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Analysis Of Paul Revere's Ride Longfellow

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“One if by land, and two, if by sea.” This is a line from “Paul Revere’s Ride,” talking about which route the British were talking about, but is it really accurate? “Paul Revere’s Ride,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is a poem about Revere’s famous journey and mission to warn the revolutionary sympathizers that the British were coming, and that they had to take their ammunition and put it in a safe spot. We all know this story because of how well written Longfellow’s poem was. Although his poem is accurate in some ways, it isn’t accurate in other ways. In Longfellow’s poem, he has some sound history. That night, Revere did have a mission. His mission was to warn the minutemen that the British were coming. The date was also correct. The date mentioned in the poem was April 18, …show more content…

He did this for a reason, though. This poem was written a bit before the civil war began, and Mr. Longfellow, an abolitionist, thought that the separation of the US, and the coming up Civil War was as dangerous as Revere’s mission. He wrote this in preparation that people will need to act as brave as Paul did that night in 1775, and he wanted to make Paul sound more heroic in doing this in effort to “rouse patriots from a deep indifference” (source three). So maybe it was for the better that Longfellow gave Revere more credit than he deserved. As one can see, there were quite a few historical fallacies in the poem. “Paul Revere’s Ride” is a poem about how Paul Revere, road his horse, and made it uncaptured to Concord, and told Hancock that the British were coming. But this is incorrect. Longfellow made a couple purposeful mistakes to make Paul Revere seem more of a hero than he really is. Not that he isn’t a hero, but the work was a three man job (Prescott, Revere and Dawes). As one can see, The history in Longfellow’s poem was stretched, but for a good

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