I"ll bet he knows that Paul Revere wasn't warning the British.
I'm glad you called me out to put on my Palin apologist hat and look at this latest Palin episode. As a result, and thanks to Sarah Palin, I'm learning a lot about Paul Revere that I never knew before. The defenders of Palin are linking to me primary sources and history books. Meanwhile, the Palin bashers only knew the legend of Paul Revere as we learned it from a
Longfellow poem that was written around the time of the Civil War and sought to pluck a figure out of the history of the American Revolution and build him up as a national hero:
The basic premise of Longfellow's poem is historically accurate, but Paul Revere's role is exaggerated. The most glaring inconsistencies between the poem and the historical record are that Revere was not the only rider that night, nor did he make it all the way to Concord, but was captured and then let go (without his horse) in Lexington, where he had stopped to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the impending attack.
Longfellow's intention was not to write a history; it was to create a national hero and he was successful at doing so. During a time of great national upheaval, people seized on Paul Revere as an example of the county's noble past.
What kind of morons consider that the most complete and accurate history?
You claimed Palin should have bothered to ask someone to talk to her about Paul Revere. Not sure if you really care what you're posting, as you're probably still in the troll mode you were back when I was in this forum in before. But, it turns out she had listened to a history presentation about Paul Revere at the location where this "gotcha" took place. I guess that's where she heard some of the tidbits about Paul Revere's history that are more obscure and that sent so many people into a tizzy after she referenced them.
She says she was asked a condescending "gotcha" question. Perhaps that's why she decided to refer to lesser known facts about Paul Revere's history, and to annoy her enemies by highlighting the part of Paul Revere's mission that was to protect the colonist' arms from the British, linking Revere with those who care about the right to bear arms today.
She wasn't in top form, and so her comment wasn't very articulate. And, she was being impressionistic rather than precise. That she was inarticulate is understandable, as she had a mic shoved in her face after a long, tiring day, and she was surrounded by a lot of distractions. And, I'm not sure why anyone would expect her to be anything but impressionistic and imprecise. Those who claimed she was a moron are not giving us the accurate history while they fact-check her, and they can sit at their computers and look it up.
Anyway, I find it interesting that Paul Revere had been detained by the British along the way and that he warned them that he'd just gone up the countryside notifying the colonists. At gunpoint he apparently conned the British about the colonists' troop levels, scaring them into believing that an exaggerated number of minutemen would be waiting to fight to protect their weapons. By misleading the British with his warning, Revere made the British poop in their pants, and that played a significant role in the events that followed. Revere's warning caused the British to panic when they heard a shot and then bells, as Revere had gotten them to think this would signal more troops than were really there. Well, I might be fuzzy on some of that; I'm only just learning about some of this the last two days thanks to Sarah Palin.
