Who Was Paul Revere? | 5 Minute Video

Do you know who Paul Revere was? He is one of America's key historical figures. Want to know what he did? Eric Metaxas, New York Times #1 bestselling author, shares the remarkable story.

Donate today to PragerU!

Have you taken the pledge for school choice? Click here!

Joining PragerU is free! Sign up now to get all our videos as soon as they're released.

Download Pragerpedia on your iPhone or Android! Thousands of sources and facts at your fingertips.

Join Prager United to get new swag every quarter, exclusive early access to our videos, and an annual TownHall phone call with Dennis Prager!

Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone!

Do you shop on Amazon? Click and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful.

VISIT PragerU!

FOLLOW us!

PragerU is on Snapchat!

JOIN PragerFORCE!

For Students

JOIN our Educators Network!

Script:

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere."

Have you ever heard that thrilling line? Do you even know who Paul Revere is?

If you're under, say, 30, I'm going to guess that the answer to both of these questions might be no.

This is a very serious problem, but it's not your fault. It's a serious problem because it means you have been cut off from one of our greatest American stories.

And it's not your fault because no one bothered to teach you about this courageous man and the great American poet who made him famous. It seems professional educators decided that other topics were more important to your education.

But they made a mistake. A big one.

The story of Paul Revere is part of our heritage. It, and countless other stories like it, unite us as a distinct people with a shared noble past. They also inspire us and stir national pride. These are good things, vital to the future of the country. Without them, we're just 300 million different individuals living between Canada and Mexico.

It wasn't always this way. In fact, not long ago you couldn't have left high school without memorizing the line I quoted and many of the lines that follow.

So let me right a wrong and tell you about two remarkable Americans who lived half a century apart – one a silversmith, and one a poet.

Paul Revere and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

By 1775, the American colonists and their British masters were on the verge of war. The flashpoint was Boston. It wasn't so much a matter of where the British would strike, but when. To give themselves some advance warning, the rebels created a team of couriers. One of them was a successful forty-year-old silversmith and engraver named Paul Revere.

On the night of April 18, two lanterns were lit in the tallest structure in the city, the Old North Church. This was the signal that the fateful moment had arrived. The British were coming. Revere rode out into the darkness to warn his compatriots to prepare for a fight. That fight came the next day in Lexington. The War of American Independence had begun.

But in the decades following, history mostly forgot Paul Revere. After serving in the war, he had an extraordinary career as an early industrialist, building a significant business that survives to this day as Revere Copper.

But when he died in 1818, his obituary made no mention of his daring ride. The only reason we still know of him is because of another crisis in American history – the Civil War.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had been an ardent opponent of slavery, an abolitionist, from the time he was a young man. By 1860, he was America's most famous poet. An epic struggle was coming, one that would again determine the future of the nation. He anxiously wondered whether the people of the Northern states would be up to the challenge that lay ahead. What might he do to inspire them?

Longfellow remembered a story he had read many years before about Revere's ride. He recreated it with consummate skill. As you read his glorious poem, you can almost hear the thundering hooves of the silversmith's horse. Published in a new magazine called the Atlantic Monthly in January 1861, his brilliant ballad was an immediate success.

For the complete script, visit