Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn

Book excerpt: Paul Revere's ride to warn the colonial militia of the British march on Lexington and Concord is a legendary contribution to the American Revolution. This book reveals another side of this American hero's life, that of a transformational entrepreneur instrumental in the industrial revolution. It combines a biographical examination of Revere with a study of the new nation's business and technological climate. A silversmith prior to the Revolution and heralded for his patriotism during the war, Revere aspired to higher social status within the fledgling United States. To that end, he shifted away from artisan silversmithing toward larger, more involved manufacturing ventures such as ironworking, bronze casting, and copper sheet rolling. The author explores Revere's vibrant career successes and failures, social networks, business practices, and the groundbreaking metallurgical technologies he developed and employed. Revere's commercial ventures epitomized what Martello terms proto-industrialization, a transitional state between craft work and mass manufacture that characterizes the broader, fast -- changing landscape of the American economy.