Boston’s Old North Church is home to Friday’s 250th anniversary commemoration of Paul Revere’s historic ride
The National Council of Churches is among the organizers, with Dr. Heather Cox Richardson offering the keynote address
LOUISVILLE — Using two lanterns posted atop what was then the tallest structure in Boston, Paul Revere and friends made their historic warnings about British troop movements — one if by land, two if by sea — 250 years ago. The Old North Church commemorated “Paul Revere’s Ride” on Friday with compelling talks and soaring music at the historic Episcopalian house of worship and national landmark, including a keynote address by a celebrated historian, Dr. Heather Cox Richardson. The National Council of Churches was among the organizers of the two-hour Lantern Service, held in the sanctuary at Old North Church and online.
Churches across the country rang their bells at 6 p.m. Eastern Time Friday as part of Let Freedom Ring! The bells at Old North Church, then known as Christ Church, are the oldest in the United States. Watch the Old North Church’s Let Freedom Ring! proceedings here. The speakers, leading off with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, begin at the 1:08 mark.
Wu said that the executive director of the Paul Revere House, Nina Zannieri, told her two things during a recent family visit: Revere’s ride was in fact “a collective effort,” and the ride occurred during a time of uncertainty in the Colonies.
“I’m still struck by the uncertainty of what Revere would find as he left his home that night — of who might find him … and what might become of him if he was found,” Wu said. “What events might he be setting into motion as he rode from Charlestown to Lexington? What kind of future would he hammer into being with the hooves of his horse? At every point in his journey, Paul Revere made a choice … a choice to press on or turn back … Knowing now what hung in the balance that night, just how much was at stake, that fragility was shocking — how easily it could have all fallen apart at any point.”
To continue to press on in the face of uncertainty “is more than resilience — it’s faith,” the mayor said. “Faith that there is a right and a wrong and that what we do in each moment matters. Faith in the community and the people around him. Faith that his friends would hang the lanterns as asked. Faith that friends would row him to safety. Faith that a horse would be ready and waiting. Faith that when he was caught just outside Lexington, his fellow riders would continue carrying forward the message that freedom is worth fighting for and the fight had arrived. Faith that this brand of merchants and farmers would give every last breath in defense of their liberty to secure a better future for the people they loved. Faith that an idea is enough to hold off an empire, that the seed of freedom once sprouted will not be uprooted. It may bake in the heat, freeze in the cold, be bruised by the elements, its branches broken or bent. But the roots will always be there for those with the courage to tend them, and the faith to face down whatever uncertainty may stand in the way.”
“Tonight I am grateful for our continued belief in each other and our refusal to fail,” Wu said. “May we always be a beacon of hope for the world and our nation, and may our faith guide us forward. Freedom is worth fighting for, and the fight has arrived. God bless the city and the people of Boston.”
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Cadwell, the vicar of Old North Church, noted that 250 years ago, April 18 fell on the Tuesday after Easter. “We wrestled with how to observe this momentous anniversary while respecting the day’s religious significance,” Cadwell said. “Determined that it was important to honor both, we see a profound confluence in that Good Friday honors and remembers sacrifice, courage, the willingness to take risks and a trust that we will be led through desolation and uncertainty into something better, more hopeful and more alive.”
William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, read from Revere’s account of the night of April 18, 1775. “What Revere and his associates did was put everything on the line to protect the things they believed in,” Galvin said. “So should we.”
Richardson’s detailed and rich talk can be found here and at the 1:18:30 mark of the online broadcast.
In the spring of 1775, Boston, “a town on edge,” was a community of about 7,000 people who shared their streets with more than 13,000 British soldiers and their families. “The two groups co-existed uneasily,” she said. The Redcoats, or “Lobsterbacks,” as Bostonians derisively called them, monitored residents’ movements and controlled traffic in and out of town over Boston Neck, the only land bridge from Boston to the mainland. Boston Neck was so narrow that at high tide, it could accommodate only four horses being ridden side by side.
The town also featured eight “towering church steeples, for Boston was still a religious town,” she said. At least 15% of the population was loyal to King George III and his government. “Those who were neither patriots nor loyalists just kept their heads down, hoping the growing political crisis would go away and leave them unscathed,” Richardson said.
After the French and Indian War, Parliament began taxing colonists without representation, enacting the Stamp Act, a tax on all printed materials, and the Quartering Act, which required colonists to pay for room and board of British troops stationed in the Colonies. “What Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war — one that had benefitted the colonists, after all — colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power,” she said.
“Far more than money was at stake,” Richardson said. “The fight over the Stamp Act tapped into a struggle that had been going on in England for more than a century over a profound question of human governance: Could the king be checked by the people?”
“This was a question the colonists were uniquely qualified to answer,” she said, because “the distance between England and the Colonies meant that colonial assemblies often had to make rules on the ground.” That “chaotic system allowed colonists to carve out a new approach to politics even while they were living in the British Empire. Colonists naturally began to grasp that the exercise of power was not the province of a divinely ordained leader, but something temporary that relied on local residents’ willingness to support the men who were exercising that power.” The Stamp Act “threatened to overturn that longstanding system, replacing it with tyranny.”
Richardson traced the history of the Boston Tea Party and other important events before coming to the night in question, which featured Revere and his fellow “Sons of Liberty.”
The plan they devised “was dangerous,” Richardson said. “The Old North Church was Anglican, the Church of England.” About one-third of the people who worshiped there were loyalists, and worshipers included General Thomas Gage, the British Army’s commander-in-chief in North America and Royal Governor of Massachusetts. But also worshiping at Old North Church — Richardson pointed to the pews where each used to sit she identified them — were Revere’s childhood friend, John Pulling Jr., and the church’s sexton, Robert Newman. “They would help,” she said. William Dawes crossed the Boston Neck just before soldiers closed down the city.
About halfway to Concord, Revere and his friends were captured. Revere was questioned and then turned loose to walk back to Lexington. But “the riders from Boston had done their work,” Richardson said. By the time Revere made it back to the house where Samuel Adams and John Hancock were hiding, “militiamen had heard the news and were converging on Lexington Green,” she said. “So were the British soldiers.” During the battles of Lexington and Concord, more than 300 British soldiers and colonists lay dead or were wounded.
For Revere, the morning of April 18, 1775 “began like many of the other tense days of the past year, and there was little reason to believe the next two days would end as they did,” Richardson said. “Like his neighbors, Revere simply offered what he could to the cause: engraving skills, information, knowledge of a church steeple and longstanding friendships that helped to create a network.”
The work Newman and Pulling did to light and post the lanterns “sounds even less heroic,” she said. “What they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time. What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing — even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew, and that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.”
“And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern — or even two —that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.”
Like Wu’s talk before her, Richardson’s was followed by a sustained standing ovation.
Cadwell discussed the 200th anniversary of the midnight ride, when President Gerald Ford addressed the nation from Old North Church’s pulpit on April 18, 1975. A year later, Queen Elizabeth II worshiped there in July 1976, concluding the nation’s bicentennial celebrations. That afternoon from the Old State House, Her Majesty said, “If Paul Revere and Samuel Adams and other patriots could have known that one day a British monarch would stand behind the balcony of the Old State House from which the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of Boston, and be greeted in such kind and generous words — well, I think they would have been extremely surprised. Perhaps they also would have been pleased — pleased to know that eventually we came together as free peoples and friends and defended together the very ideals for which the American Revolution was fought.”
Much has changed in the 50 years that followed, Cadwell noted, including technological advances; “greater degrees” of gender, racial, sexual and orientation equality; and “expanded understandings of marriage” and advances in medicine and research.
“We can be incredibly proud of this progress, of this light. And yet today, many who call this country home do not feel safe,” he said. “They fear being sent away, or being arrested in the street, or made to live a life that is contrary to their innermost being.”
“This 250th anniversary could not come at a more critical time,” Cadwell said. “It’s a reminder that the America we love and want, the world we love and want, need to be fought for and voted for and written about and talked about, every day and in every way, by individuals as varied as each of us here tonight, Republicans and Democrats alike, people of every background and orientation and gender identity.”
The ”true beacons of justice and light” are “people everywhere who are willing to sacrifice, to take risks, to go to unknown and even fearsome places in order to bring hope, freedom and abundant life, free of bondage, free of war, free of oppression, free of bigotry and discrimination,” Cadwell said. “That’s the light we need, and that’s the light we can be for our nation and for the world, which need us to go forth from this church out not the streets and into the world. May that light — may our light — never be dimmed.”
Two Old North Church youth then lit lanterns to be displayed in the steeple. To conclude the service, the Rt. Rev. Julia E. Whitworth, the 17th bishop diocesan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, offered a blessing: “Live without fear, for your Creator has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Go in peace to follow the good road, and the blessing, mercy and grace of God the life-giver, the liberator and the lover of all souls, be with you and those you love this day and forever more. Amen.”
During the recessional, those gathered in Old North Church and some online sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
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