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Straight from the Source Close Readings for Elementary Social Studies The Midnight Ride: Start of the American Revolution Grade Level: 3 MA Standards: 3.5 Explain important political, economic, and military developments leading to the American Revolution. 3.10 Identify historic buildings, monuments, or sites in the area and explain their purpose and significance. Common Core Standards: RI.3.1; RI.3.2; RI.3.4; RI.3.7; RI.3.9; W.3.1; W.3.2 Image Source: By Richard Wood from Tacoma, Washington, USA (Boston 2010-05-02-15) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Abstract: Students read passages from Paul Revere’s own account of his famous midnight ride of April 19, 1775. Revere’s letter engages students with an exciting, up-close view of the events that triggered the American Revolution, while allowing them to consider the balance of individual and collective action in a movement for political change. In the accompanying activities students practice the important social studies skills of mapping and sequencing historical events and examine how Revere was portrayed in John Singleton Copley’s famous portrait. Writing prompts are provided for the Common Core text types, as well as an accompanying academic vocabulary list. Straight from the Source: Revere’s Midnight Ride Rationale and Source Context: In the decade from 1765 to 1775, tensions between the British government and its rebellious North American colonists reached a crisis point. They boiled over into war when the first shots of the American Revolution rang out in Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775 – commemorated in Massachusetts as Patriot’s Day. Paul Revere’s letter describing his midnight ride gives a first-hand view of that day, and of events leading to the Revolution’s first battle. Who was Paul Revere and what was his role in the patriot movement? Born in Boston, 1734, he was an artist and master silversmith, an engraver and entrepreneur, a father and an active church member. Revere was also a political organizer and activist of capability, passion and talent. Revere believed that free-born American men like himself had the right to self-government, and he joined the colonial resistance in Massachusetts to preserve that right. Revere was not a top leader of the revolutionary movement. Those were men from the colony’s social and economic elite: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Joseph Warren most notably. (All three men are named in Revere’s letter and crucial to the events he describes.) Revere played a different role – an intermediary, trusted by those both above and below him on the social ladder, an active man who knew how to get things done. Historian David Hackett Fisher aptly describes him as “an organizer of collective effort in the American Revolution” who had “an uncanny genius for being at the center of events.” His “midnight ride,” described in the letter, exemplifies that role. By the time Revere’s narration begins, the distrust and hostility between Britain’s colonial administrators and the rebellious colonists of Massachusetts had created a volatile situation. Boston by 1774 was a city under military occupation. Armed British soldiers (called “regulars”) patrolled the streets, loitered by shops and stables and on the wharves, and even lived in people’s homes by order of the British crown. Boston’s residents bitterly resented the soldiers and taunted them when an opportunity arose. This dangerous back and forth had already led to violence, with the Boston Massacre of 1770 – a tragedy turned to useful propaganda for the patriot cause by Paul Revere’s widely distributed engraving of the event. Beyond the level of the street, political and military developments had also come to a crisis point in Massachusetts. The British crown had abolished the colony’s long-standing right to self- government. But colonial leaders governed illegally, in defiance of British orders. Massachusetts militia companies, formerly serving the British crown, transferred their loyalty to the rebellious provincial government. Patriot rebels collected and concealed stores of gunpowder and weapons. Despite these troubles, General Thomas Gage, Britain’s military governor, still believed in early 1775 that the rebellion could be stamped out and armed conflict avoided. Disarming the militias was key. Gage employed a network of spies to inform him of every patriot move. These sources identified the rebel powder supply at Concord as a key target. Gage also planned to arrest Hancock and Adams, who were taking shelter in Lexington. But the patriots too had an active and capable network of spies. Alerted to the British plan in the days and hours before it launched, the rebels developed a counter-response: sending messengers to Concord and Lexington, they would warn the militias and get their leaders to safety. Here the central events of Revere’s account begin. Straight from the Source: Revere’s Midnight Ride Revere penned this account of the midnight ride long after the events, perhaps more than two decades later. He wrote at the request of Jeremy Belknap, a clergyman and historian, also born in Boston, who initiated a project after the Revolution to collect the records of the new nation’s birth. The tale of the midnight ride is an exciting one. But Revere wrote to Belknap in an unembellished and understated style. His corrections and cross-outs, still visible in the manuscript, show a conscientious author trying to get the facts straight. Revere described in sequence, almost hour by hour, the events preceding the Battle of Lexington and Concord as he knew them. Revere apparently sought no personal glory in writing his account: he signed it by name at first, but later crossed through his signature, asking Belknap to call him an anonymous “son of liberty.” (Belknap evidently ignored this request when he published the letter.) Revere is often remembered as the courageous solo rider of the Revolution – due in part to the iconic poem of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But Revere’s own account stresses collective as much as individual effort. It teems with people, named and unnamed, each given credit for individual contributions to the cause. Revere acknowledges, too, that his account is only one version of the story, limited to what he saw and heard on that eventful and chaotic night. Sensibly, he urged Belknap to ask others what they recalled of the same event – valuable advice for anyone who seeks to know the truth about the past. Paul Revere’s letter shows that people of Massachusetts and Boston played a critical role in the making of the American Revolution. Use it in conjunction with supporting material to introduce 3rd graders to the Revolution and help them develop key social studies skills, including the mapping and sequencing of historical events. Original Source: “Letter from Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap, circa 1798.” Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. Collections Online. http://www.masshist.org/database/99 Text Complexity (Grade-Level Edited Text)* Lexile ATOS Degrees of Flesch-Kincaid Reading Power 1020L 5.9 55 5.9 *The readability measures listed here refer to the adapted grade-level edited version of the text, not the original text. Straight from the Source: Revere’s Midnight Ride Suggested Guidance for Teaching Close Reading of Text with Accompanying Materials Pre- 1. Introduce students to the growing tension between Britain and its colony of Readin Massachusetts in the 1770s. Use a children’s non-fiction book or magazine about g the coming of the American Revolution (see recommendations under “Additional Resources), or this short entry on Revolutionary Boston from the website Liberty’s Kids: https://web.archive.org/web/20041025131807/http://www.libertyskids.com/arch_wh ere_boston.html (Students can follow the hyperlinks to learn more about events and people in Boston’s Revolutionary history. Student teams can become class “experts” on John Hancock, Samuel Adams, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and other related items.) 2. Project the image of Paul Revere’s original letter describing his midnight ride: http://www.masshist.org/database/99 (Double-click on the image to open in a separate window. Here you can use the scanning and enlarging features to help students focus on special details.) Have students make and share open-ended observations about the first and last pages (e.g. this document is written by hand; the paper looks old; some words are crossed out; it looks like a letter; the individual words or letters they recognize, etc.). Ask them to guess who wrote the document and where the author’s name might be found. After they identify Paul Revere’s name from the last page of the document, ask students what they know or have heard about him. Record their answers. 3. Explain that students will now read a printed version of the original Paul Revere letter they examined. Ask students to pre-read the text independently, one paragraph at a time. After each paragraph ask them to pause and summarize the main action that took place in that passage, individually or in small groups. Compare individual summaries and record a class summary of events. Post these in chronological sequence around the room. Straight from the Source: Revere’s Midnight Ride 1st Reading: 4. Focus on these questions for the first reading of the text: Key Ideas and a. In the beginning of this document, what reasons did Paul Revere Details give for recording his memories? (Paragraph 1) b. What details tell you that secrecy was important to the patriots of Boston? (Paragraph 3) c. What did Revere and the patriot’s committee observe the week of April 15th that made them suspicious about British plans? (Paragraph 5) d.

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