Note on Sources
As a result of its dreadful outcome, the Penobscot Expedition became one of the most closely examined events of the Revolutionary War, and its detailed history survives today. The conduct of Paul Revere—and to a lesser extent, his court-martial—is found within this history and reveals itself through the personal accounts or “depositions” of nearly every officer involved in the expedition. These original statements are housed in the Massachusetts Archives, vol. 145, and have been restated in various volumes of the Documentary History of the State of Maine: The Baxter Manuscripts. I have relied heavily on these primary sources for the details of the story spoken in the words of its participants. Though every quote in this book is derived from actual documented statements, I have on occasion, for the sake of readability, corrected some of the more obvious spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors, which often and understandably found their way into the word-for-word transcribed accounts.
Treatment of the Penobscot Expedition and Paul Revere’s ensuing tribulations in the various Revere biographies has been sparse. Esther Forbes devoted about eight pages to the topic in her 1942 Pulitzer Prize–winning Paul Revere and the World He Lived In and benignly entitled the chapter “Confusion on the Penobscot.” The late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century books by Elbridge Henry Goss, The Life of Colonel Paul Revere, and Charles Ferris Gettemy, The True Story of Paul Revere: His Midnight Ride, His Arrest and Court-Martial, His Useful Public Services, provide much more in-depth accounts of Revere’s role at Penobscot and rely heavily on the existing primary sources found in the Massachusetts Archives. Jayne Triber’s excellent biography, A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere, explores some of Revere’s problematic relationships and how they culminated in 1779, but devotes only passing reference to his court-martial. Each of these works, however, proved invaluable in recreating Paul Revere and his place in history.
Several fine books have delved into the Penobscot Expedition and explored the role that Paul Revere played. Most notably, Charles Bracelen Flood’s book, Rise, and Fight Again, offers a wonderfully detailed rendering of the story and affords a harsh but accurate glimpse into Revere’s less-than-exemplary conduct on the expedition. Similarly, Bernard Cornwell’s 2012 work, The Fort, provides a fictional though historically accurate account of Penobscot and Revere’s troubled role. Perhaps the most comprehensive book on the subject is George Buker’s The Penobscot Expedition, which remains the most authoritative secondary source on the subject.