Paul Revere's Ride

It is a matter of historical record, which Longfellow knew, that Paul Revere did not ride alone that night and was actually stopped by British regulars before he reached Concord. By the time of the poem’s publication, however, American history had marginalized Paul Revere as a footnote, one of many anonymous colonial insurgents.

As such, Longfellow essentially created Paul Revere as a character. The poem, then, raises questions about the relationship between poetry and history. Longfellow could have invented entirely the circumstances and the characters of this heroic stand against British occupation of colonial New England without invoking the historical personage of Paul Revere. In creating Paul Revere, Longfellow as poet does what historians cannot: He selects his details and shapes them into high drama and, in turn, reimagines a minor historical personage into a mythic folk hero.

In drawing on a historical figure, Longfellow not only gives his national myth a grounding in reality but also raises complicated questions about the use (and potential abuse) of historical figures to promote national myths. History does not invent. A young George Washington never lied about cutting down a cherry tree, Pocahontas never fell in love with English captain John Smith, and a Philadelphia seamstress named Betsy Ross did not sew America’s first flag—but Longfellow suggests in his heroic re-envisioning of Paul Revere that nations find their identity in such myths, that fiction can be truer than fact.