By: Mehitabel Glenhaber

As we’ve explored in other blog posts and our lecture series this past year, Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride was far from the only messenger work that he did to support the Patriot cause. We know about many of these rides from surviving invoices, where Paul Revere included information about who he was working for and what sort of work he was doing, as well as how much he got paid for it. We’re not sure if he got paid for his work as an express rider on April 18-19th, but this invoice in the Massachusetts Archives Collection shows that he was paid for messenger work that he did a few days later:

“1775 The Colony of Massachusetts Bay to Paul Revere D
To riding for the Committee of Safety
from April 21 1775 to May 7th, 17 Days at 5 “ /                                                        4” 5” 0”

To My expenses for self & horse during that time                                                     2” 16” 0”

May 6th To keeping two Colony Horses 10 Day at 1 / Horse                                   1″ 00 00

Augt 2d To Printing 1000 impressions Soldier Notes at 6″ / Hund                            3″ 00″
____________

Errors Excepted                                                              £ 11″ 1″ 0
____________
____________

Paul Revere”

In this invoice, Paul Revere billed the revolutionary government of Massachusetts for four pounds and five shillings to cover the cost of his labor from April 21^st – May 7^th. He also asked for reimbursement for “expenses for self & horse during that time” and “keeping [renting] two Colony Horses” for 10 days.[1] In the invoice, he described his employer as “The Committee of Safety.” Who was this Committee of Safety, and why were they paying Paul Revere to ride?

In the 1770s, most mail in the American colonies was delivered on horseback or by boat, but hiring a private messenger wasn’t the only way to get a message where it needed to go. England had a royal postal system, which extended to the American colonies.[2] In fact, many of the “turnpikes” and roads which Paul Revere travelled had originally been constructed by the British government, as post roads between the colonies. The British imperial postal system had post offices in most major American cities. Mail delivery in America was getting more reliable and cheaper during Paul Revere’s lifetime thanks to reforms by Boston-born postmaster Benjamin Franklin which standardized discounted rates for shipping newspapers, broadsides, and other publications.[3]

In the years leading up the American Revolution, radical whig groups throughout the thirteen colonies began to form their own communication networks. Patriot leaders in Boston in 1772 convened a town meeting and passed a resolution forming what they called a “committee of correspondence.”[4] This committee functioned as both an unsanctioned, rebellious municipal government, and a postal network. Members of Boston’s Committee of Correspondence wrote petitions claiming to speak on behalf of the “body of the people” of Boston, and also organized networks of messengers to deliver these proclamations to other cities. The first petition shared by the Boston Committee of Correspondence was a call for cities in other colonies to form similar committees.[5]  By 1774, 144 similar committees had sprung up in towns throughout the thirteen colonies.[6] These committees of correspondence were organized on the local level. Most of them were made up of ordinary citizens appointed at their town meetings, many of whom had never held a political office before.[7]

At a time when the British government had full authority to open, read, and censor the royal post, the committees of correspondence were the Sons of Liberty’s chosen method for communicating with Patriot activists in other towns, circulating news and petitions alike. [8] Once more committees were established, they allowed Patriots to quickly update each other on political developments and the British government’s actions across the colonies. They also allowed agitators to build popular support and solidarity between the colonies, and to organize political actions like boycotts.[9]

In addition to allowing Patriots to circulate potentially treasonous correspondence through trusted messengers, committees of correspondence were also a symbolic gesture, undermining the British government’s monopoly on America’s communication networks. Some historians argue that these committees were a way for Patriot leaders to test if they had enough support to build the sort of infrastructure which they would need to stage a revolution.[10] These communication networks – and the capacity to hire and pay messengers – were a crucial part of the infrastructure which aspiring revolutionaries would need to organize a military, or run a new government if they seceded from England.

And, indeed, in 1774 and 1775, as the political crisis in the colonies intensified, many local committees of correspondence began to operate more like military or police organizations. Some of these committees created units called “committees of safety” or “committees of observation,” which, in addition to delivering mail and petitions, began to spy on British soldiers and warn Patriot militias of potential British military actions.[11] Some Patriot agitators organized themselves into less-formal groups as well.[12] Paul Revere described in his a 1798 letter to historian Jeremy Belknap that in 1774, he was “one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanicks, who formed our-selves in to a Committee for the purpose of watching the Movements of the British Soldiers, & gaining every intelegence of the movements of the Tories. [sic]”[13] At this same time, Revere also took work from Boston’s Committee of Correspondence (under the direction of the committee’s president, Dr. Joseph Warren) including delivering seditious messages and warning Patriots in other Massachusetts cities of impending British raids on local powder houses.

Taken in this context, we can understand that Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride was not an isolated event. It was a mission which he was assigned by the Boston Committee of Safety, as a component of ongoing work he had been doing in association with the Sons of Liberty for several years.

In his account of his Midnight Ride, Paul Revere also describes that after the Battle of Lexington and Concord he was engaged by Dr. Warren as a messenger “to do the out of doors business for that committee [of Safety].”[14] This “out of doors business” which Revere describes lines up with the dates described in this invoice. This work may have been other long-distance riding as he had done before, perhaps notifying the Continental Congress about what had transpired in Lexington.[15] But it may also have involved mustering support for the revolution, circulating petitions encouraging soldiers to enlist in the Massachusetts militia, or coordinating the movement of people and supplies as Patriot forces readied to siege Boston.[16]

Either way, this invoice is a window into all of the behind-the-scenes work which went into organizing the American Revolution, not only by the people who delivered messages, but also by the committees which appointed them, assigned them missions, and made sure they got paid. This invoice – written a year before the Declaration of Independence – shows how much infrastructure went into the American Revolution, and just how early on Patriot organizations in Massachusetts had begun to function as independent governments on the local level.

Explore the full document for this primary source and others like it on our new educational website!

[1] Yes! Paul Revere was expensing his horse rentals! As far as we know, Paul Revere never owned a horse around the time of the American Revolution. Like most Bostonians of the time, he rented a horse for long-distance travel when he needed to go out of town.
[2] Warner, 28.
[3] Warner, 122-125
[4] https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/committees-of-correspondence
[5] Adleman, 94
[6] Ibid and Triber, 91.
[7] Breen 126.
[8] Warner, 153.
[9] Breen, 21.
[10] Breen, 21
[11] Breen, 46
[12] Fisher, 79
[13] Belnknap Transcript
[14] Belknap account
[15] Triber, 111
[16] Fisher, 267 and Forbes, 277

Works Cited

Adelman, Joseph M. Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

Breen, T.H. The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.

Fisher, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. Oxford University Press, 1994.

Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1942.

Treesh, Catherine. Committees of Correspondence. The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/committees-of-correspondence.

Triber, Jayne E. A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere. University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Warner, William B. Protocols of Liberty: Communication Innovation & The American Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2013.