[515] There is necessarily much in the Mass. Archives. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 118.
[516] Lossing's Field-Book, vol. i.; Lossing's Schuyler, i. ch. 26; Stone's introd. to Thayer's Journal, and the references given by that editor, p. v.
[517] On the "Canada Campaign."
[518] The manuscript is in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. Cf. Worcester Mag., i. 202.
[519] The tower upon which the lanterns were hung is a matter of dispute, Revere's "North Church" being considered by some to have been the church in North Square, Boston, pulled down by the British during the siege, and by others the present Christ Church, and it is upon the latter that the tourist to-day is shown an inscription identifying that building with the event. Richard Frothingham, in a letter to the mayor of Boston, called The alarm on the night of April 18, 1775 (Boston, 1876, 2nd ed., 1877) protested against this act, and wrote in favor of the church in North Square. The other alternative was upheld by the Rev. John Lee Watson in a letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser, July 20, 1876, and this was printed separately in 1877 as Paul Revere's Signal, with remarks by Charles Deane, and in a second edition with an additional letter in 1880. (Cf. Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Nov., 1876.) This second letter was mainly in answer to William W. Wheildon's History of Paul Revere's Signal Lanterns (Concord, 1878), in which, while accepting the Christ Church theory, it was claimed that Robert Newman was the person who showed the lanterns, and not John Pulling, as averred by Mr. Watson (cf. note in Everett's Orations, i. p. 101). Mr. Deane had shown that, both before and after the destruction of the church in North Square, Christ Church had been called the North Church; while the earliest use of that designation for the latter building seems to have been in one of Dr. Stiles's almanacs in 1754, where he speaks of "Dr. Cutler's alias North, alias Christ Church." (Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1884, p. 256.) E. G. Porter's Rambles in Old Boston, N. E., favors Christ Church.
Among the more general histories, the fullest account of this ride can be found in S. A. Drake's Middlesex County, i. ch. 16.
Mr. E. H. Goss printed a paper on Revere in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., Jan., 1886, p. 3, giving, among other cuts, a view of his birthplace(?) in North Square, in Boston. There is a portrait of him, with a note on other likenesses, in Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 69. Cf. also T. W. Higginson in Harper's Monthly, Oct., 1883, and his Larger Hist. of the U. S.
[520] Boston, 1878,—one hundred copies privately printed.
[521] The entire series (twenty in number) is printed in Force's American Archives, 4th ser., ii. 490, et seq.; Shattuck's History of Concord, pp. 342, et seq.; Journal of second continental congress, pp. 79, et seq.; and portions of it are given in Frothingham's Siege of Boston, pp. 367, et seq.; Remembrancer, 1775, i. 35, et seq.; London Chronicle, June 1, 1775; also in various Boston newspapers of the time. They were also printed in a tract without imprint, Affidavits and depositions relative to the commencement of hostilities at Concord and Lexington, April 19, 1775. They were again issued by Isaiah Thomas, at Worcester, in a Narrative of the incursions and ravages of the King's troops on the nineteenth of April (Haven, in Thomas, ii. p. 661); again at Boston, in 1779 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xiv. 204). Dawson (i. 23) prints some of the depositions, and so does Hinman in his Connecticut during the Revolution, App. Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, transmitted copies to Dartmouth (N. Jersey Archives, x. 612). Lieut. E. T. Gould, of the King's Own, captured by the provincials, testified that he "could not exactly say which fired first."
[522] Sparks says (Sparks MSS., no. xxxii., vol. ii.): "In the public offices in London, I saw several papers respecting [Lexington], and particularly about the arrival of Captain Derby and the intelligence he brought. He was examined by order of the ministers, and he seems to have acted a bold part in circulating the intelligence.... In the first dispatch to General Gage he was censured for not sending the particulars immediately, and ordered to keep a packet in constant readiness."