Hoofprints Through History
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere …”
Most of us have read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about the historical ride that Paul Revere took on “the eighteenth of April, seventy five,” to alert the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord that British soldiers were coming.
I suppose we can’t measure the historical impact of men on horseback strictly by the distance they covered. Revere rode only about 30 miles, although it was the middle of the night and most of it was on unlit back roads and country lanes. Still, we are the beneficiaries of Revere’s endeavor.
I read this poem the other day and got to thinking about men riding on horseback to change history. Most of my columns here in are aimed at improving your riding skills, but occasionally I write about other aspects of the horse world. History is another of my interests, and I thought that for a while I would combine my historical reading and rumination and my
