<div>I wonder, Carl, if there are ANY circumstances under which you would support armed insurrection against tyranny. And by "support" I don't mean, of course, actual fighting, but merely acceding to it intellectually.</div>
<div><br><br> </div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:07 PM, C. G. Estabrook <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:galliher@illinois.edu">galliher@illinois.edu</a>></span> wrote:</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br> </div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">Yes, Longfellow's poem was a conscious act of pro-war propaganda in 1860 <<a href="http://www.danagioia.net/essays/elongfellow.htm" target="_blank">http://www.danagioia.net/essays/elongfellow.htm</a>>. It supports not one but two wars - armed resistance to the British in 1775 and the armed attack on the secessionist states in 1860 - that I would not have supported. But it's still a good poem and considering it may actually challenge currently politically potent historical myths.<br>
<br>There's a good book about Revere's ride by David Hackett Fischer from about 15 years ago (and he mentions Prince Estabrook, the first colonial militiaman wounded in Revolutionary War). --CGE<br><br>On 4/18/10 4:31 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">So through the night rode Paul Revere;=<br>And so through the night went his cry of alarm<br>To every Middlesex village and farm,---<br>
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,<br>A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,<br>And a word that shall echo for evermore!<br>For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,<br>Through all our history, to the last,<br>In the hour of darkness and peril and need,<br>
The people will waken and listen to hear<br>The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,<br>And the midnight message of Paul Revere.<br><br>Longfellow wrote this on April 19, 1860, with forebodings of a Civil War?<br>Revere's ride is said to be on April 18, 1775.<br>
<br><br>On Apr 18, 2010, at 1:19 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">A hurry of hoofs in a village street,<br>A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,<br>And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark<br>
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;<br>That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,<br>The fate of a nation was riding that night;<br>And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,<br>Kindled the land into flame with its heat.<br>
He has left the village and mounted the steep,<br>And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,<br>Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;<br>And under the alders that skirt its edge,<br>Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,<br>
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides...</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<br />--
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