Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Maine Historical Society.
“Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Those lines begin one of the most famous poems written by an American poet. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began writing “Paul Revere’s Ride” on the eve of the 85th anniversary of the actual event, but his purpose in writing it wasn’t so much to offer a precise retelling of the beginning of the Revolutionary War or to transform Paul Revere into a national folk hero. He wrote it as a means to inspire moral courage and national unity as the country slowly moved toward civil war.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in Portland (see Wadsworth-Longfellow House) in a family steeped in Revolutionary War stories and memory. His maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, was an officer with the American forces during the war, who served alongside Paul Revere as part of the largest American naval expedition of the war (see Penobscot Expedition).
Henry’s own renown came through writing and education rather than military exploits. He taught at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, his alma mater, and at Harvard College while publishing his poetry. By the mid-1800s, poems such as “Evangeline,” “The Song of Hiawatha,” and “The Courtship of Miles Standish” made him one of the first American writers to achieve international literary celebrity.
When Henry died in 1882, he was in the house he had lived in since 1837. That home in Cambridge, Massachusetts had been George Washington’s headquarters during the early days of the Revolutionary War.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
