Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized a Boston silversmith's heroism at the dawn of the American Revolution with his "Paul Revere's Ride" published in 1860. Revere was assisted by several men, dodging British patrols as they fanned out to spread the word of British troops approaching Concord via Lexington on the night of April 18, 1775. The British mission was to capture a cache of colonialist arms in Concord. Longfellow's poetic portrayal of Revere warning "the British are coming" was in error: the vast majority of colonists still considered themselves "British" (albeit second-class) and contemporary accounts indicate that Revere's warning was "the Regulars are coming,' referring to regular British Army troops.
By the following morning, colonial militia had assembled at Lexington town green to stop the British advance toward Concord, sparking the first military confrontation of the American Revolution, the "shot heard 'round the world."
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