Inaccuracies In 'Paul Revere's Ride'

“One if by land, and two if by sea.” Many people may associate this famous line with Paul Revere because that’s what they learned in history class, but what many of those people don’t know is that Paul Revere had never said that line at all. That well known line is included in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” which is a poem that we usually learn in history class. But, despite the poem being based on Raul Revere’s deposition, there are many inaccuracies. So instead, the poem should be used in a Language Arts classroom and not a history classroom. The inaccuracies in “Paul Revere’s Ride” make it inappropriate for the history classroom. Despite the inaccuracies of the poem, there are also some similarities in the two pieces. …show more content…
To begin with, we might all know Paul Revere as the hero that rode into Concord warning everyone that the “Redcoats are coming”, but that never happened at all. In the deposition, Revere got captured by British officers before he arrived at Concord. “We attempted to get through them, but they kept before us…. They put us into a building.” In addition, in the poem, Revere’s goal was to warn everyone in Lexington and Concord about the British, but in the deposition Revere’s objective was to warn Adams and Hancock about the British. The deposition proclaims, “I was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren…. When he desired me to go to Lexington, and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esq. that there was a number of soldiers…. Marching to the bottom of the common.” Once again, in the poem it shows Paul Revere riding alone into the night, but he was actually accompanied by two other fellows, Dawes and Prescott. In the center of the deposition, it states, “After I had been there about half an hour, Mr. Daws arrived…. We set off for Concord, and were overtaken by a young gentlemen named Prescott.” As you can see, there are a lot of