Paul+Revere

__**The Historic History of Paul Revere,**__ n the night 18th and 19th of April, Paul makes his famous Midnight Ride to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British are marching to arrest them. Along with William Dawes and other riders, he warns the countryside of the British march. He witnesses the "shot heard 'round the world" as fighting breaks out in Lexington.Paul Revere made a painting of the Boston Massacre.Here is his paiting of the Boston Massacre.

The Coming of the Revolution 1773-1776
Deteriorating relations between England and the American colonies noticeably worsened in the 1763-1773 decade, with serious dissension arising over the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and the Tea Act. The Boston Tea Party in 1773, a dramatic defiance of British authority by the radicals in Boston, led directly to the passage by parliament in 1774 of the Coercive or Intolerable Acts which gave England almost total control of the government and trade of Massachusetts. Connecticut's leaders felt deep sympathy for Massachusetts, a feeling strengthened by the British closing of the port of Boston, where many Connecticut merchants regularly traded. Numerous Connecticut towns, such as Farmington and Norwich, established committees of correspondence and passed resolutions denouncing British actions. In October 1774 Mansfield passed the "Mansfield Declaration of Independence," a vigorous affirmation of the need to retain the natural and constitutional rights of the colonists but falling far short of a true declaration of independence. The assembly enacted stringent anti-Tory laws, and ardent Loyalists such as the Reverend Samuel Peters (1735-1826) of Hebron were harassed and persecuted, causing some, including Peters, to flee to areas under the control of British troops. For several decades the eastern part of Connecticut had been poorer and more radical than western Connecticut. By late 1774, however, many western towns such as Norfolk, Stratford, and Greenwich had passed resolutions supporting the American cause. Known Loyalists in towns like Newtown and Ridgefield found themselves under intense surveillance by Whigs from nearby towns. When fighting erupted at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, some 3,600 Connecticut militiamen rushed to the Boston area. A special session of the General Assembly, convening on April 26, enacted an embargo on food exports and ordered one-fourth of the militia to be ready for active militia service. Further preparedness measures were passed at the regular May session. That same month many Connecticut men, including Benedict Arnold (1740/41-1801), participated in the seizure of Fort Ticonderoga to secure some much-needed cannon. In June Connecticut soldiers fought well under Israel Putnam (1717/18-1790) at the bloody battle of Bunker Hill. Paul Revere Paul Revere, the folk hero of the American Revolution whose dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775 warning Boston-area residents that the British were coming, was immortalized in a ballad by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Revere was mainly distinguished in the colonial era as a master silversmith -- a craft he learned from his father, Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot refugee who changed his name to Revere in the New World. To support his large family, the versatile and energetic craftsman also made surgical instruments, sold spectacles, replaced missing teeth, and engraved copper plates, the most famous of which portrayed his version of the Boston Massacre. In the 1770s Revere immersed himself in the movement toward political independence from Great Britain. As the acknowledged leader of Boston's mechanic class, he proved an invaluable link between artisan and intellectual. In 1773 he donned Indian garb and joined 50 other patriots in the Boston Tea Party protest against parliamentary taxation without representation. Although many have questioned the historical liberties taken in Longfellow's narrative poem, Paul Revere's Ride (1863), the fact is that the legendary figure served for years as the principal rider for Boston's Committee of Safety, making journeys to New York and Philadelphia in its service. On April 16, 1775, he rode to nearby Concord to urge the patriots to move their military stores endangered by pending British troop movements. Finally, two days later, he set out on his most famous journey to alert his countrymen that the redcoats were on the march, particularly in search of Revolutionary leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams. http://www.paulreverehouse.org/
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http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/massacre.html Here is the PowerPoint: [|www.earlyamerica.com/paul_revere.htm].