"On the Eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five"

“On the Eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five.” Do understand that the line is not referring to 1975 or even 1875 but 1775! The words come from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” The poem, famous in American Literature and American History, was written in 1860.

The need for a way to alert the revolutionaries was known and planned for in the months before April, 1775. Actually, a century before, a system of alarms was employed by the early colonists to rally settlers during the Indian Wars. This was reorganized in the early years of colonial unrest and was rea...