“Paul Revere and Plan B” in Medford, 11 June

On Thursday, 11 June, I’ll speak to the Medford Historical Society on the topic of “Paul Revere and Plan B: Planning and Improvisation in the Lexington Alarm.”

Our event description says:

After the Battle of Lexington & Concord on April 19, 1775, Massachusetts resistance leaders portrayed the uprising as a mostly spontaneous response to the army’s incursion into a peaceful countryside. Decades later, Henry W. Longfellow presented “Paul Revere’s Ride” as nearly a one-man show.

In truth, the Massachusetts Patriots had prepared for months to resist the Crown military. Revere was part of a network of organizers, informants, and alarm riders. At the same time, Revere and his colleagues succeeded by being able to respond to contingencies by changing their plans.

Drawing on new research, this talk will shed light on one of independent America’s oldest stories—and how the day could have turned out differently.

I developed an earlier, short version of this talk for the 19th of April several years ago, and now I’m backloading it with more about Revere’s pre-war propaganda and espionage work.

The society will meet at the Charlotte and William Bloomberg Medford Public Library starting at 7 P.M. This event is free and open to the public.

(The photograph above, which comes courtesy of Digital Commonwealth, shows the reenactment of Paul Revere’s stop at the Isaac Hall House in Medford sometime in the mid-1900s.)