4/23/2025

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal focuses on two pieces from Jack Miller Center scholars that were published at RealClearHistory.

First, William Anthony Hay writes about the famous shots at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, that set off the American Revolution in 1775. Captain Levi Preston later captured the principles at stake during an interview decades later in 1843. When pressed on various grievances, he replied, “Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: we had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.” Hay writes that decades long-issues began to well up when the British changed their policy of “salutary neglect” to one of intense interest during the Seven Years War. Heightened levels of taxation on the colonists to help pay for the wars the British empire was engaged in throughout the word helped sparked rebellion in the colonies. As Hay concludes, “Americans believed themselves to be citizens, not subjects or clients of some distant authority, whatever its nature or intentions – and they have acted accordingly ever since.”

Next, Robert J. Allison does a deep dive into the many rides Paul Revere took for the cause of American self-government and independence. He unearthed an invoice from the Massachusetts State Archives (dated August 1775) which shows that Revere charged the Massachusetts Bay Colony £11, one shilling (about $2,000 today) partly for rides he made on horseback for the colonial cause. “From April 21st to May 7th,” Allison notes, Revere “charged five shillings a day for ‘riding for the Committee of Safety’ and £1 for ‘keeping two Colony horse[s]’ for ten days.” This does not cover Revere’s famous “midnight ride,” which was turned into a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but rides Revere made “spreading news of the famous events” of April 18th. “Whether or not Massachusetts paid him for his important work the night of April 18th,” Allison concludes, “we all remain in debt to him, and to those who answered his call.”