We misunderstand Paul Revere's revolutionary thinking if we identify it with our modern ideas of individual freedom and tolerance that later spread through the world. Bostonians had very different attitudes in 1775. Samuel Adams often spoke of what he called "publick liberty," or the "liberty of America," or sometimes the "liberty of Boston." Their idea of liberty was both a corporate and individual possession. It had a double meaning in New England, akin to the Puritan idea of a special and general calling and Cotton Mather's two oars. It referred not only to the autonomy of each person's rights, but also to the integrity of the group, and especially to the responsibility of a people to regulate their own affairs. We remember the individual rights and forget the collective responsibilities. We tend to interpret Thomas Jefferson's ambiguous reference the "the pursuit of happiness" as an individual quest, but in 1774, Paul Revere's town meeting spoke of "social happiness" as its goal.
Also distinctive to this culture was its idea of equality. The motto of the Sons of Liberty was "Equality Before the Law." They did not believe in equality of possessions, or even equality of esteem, but they thought that all people had the right to be judged according to their worth. Paul Revere's business associate Nathaniel Ames wrote:
All men are by Nature equal
But different greatly in the sequel
For Paul Revere and "town-born" Boston these principles did not derive from abstract premises, but from tradition and historical experience. In America it has always been so. Milan Kundera has recently reminded us that "the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." This was Paul Revere's road to revolution. It was also his message for our time.
David Hackett Fischer, from Paul Revere's Ride
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