Epilogue

The court-­martial had not quite provided the unqualified exoneration for which Revere had hoped. Though he had been acquitted on both charges, the ruling confirmed that in fact he had refused the barge to General Wadsworth and that he did leave the Penobscot without direct orders to do so. Moreover, an acquittal “with equal honor as the other Officers in the same expedition” seemed, in light of the circumstances, a rather empty victory. Nevertheless, Revere was resignedly satisfied with the court’s judgment, and he accepted it as a complete and absolute vindication of his actions on the Penobscot Expedition. As far as he was concerned, the matter was now concluded.

Others, however, begged to differ.

On March 14, excerpts from the decision of the court-­martial appeared in newspapers throughout the region, and it finally appeared that Revere had received the public recognition of innocence that he had sought. Several days later, however, an open letter appeared in the Boston Gazette that would shatter his short-­lived gratification and, once again, thrust the ugly Penobscot debacle—and Paul Revere’s role in it—back into the public eye.

Under the pseudonym of “Veritas,” the letter writer resurrected every unwelcome allegation against Revere—from delaying the outset of the expedition, to sleeping on board the transports, to disobeying General Wadsworth’s orders—and scourged the members of the court-­martial for acquitting Revere of the charges. “[T]hat this is satisfactory to the people at large,” wrote Veritas, “is a doubt with me.”1 And taking great exception to the court’s finding of equivalence between Revere and the other officers, Veritas angrily protested, “For this Lieut. Co. Paul Revere to be ranked as acting with equal courage as other Officers on the expedition when several fell bravely advancing . . . when numbers on that expedition either for courage or conduct . . . stand without blot or censure—to have such a man ranked on the same footing, is what, in private opinion, the world may determine.”2

Revere’s response to the “Veritas” letter was swift and predictably bellicose. In a tedious and irate diatribe that splashed across two separate issues of the Boston Gazette for all to see, Revere snapped back with characteristic fury. Describing himself as “greatly abused” by the published letter, he immediately revealed the “infamous author of the infamous remarks,” apparently “justly ashamed of his true name and character,” to be none other than William Todd.³ He then lambasted his attacker.

“From motives of revenge . . . ,” claimed Revere, “this man has been aiming at my ruin, in a series of the most wicked and unmanly attacks upon my reputation . . . I’m sure the justice of my country would have . . . [shielded] my character from every dishonorable imputation, had not he, like an assassin stabbed it in the dark.”⁴

With vitriolic intransigence, Revere tediously addressed each of the charges upon which he was tried and reiterated his defenses to every one. He restated verbatim excerpts of both sets of findings of the committee of inquiry, and he described in detail every procedural step—date by date—that had led him to acquittal. As to the allegation that he had left the Penobscot without orders, Revere sardonically scolded, “[P]erhaps Mr. Todd, under such circumstances, would have seized the opportunity of raising a monument on the . . . merit of maintaining an undisputed post on the banks of the Penobscot River.”⁵ And with regard to Thomas Carnes’s original complaint of September 6, 1779, Revere levied his suspicion that Carnes had, in fact, been hired to lodge it.

On April 4, Carnes himself joined the fray. In a caustic letter to the publisher of the Continental Journal (that would also appear in the Boston Gazette four days later), he took angry exception to the claim that somehow he had been hired to issue his complaint. “That I was desired to do it is true,” wrote Carnes, “had I not been, the duty I owe my country demanded it.”⁶ He again accused Revere of delaying the fleet at Nantasket, eating and lodging on the transports, and generally absenting himself during the expedition when needed. And he stated that, at some point after he filed his complaint, Revere had called at his home “to require satisfaction.” Not above a violent encounter, Revere had been known in the past to resort to fisticuffs when he felt ill-­treated.7 “I am of the opinion,” wrote Carnes, “fighting is not a science, that gentlemen, no more than myself is fond of.”⁸

The war of words quickly escalated. Responding to Revere’s acerbic rejoinder in the Boston Gazette, William Todd, in a letter that appeared in the same paper on April 8, revealed himself as “Veritas” and furthered his attack on Revere. “That I ever aspersed Lt. Col. Revere’s character, I deny. If I said anything of him, it was the truth—if the truth aspersed his character, so let it be,” wrote Todd.⁹

Revere refused to let the matter die, and he refused to let others have the last word on the subject of his character. Three days after Carnes’s letter appeared in the Boston newspapers, the Continental Journal published a responsive barb authored by Revere. Noting that Carnes had echoed many of the same allegations previously asserted by Todd, he reiterated his claim of conspiracy. “I am confirmed in my opinion,” he wrote, “that . . . [Carnes] was originally hired as a tool, to father a number of falsehoods which a man who had any reputation to lose would be afraid to utter.”¹⁰

Then, in an attempt to close the entire indecorous affair with Carnes, Revere ended his missive with a parting shot. “I shall take no further notice of what has been or may be published by any person under the signature of T. J. Carnes, from the same motives that I do not stop to reason with every puppy that barks at me in the street.”¹¹

But Revere was not done with William Todd. “I am sorry to trouble you or the public again in taking the least notice of Mr. Todd’s exhibitions . . . ,” wrote Revere in a letter to the publisher of the Boston Gazette that appeared in the paper on April 15, “but, as I have been publicly abused, I think myself entitled to a candid hearing, and claim it as my right.”¹²

Todd had accused Revere of absenting himself from the regiment during the expedition and of busying himself with menial and insignificant chores that should have been left to noncommissioned officers, such as fixing artillery fuses and culling cannon shot, “to avoid the perils of an engagement.” Revere, once again, felt compelled to defend his honor against the charge, mockingly writing, “[P]erhaps so great a man as Mr. Todd might have thought it below his dignity to stoop to so degrading a piece of military duty as to give a pattern for a case of grape shott (which is all that I did) . . . I have known a greater General than I believe Mr. Todd will ever be, literally stoop to lay a dirty sod upon a breastwork, while a number of common soldiers were engaged in the same dirty employment; no one thought it his duty, perhaps if Mr. Todd had been present he would have disputed his right.”13

Revere closed his letter—indeed his entire dialogue on the matter—with a final appeal to his community:

I now call upon the impartial public to determine how a single article, advanced with so much confidence and plausibility, is supported by the smallest degree of evidence, if a man’s reputation is to be blasted because an envious, disappointed, malicious man has the hardiness to publish a parcel of the most abominable falsehoods against him; and when called upon, has not the least colour of evidence to support them, it is hardly worth a man’s while to endeavor to acquit himself in the public opinion. But I flatter myself the case is otherwise, and that the resentment and contempt of my country will fall on the man who, by such artifices, has attempted to deceive them, and not on the intended victim of his malice.¹⁴

In an incendiary exclamation point to the affair, Thomas Carnes published one further letter in the Continental Journal in response to what he called Revere’s “scurrilous language” against him. “I should be very sorry,” wrote Carnes, “to put my character on a footing with Paul Revere, who the world knows to be a coward.”¹⁵

But the public would have the final word. In a letter from “A Customer” printed in the Boston Gazette on April 15, the following lines of verse appeared regarding Paul Revere:

If his deeds would but shine, as he wishes to tell,

It would please us to read, but we know the man well.16

As Paul Revere battled with his enemies in the columns of Boston’s newspapers, trouble continued to brew in Maine. After the American defeat at Majabigwaduce, Tories and British Loyalists joined with British soldiers to plunder the villages on the shores of Penobscot Bay. Long-­simmering political rancor in the region came to a boil, and the area was thrust into a state of perpetual crisis and hardship. In an effort to stabilize the situation, General Peleg Wadsworth, who had been exonerated with glowing accolades by the committee of inquiry in 1779, was returned to the region in an effort to restore order.

With the regional timber and fishing industries in British hands and the local inhabitants “entirely exposed to the fury of the Enemy,”¹⁷ Massachusetts soon contemplated yet another attempt to remove the British from Majabigwaduce. When the idea found its way to Morristown, however, the response was less than enthusiastic. “I have attentively considered the application . . . on the Subject of an Expedition against the Enemy at Penobscot,” wrote General Washington to the Massachusetts Council on April 17, 1780. “It appears to be of great Importance in several points of view that they be dislodged—but circumstanced as we are I do not see how the attempt can be made with any prospect of Success.”¹⁸

Without the hope of another determined attack upon British positions on Majabigwaduce, General Wadsworth was left to command and secure the region with the limited tools of martial law and common sense. He set up his headquarters in Thomaston and immediately issued a proclamation in Lincoln County and throughout the coastal islands forbidding any assistance or aid to the enemy, upon the penalty of execution.¹⁹ As the months unfolded, however, Wadsworth found himself unable to raise any troops to defend the area or to gain a foothold against the British, and by 1781 he requested a discharge from his duties and prepared to leave the area.

On the night of February 18, General McLean, recognizing the weakness of the Rebel force in Thomaston, dispatched a company of twenty-­five men from Majabigwaduce to storm Wadsworth’s headquarters. After a fierce battle in which he was wounded in the arm, Wadsworth was captured and ultimately imprisoned at Fort George. Though treated well by McLean, after several months in captivity Wadsworth received word that he was most likely to be sent to England to face trial and execution.20 In the late night of June 18, Peleg Wadsworth cut a hole through the ceiling of his prison cell and daringly escaped from Majabigwaduce.

He made his way back to Massachusetts, where he reunited with his family and remained until the end of the war. Eventually settling in Maine, Wadsworth would enter into business and, in 1792, be elected as a member of Congress from the Cumberland District, where he served until 1807.²¹

Fort George, the problematic objective of the Penobscot Expedition, would remain in British hands throughout the Revolution. “When the war ended,” wrote historian Charles Bracelen Flood, “a British officer waited impatiently for some American representative to appear and claim . . . [the fort]. Day after day he waited; no American bothered to come to this place for which forty ships and an army had once been lost. Finally the British officer burnt the barracks that had been built inside the earth walls of Fort George and sailed to Canada.”²² It would be the last British stronghold ceded by the king’s forces after the war.

In 1778, Elizabeth Wadsworth, the general’s wife, gave birth to the couple’s third child, a girl whom they named Zilpah. In a family history of the Wadsworths in America published in 1883, the following is written of Zilpah Wadsworth: “In her character of rare excellence was combined all that exalts and ennobles the heart of a Christian lady. She also possessed intellectual qualities of a very high order. One fact alone would well cause her name to be spoken with reverence in every civilized land beneath the sun: she was the mother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”²³

Little is know of the fate of William Todd and Thomas Carnes following Revere’s court-­martial. Todd, a Leicester, Massachusetts, native, would resettle in Keene, New Hampshire, where he owned the Ralston Tavern and later became the town postmaster.²⁴ He would live in the town at least until 1803 and, interestingly, become active in local Freemasonry, rising to the title of master of the Rising Sun Lodge.²⁵

Thomas Carnes would serve as a captain of the Massachusetts Marines until 1781. He appears to have experienced some problems in his personal life following his military service, as on June 14, 1783, the following advertisement appeared in the Boston Evening Post:

The impartial Public will be pleased to take notice, That the certain Woman by the name of MIME CARNES, wife of THOMAS JENNER CARNES, and published by him in the paper of last Monday, as a run-­away—is a poor, unfortunate, distressed female, who, being seduced by the false promises of the above-­named Thomas J. Carnes, has been over persuaded to abandon her parents, her friends and her country, and become his wife, depending upon him only for her protection, support and happiness, but who, after having repeatedly suffered every species of cruelty and insult that villainly and infidelity to her bed could suggest, and inhumanity could inflict, has been obliged, in regard to her own personal safety, and to obtain the common necessaries of her existence, to seek for this shelter which he denied to her, from one of his own relations.26

The same notice would appear in the Boston newspapers Continental Journal and Independent Ledger on June 12 and June 16, 1783. He married again on March 22, 1798, to Elizabeth Fennecy of Boston, presumably forming a more compatible union. The Register of Members of the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution indicates that Carnes “died in Maine after 1802.”²⁷

Upon his return home from the Penobscot Expedition, General Solomon Lovell resumed his position as commander in chief of the Suffolk County Militia. In April of 1780 the people of Weymouth, Massachusetts, chose Lovell to join a committee to report on the new state constitution. He was instructed to vote for its adoption with several amendments. Lovell remained active in town and state politics, serving as a selectman from March of 1781 through 1787 and as a representative in the General Court from May 1781 until 1783. His involvement in the disastrous failure of the Penobscot Expedition did not seem to lower his standing among his countrymen. Gilbert Nash, Lovell’s primary biographer, would write, “Esteemed and honored in his town, where most familiarly known, respected and trusted in the counsels of the State, which he for many years served faithfully and well, his name has been handed down through the generations, as that of one of whom the town may well be proud, one to whom the young may look with respect and veneration, whose example it were safe to follow, and upon whom all may look as a high-­minded and worthy citizen.”28 Lovell died on September 9, 1801, at the age of sixty-­nine.

On June 29, 1793, fourteen years after the Penobscot Expedition began, Congress finally would award Massachusetts $1,248,000 as the state’s share for losses suffered during the war.²⁹ With the American victory over Great Britain and the ratification of the new federal constitution, thoughts turned away from the humiliating defeat at Penobscot, and soon the fiasco would be all but forgotten.

Paul Revere slowly would consign Penobscot and its gloomy aftermath to the unchangeable past. He rededicated himself to business and, in a show of camaraderie with the only other officer of the expedition to face a court-­martial, Revere purchased shares in the privateer Minerva—commanded in 1781 by none other than Dudley Saltonstall. The venture proved successful, and Saltsonstall would, in fact, distinguish himself with the capture of the British vessel Hannah and her cargo worth eighty thousand pounds.³⁰

As the war came to a close, Revere had intended to enter the world of trade, but with the bulk of his money lent to government, he returned to his goldsmith shop and, in partnership with his son Paul Jr., continued to serve the people of Boston with his artistic craft.

Finally advancing into the mercantile ranks, he opened a hardware shop in 1783 on Essex Street opposite the site of the old Liberty Tree, where he sold various domestic and imported goods as well as his own assortment of personally fashioned jewelry, teapots, buckles, medallions, and candlesticks.³¹

Revere was focused on business after the war, but his political passions clearly had not ebbed. During the fiery public debate on the ratification of the United States Constitution in early 1788, Revere was decidedly in favor. Samuel Adams, however, whose vote as a member of the Massachusetts delegation would be critical to the effort, was wavering. Amid the turmoil, a group of local artisans and mechanics led by Revere held a meeting at the Green Dragon, and several resolutions were unanimously passed in favor of ratification. The crowd of men then marched to Adams’s home and presented him with their resolves. Forty-­five years after the fact, in a speech delivered to a crowd in Pittsburgh, Daniel Webster would relay Revere’s pivotal and dramatic exchange with Adams:32

“Mr. Revere, how many mechanics were there in the Green Dragon when these Resolutions were passed?” asked Adams.

“More, sir, than the Green Dragon could hold.”

“And where were the rest, Mr. Revere?”

“In the streets, sir.”

“And how many were in the streets?”

“More sir! than there are stars in the sky.”

On February 6, 1788, the Massachusetts Convention voted narrowly to ratify the United States Constitution. Samuel Adams would vote in favor.

With the establishment of a firm and stable federal government and with his hardware shop struggling to remain profitable, Revere attempted, in the late 1780s and early 1790s, to secure a public position through the influence of his friend Congressman Fisher Ames. A post, perhaps in the National Mint Revere thought, would be appropriate given his experience as an engraver. Even Ames, however, had to be cautious about Revere’s chances. “I am no stranger to your services and zeal on the side of liberty,” wrote Ames in April of 1789, “and in my mind that sort of merit will greatly support the claims of the candidate who can plead it. The number of expectants however will be considerable, and may have merit and powerful patronage.”³³ Though his efforts to acquire an appointment with the federal government would indeed fail, Revere would be chosen to serve locally as president of the board of health in Boston and even as county coroner.³⁴

In the early 1790s, however, Revere’s entrepreneurial efforts finally would blossom. He discontinued the hardware business and, together with his son, established a bell and cannon foundry on Foster Street, now Causeway Street, in the north part of Boston. Through the years, he would cast no fewer than sixty church bells, some of which are still hung in New England steeples, including in the Old South Meetinghouse on Washington Street in Boston, and he would even supply the copper bolts and fittings for the U.S.S. Constitution—Old Ironsides, as she would come to be known—upon her construction in 1798.35

Encouraged by his success in the copper trade, Revere would purchase an old iron mill in Canton, Massachusetts, and in 1801 convert the site into a thriving sheet-­copper-­rolling mill. He would be asked to supply the copper sheets for the dome of the Massachusetts State House in 1802; and a year later, when the U.S.S. Constitution required replating, Revere was entrusted to supply the sheets of copper for the task. His copper-­rolling mill was an enterprise that would ultimately allow Paul Revere to retire in 1811, a wealthy man.³⁶

Throughout his advancing years, Revere continued his active service in many civic and fraternal organizations. At the age of sixty he was elected grand master of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge, and he would become an organizing member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. Through the years he would involve himself in such associations as the Boston Library, the Boston Humane Society, and the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society.³⁷

In 1787, as his entrepreneurial and civic interests expanded, Paul Revere began referring to himself in business and in official documents as “Esquire.”³⁸ No longer confined to the role of mere goldsmith, he had advanced at last to the coveted status of “gentleman.”

Revere would assume many titles during his life: Patriot, Freemason, artisan, mechanic, dentist, entrepreneur; but the title he preferred—the one that he carried throughout his days—was Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere.

Revere died on May 10, 1818, at the age of eighty-­four. One obituary appearing in the New-­England Galaxy & Masonic Magazine included the following tribute:

During his protracted life, his activity in business and benevolence, the vigour of his mind, and strength of his constitution were unabated. He was one of the earliest and most indefatigable Patriots and Soldiers of the Revolution, and has filled with fidelity, ability and usefulness, many important situations in the military and civil service of his country, and at the head of valued and beneficent Institutions. Seldom has the tomb closed upon a life so honourable and useful.39

Boston plainly had forgiven Paul Revere for his transgressions. This man of contrasts undeniably had earned the respect of his countrymen and found his place in the local history of Boston. But his lifelong achievements did not immediately propel him to enduring fame, and over time, the memory of Revere’s creditable service to the ideal of freedom began to fade.

Through the gifted quill of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, however, Paul Revere would ultimately find immortality. While strolling past the Old North Church and Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in the North End of Boston on April 5, 1860, with his friend Senator George Sumner, Longfellow immediately was struck by the history of the area and the relevance of that history to the Union cause in antebellum America.⁴⁰ He would find in the streets of Old Boston a mythical rallying cry that would inspire a nation. Paul Revere’s Ride, published in the Atlantic Monthly in January 1861, would awaken patriotic fervor on the eve of the Civil War⁴¹—in much the same way that Revere’s ride itself had served as its own clarion call to arms eighty-­six years earlier. Though Longfellow would sacrifice historical accuracy for patriotic imagery, he would, in the process, transform Revere into a national icon.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

Longfellow’s fictionalized account, set in poetic verse, would replace much of what we know to be true about Paul Revere—and the distasteful memory of his role in the Penobscot Expedition would be, perhaps, the first victim of revised history.

“A cry of defiance, and not of fear,” wrote Longfellow of Revere’s courageous trek.

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-­wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-­beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.42

The enchanting image of a Patriot astride Deacon Larkin’s elegant mare, spreading the midnight alarm through the farms and villages of Middlesex County, endures even today and reminds us of the everlasting legend, but not necessarily the man.