Palin and the Revised Story of Paul Revere’s Ride

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

I’m sure most Americans are aware that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been on a bus tour along the east coast of the United States. What is the purpose of her tour? Only Palin knows for sure. She did, however, provide people with her reason for taking this tour of historical places on her Sarah PAC website.

It’s interesting when (for the 100th time) reporters shout out, “Why are you traveling to historical sites? What are you trying to accomplish?” I repeat my answer, “It’s so important for Americans to learn about our past so we can clearly see our way forward in challenging times; so, we’re bringing attention to our great nation’s foundation.” When that answer isn’t what the reporters want to hear, we’ve asked them if they’ve ever visited these sites like the National Archives, Gettysburg, etc. When they confirm that they haven’t, it’s good to say, “Well, there you go. You’ll learn a lot about America today.” (They usually don’t want to hear that either!)

Last Thursday, Palin stopped in Boston for a tour of three Revolutionary War sites. She said she was “getting goose bumps’’ from all the history she was glimpsing in Boston. She added, “You’ve got to know a lot about our past in order to know how to proceed successfully into the future.’’ And thanks to Palin we’re learning history anew as she provides reporters with her version of American historical events when she speaks to them on stops along her way.

After visiting the Old North Church in Boston’s North End, she hailed Paul Revere and what he did on his “famous ride.” Here is how Palin described that event: …he who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we’re gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we we’re gonna be armed.

Got that? Revere warned the British! That’s news to me. And to think that I thought for decades that Paul Revere had been riding around on his horse warning certain American colonists about the British. The archivist at the Cambridge Public Library doesn’t know what really happened that fateful night either. The archivist wrote the following in a blog post: “Paul Revere and his famous midnight ride is so much a part of the collective memory of the American Revolution that it is often forgotten that Revere was just one of several men and one woman who alerted the Minutemen of the impending British advancement.”

I guess the History Channel got it wrong too. Following is what I found on the channel’s website. It includes no mention of bells.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.

The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a British military action for some time, and, upon learning of the British plan, Revere and Dawes set off across the Massachusetts countryside. They took separate routes in case one of them was captured: Dawes left the city via the Boston Neck peninsula and Revere crossed the Charles River to Charlestown by boat. As the two couriers made their way, Patriots in Charlestown waited for a signal from Boston informing them of the British troop movement. As previously agreed, one lantern would be hung in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church, the highest point in the city, if the British were marching out of the city by Boston Neck, and two lanterns would be hung if they were crossing the Charles River to Cambridge. Two lanterns were hung, and the armed Patriots set out for Lexington and Concord accordingly. Along the way, Revere and Dawes roused hundreds of Minutemen, who armed themselves and set out to oppose the British.

Tim Murphy—snarking little fellow—wrote this in an article at Mother Jones: “We don’t mean to nitpick—we just think that if you launch a major publicity tour on the subject of great moments in American history, it might make sense to brush up on the details first. We can only imagine how Palin might try to spin this: ‘Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. If the story doesn’t sound like what you read on Wikipedia, you know who to blame: the elite liberal media.’”

It’s just not fair! Tim Murphy and other members of the “lamestream media” love to make fun of Palin. I don’t understand why. She’s only trying to give us the scoop on what really happened in our country’s past—just like Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota. Thank heavens we have women so well versed in American history that they can enlighten us today with their knowledge.

SOURCES

Palin hits town to pick her spots, take her shots (Boston Globe)

Just passing through (Boston Globe)

Reminding Reporters, too, of America’s Foundations (Sarah PAC)

Sarah Palin’s Reasons for Bus Tour Misguided (Yahoo)

Paul Revere’s Ride, Reimagined by Sarah Palin (Mother Jones)

The Other Paul Revere: William Dawes’ Midnight Ride through Cambridge (The Cambridge Room)

Revere and Dawes warn of British attack (History.com)

831 thoughts on “The Bells Are Ringing: Sarah Palin and the Revised Story of Paul Revere’s Ride”

  1. Issue 2: Revere Did warn the British that They Were Not Going to Be taking American Arms

    One of the prisoners, Elijah Sanderson, listened at a distance and later remembered, “I heard him speak up with energy to them.”
    “Gentlemen,” Revere told them, “you’ve missed your aim.”
    “What of our aim?” one answered in a “hard” tone. Another insisted that they were out after deserters, a frequent employment of British officers in America.
    “I know better,” Paul Revere boldly replied. “I know what you are after and have alarmed the country all the way up.”
    … Paul Revere proceeded to tell his astonished captors more than they knew about their own mission …
    … He also told them what he had been doing that night, and warned that he had alarmed the militia at Lexington, and their lives would be at risk if they lingered near that town. “I should have 500 men there soon,” he said …

    Fischer at Kindle Locations 7637-7639 Citing Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Sanderson, Deposition, 32; (Sanderson’s version of this conversation is generally consistent with Revere’s deposition, but more detailed and dramatic. Here as elsewhere, Paul Revere’s three accounts err on the side of understatement.)

  2. Instead of battling layman to layman with Buddha, I’m just going to have Paul Revere expert David Hackett Fischer do it for me. All quotes from Fischer, David Hackett (1995). Paul Revere’s Ride Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

    Issue 1: The British Were Attempting to Seize American arms

    This soldier [Gage] who hated war did not wish to use force against the Americans, except as a last resort. His purpose was to remove from Yankee hands the means of violent resistance until a time when cooler heads would prevail. To that end, General Gage proposed to disarm New England by a series of small surgical operations—meticulously planned, secretly mounted, and carried forward with careful economy of force. His object was not to provoke war but to prevent one.
    New England’s Whig leaders were vulnerable to such a strategy. Many weapons were in the hands of the people, but not enough for a long struggle against the King’s troops, and there was no easy source of resupply. Few firearms were manufactured in New England; gunpowder had to be imported from abroad. This gave General Gage his opportunity. While still in his summer house at Danvers, he began to plan a series of missions against the arsenals and powderhouses of New England designed to remove as many munitions as possible—enough to make it impossible for the people of that region to make a determined stand against him.
    The plan had one major weakness. It could only succeed by surprise. The people of New England were jealous of their liberties, including their liberty to keep and bear arms.

    Fischer, Kindle Locations 860-873, (1994) citing Gage to Dartmouth, Aug. 27, 1774, Gage Correspondence, I, 365, 367

  4. Mike, I doubt psychotic unless somebody shows me some concrete evidence. However, I can buy into sociopathy. In the DSM it would be listed under antisocial personality disorder. I do believe a lot of them are well socialized sociopaths or psychopaths.

    As for better living through chemistry, that has occurred to me. Either that or she is an untreated manic. Or both.

  5. Elaine,

    Thanks for the link, read the article and want to check out the guy’s book. The notion that lack of empathy is one of the prime detectors of psychopathy is one I’m aware of and we curiously see it in a few who post here. I’m not naming names of course.

  7. OS,

    I no longer have a DSM, but from my experience I would call her Borderline, manifesting narcissism. Definitely AXIS II and I’d love to know if there are drugs involved also and I don’t mean grass.

    BTW, my wife mentioned late last night, that she saw via twitter, that Forbes Magazine has an article out about a study that claims a high percentage of CEO’s exhibit psychotic features. I long suspected that. Have you any info on it, I’m going to google it later.

  8. Mike, I could not agree more. Axis II, y’think? 😆

    I have been trying to figure out where she would fall on the Axis II spectrum. Mixed type no doubt, but a LOT of narcissism there. Borderline too.

  9. “Except one of her main sponsors in this case was the NRA: “……they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms…..” And so forth.”

    OS,

    Good point. This shameless self promoter makes The Kardashian’s and Paris Hilton
    seem demure by comparison. The truth is she could care less about being President, her goal is being/staying rich and famous, the presumed Presidential pursuit merely her vehicle.

  10. I was at a graduation ceremony, looks like I didn’t miss anything.

    Is the defense resting?

  11. Mike sez: “Palin rendered a stupid paraphrasing of history, in order to appeal to her Tea Bagging base.”

    *******************************************

    Mike, you missed one of the key elements of her comments. She was a shameless in promoting her sponsors as a NASCAR driver in a post-race interview: “Our Lowe’s Home Improvement Chevrolet was fast all day, and I want to thank our Lowe’s crew”…and so on.

    Except one of her main sponsors in this case was the NRA: “……they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms…..” And so forth.

  12. This has become the neverending story of a troll who continues on after having been thoroughly put to shame, exposed his ignorance and laid bare his lack of honesty.
    Any fair observer of this whole process must conclude that this man is either paid or deluded. On the other hand it has amply displayed the debating talents of Buddha, OS,
    Bob & Elaine, all of which are stylistically different, thus serving as a good lesson in rhetoric and logic. Thank you Kderosa for serving as our equivalent of a tackling dummy.

  13. Buddha and OS,

    BDAman posted two letters from Paul Revere 4 or 5 posts in, and he and Elaine had a discussion about his three surviving accounts (two letters and a deposition), in which the deposition was actually explicitly mentioned. So, we’ve got that going for us.

  14. “It seems that what is happening here is a splitting of hairs to misdirect”

    Exactly true! In your blithe stupidity Billy B. you have correctly identified kderosa’s strategy. He is redefining meanings of a historical occurrence to cover the fact that Ms.
    Palin rendered a stupid paraphrasing of history, in order to appeal to her Tea Bagging
    base. He is “misdirecting” us away from Palin’s self serving blunder to protect his cause. Nice of you to drop in to give him support. Convenient some might say. The truth is though both you and he argue in vain, because not only are you wrong, lying about history, but more importantly you exhibit no sense of shame for your duplicity.

  15. “I also think that no one here knew about Paul Revere’s deposition until kderosa posted it.”

    *********************************************

    Really? You know that how? On a personal note, my first encounter with it was in 8th grade Civics. Later in the 11th grade we revisited it in my Government class. And again in high school English when we were picking apart Longfellow’s poem. The English teacher did that to help us understand both poetic license and to work on analytical thinking. That latter is something the trolls around here, as well as St. Sarah, could use in large quantities.

    This is a blog inhabited by educated people, not folks who depend on gossip, Google and Roger Ailes for their knowledge of history and the world.

  16. Billy B., G.G., whatever,

    First, your understanding of causation is piss poor. That bit of drivel deserves no further address.

    Second, 600 posts is nothing. We’ve kept trolls spinning for as long as 1,400 posts around here. Why? Because it’s funny and it amuses us. You do not know our shape of victory, so do not think you can discern our strategies. Or attempt to and be wrong. See if I care.

  17. what was the impetus for all of the action that occurred that night? It was Paul Revere’s ride. So I would say it is legitimate to say Paul Revere caused bells to ring and shots to be fired.

    It seems that what is happening here is a splitting of hairs to misdirect, Palin had it essentially correct. The left cannot stand it and so must denigrate. I doubt anyone posting here knew the full history of Revere’s Ride until Palin said what she said. I know I didn’t, because it isn’t taught in public schools in any depth.

    I also think that no one here knew about Paul Revere’s deposition until kderosa posted it. The idea someone would wait almost 600 posts before replying is laughable at best.

    I can see waiting a strategic amount of time to pull a gotcha, but come on, 600 posts? No way.

  18. kderosa, you should stick to playing with your blocks. I have a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary right here, along with a copy of Merriam-Webster unabridged and a half dozen other dictionaries. I do not have to resort to an internet search to look up a word. Your understanding of both legal cites as well as word definitions leaves a lot to be desired.

    As for your responses to Buddha’s posting of Revere’s own sworn testimony regarding his actions and the events of that night, with the side-by-side comparison to Palin’s mangled version of events, speaks for itself. Your attempt to introduce the words of someone who was many miles away at the time as an authoritative source bespeaks your failure to understand the nature of live testimony versus hearsay. Or even gossip.

    Sarah Palin’s words are in reference to what she thought Revere did. Object and verb agree in her statements with reference to Paul Revere. You do not get to move the goalposts in the middle of a game. Now run along. This is a blawg for grownups.

    If that is the way she responds to questions posed to her, and we know for a fact it is, then it is a wonder she ever got out of Junior High.

    As for you, when you get your butt kicked, instead of admitting someone else may know more than you, you just double down on the stupid. How do you think that makes you look?

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