Paul Revere Never Shouted the British Are Coming and Six More Revolution Myths

The most famous midnight ride in American history is partly an accident of poetry. A poem published on the eve of the Civil War turned a careful, secret, well-organized warning into a one-man gallop with a catchphrase, and the country has been quoting the poem ever since as if it were the minutes of the meeting.

I do not say this to cut down the heroes. I say it because the true record of the Revolution is better than the legend, and because a movement that claims to conserve a country's inheritance ought to know what is in the inheritance. Here are seven claims that Americans repeat with total confidence. Each is stated, tested against the evidence, and given a verdict.

Myth One: Paul Revere Rode Alone, Shouting That the British Were Coming

The claim. On the night of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere galloped through the countryside crying out that the British were coming.

The record. Revere was one of several riders, and he did not shout. The whole operation depended on secrecy. British officers and soldiers were out on the roads that night, and a rider who bellowed through the villages would have been arrested before he reached the next one, and would have made the worst secret agent in the history of secrets. Revere's job was to carry a quiet warning, door to door and to local militia leaders. Revere's own later account has him warning that "the Regulars are coming out," and the colonists still thought of themselves as British subjects, so "the British are coming" is probably not what anyone said. The warning that the "regulars" were on the move is closer to the mark.

Revere was not alone. William Dawes rode out by a different route. A young doctor, Samuel Prescott, joined Revere on the road to Concord. A British patrol stopped them near Lincoln. Revere was captured, Dawes got away, and it was Prescott who carried the alarm to Concord. Beyond those three, there was a network of riders, church bells, drums and gunshots spreading the news from town to town. The famous poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," was written in 1860 and first published at the turn of 1860 and 1861. Longfellow wanted a hero for a divided country, and he made one, leaving out the other riders along the way.

Verdict: Mostly false. Revere rode and he was brave, but he did not ride alone and he did not shout. The fuller story is in Why Lexington Green and Concord Bridge Started a War on April 19, 1775.

Myth Two: Every Signer Signed the Declaration on July 4

The claim. On July 4, 1776, the delegates gathered and signed the Declaration of Independence, all fifty-six of them, in a single solemn scene.

The record. The Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, adopted the final text of the Declaration on July 4, and ordered it printed. That is why the document carries the date July 4. But the large parchment copy that we picture, with the famous signatures, was prepared afterward, and most of the delegates signed it on August 2, 1776. Some signed later.

The first printed copies, the Dunlap broadsides, carried only the names of the president of Congress, John Hancock, and the secretary, Charles Thomson. The names of all the signers were not made public until January 1777, when Congress ordered a copy with the signatures sent to the states.

Verdict: False. The adoption was July 4. The signing was mostly August 2, and it was a process, not a scene. For the complete chronology, see July 2, July 4, August 2, the Dates Behind the Declaration of Independence.

Myth Three: Betsy Ross Designed the First American Flag

The claim. In the spring of 1776, George Washington and two others visited a Philadelphia seamstress named Betsy Ross, who sewed the first flag with thirteen stars in a circle.

The record. Betsy Ross was a real upholsterer in Philadelphia who made flags. The records of the Pennsylvania navy show her being paid in 1777 for making ship's colors. That much is documented. What is not documented is the visit from Washington or her design of the national flag. The story first appeared publicly in 1870, almost a century later, when her grandson William Canby presented it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania from the family's recollections. There is no contemporary record that supports it.

What we do have is the text of the resolution that created the flag. On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress resolved: "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." The resolution says nothing about who designed it. Another man, Francis Hopkinson, a member of Congress and a signer of the Declaration, wrote to Congress in 1780 asking to be paid for his flag designs, and he is the only person of the era known to have made such a claim. Historians accept that he designed early flags, but the question of who designed the national flag remains debated.

Verdict: Unproven. She sewed flags; whether she designed the first national flag rests on family tradition, not on the record. If you want the official story of the flag as it now stands, the page on the flag is the place to start.

Myth Four: A Third of the Colonists Were for the Revolution, a Third Against and a Third Neutral

The claim. John Adams said that the Revolution was supported by one-third of Americans, opposed by one-third, and ignored by one-third.

The record. Adams did write, in private letters long after the war, that a considerable portion of Americans had been opposed to the Revolution, and in a letter to Thomas McKean in November 1813 he said about a third of the people of the colonies had been against the Revolution. But he gave it as a rough recollection, in old age, in a letter to a friend. He was not conducting a census. The neat "a third, a third, a third" formula is often pinned on him, but the passage I could confirm gives only the one third who were against, and it turned an old man's reminiscence into a statistic.

Historians who have tried to count the Loyalists in the more careful way, using claims, military service and migration records, generally arrive at a smaller share of the white population than a third. Whatever the exact figure, the claim that neutrals were exactly one-third is not something Adams ever proved. What matters is that the Revolution was not unanimous. A large minority of colonists remained loyal to the Crown, many of them for reasons of conscience, and some of them suffered heavily for it. The Revolution was a civil war as well as a war for independence, and the Declaration itself did not pretend otherwise.

Verdict: Misread. (The founding generation, it turns out, was also guilty of the oldest habit in politics, which is to remember the numbers in your favor.) Adams offered a rough memory, not a poll. The truth is that the colonies were divided and the Revolution was won by a determined portion of the people, not a majority by acclamation.

Myth Five: The Revolution Was Just a Squabble Over Taxes

The claim. The colonists rebelled because they did not want to pay a little tax on tea.

The record. The tax was part of it, and the principle behind the slogan, no taxation without representation, mattered a great deal. But if you read the Declaration of Independence, which is the colonists' own list of reasons, taxes are one item among many. The document accuses the king of keeping standing armies among the people in time of peace, of quartering troops in their homes, of cutting off their trade, of denying them trial by jury in many cases, of suspending their legislatures and altering their charters, and of obstructing the administration of justice. The tax on tea, which was in fact a reduction in the price of tea for the colonists, was the occasion for the Boston Tea Party in 1773, but the Coercive Acts that followed in 1774, which shut the port of Boston and rewrote the government of Massachusetts, were what turned a protest into a war.

For the full argument, read The Grievance List in the Declaration Reads Like a Charge Sheet Against Power. The colonists were fighting over who would govern them and how. The tax was the first spark, not the whole fire.

Verdict: False. It was a fight about self-government, with taxes as one of the grievances.

Myth Six: The Colonists Fought Only From Behind Trees

The claim. The British marched in red lines like fools, and the Americans won by hiding behind trees and stone walls.

The record. Americans did use cover, and the running fight back from Concord in April 1775 is the most famous example. But the Continental Army fought pitched battles in the open for most of the war, and after Valley Forge it did so in good order. At Monmouth in June 1778 the Continentals stood in line against the British regulars. At Cowpens in January 1781, Daniel Morgan arranged his men in three lines, with skirmishers in front, militia in the middle and Continentals behind, and beat Banastre Tarleton's force in an open field, with a plan that used the known habits of the militia. The war was fought both ways, with the tactics that fit the ground.

The British, for their part, were not fools. They were professionals who had beaten the French and who won many of the engagements of the war. They lost the war because they could not hold the ground they took and because the Americans, and later the French, kept an army in the field. For how that happened, see Valley Forge Was a Winter of Hunger That Turned Farmers Into an Army.

Verdict: Partly true, mostly false. Colonists used the ground when it helped, and fought in the open when it was called for.

Myth Seven: George Washington Had Wooden Teeth

The claim. The first President wore wooden dentures.

The record. Washington suffered from bad teeth for most of his life and by the time he became President he had very few natural teeth left. His dentures were made from a combination of materials, including ivory, human teeth and metal such as gold and lead. There is no evidence that he had wooden dentures. The belief probably arose because the ivory stained over time and took on a brownish, grained look, which resembled wood. Dentures of the period were uncomfortable, and the contemporary accounts say that they gave him pain and affected the shape of his mouth.

Verdict: False, with a grain of explanation. The dentures were not wood. They were a more painful, more expensive arrangement, which makes them the first federal program to cost more than it was worth.

The Strongest Objection

A reader may fairly ask why any of this matters. Here is the best case for leaving the legends alone.

The objection says: These stories are harmless. They give children heroes and make people proud of their country. Fact-checking Paul Revere is pedantic, and picking at the founding legends only helps people who want to tear America down.

Here is the answer, in four points.

1. A claim that cannot survive scrutiny is a weak foundation. The people who want to discredit the American story are happy to find a false legend and use it as proof that the whole story is false. The best defense is to hold the true account in hand, and to know it better than the critics do.
2. The true story is better. Revere's real ride involved a network of riders, a secret, a capture and an escape. The real flag came from a congressional resolution. The real signing took weeks. The real Revolution was a civil war, in which ordinary people made hard choices. None of this diminishes the Founders. It makes them human, and therefore more admirable.
3. Honesty is itself a founding principle. The Declaration opens by saying that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." The founders thought it mattered to give an honest account of themselves. A country that cannot tell the truth about its own beginnings is breaking faith with them.
4. Teaching the real record respects the reader. Children and adults can handle the truth, and they remember a story with detail better than a slogan. See The Cherry Tree, the Flat Earth and Other History Myths Traced to Their Source for further cases where the legend outran the evidence.

The Case in Brief

1. Paul Revere did not ride alone or shout; he and at least two other riders carried a quiet warning in a network that the poem of 1861 compressed into one man.
2. The Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776, but signed mostly on August 2, and the Betsy Ross flag story rests on family tradition from 1870, not on documents from 1776.
3. Adams's one-third remark was a rough recollection, the Revolution was about self-government and not only a tax, and the colonists fought in the open as well as from cover.
4. Washington's dentures were not wood.
5. A conservative case for the Founding is stronger when it rests on the record, because the record is more impressive than the myths.

What you can do: read the Declaration of Independence from start to finish, including the grievance list, then check one legend you were taught as a child against a primary source at your public library.