Paul Revere isn’t a polished politician. He’s a working artisan, silversmith, engraver, problem solver, someone who believes a man proves himself by what he can make and what he can provide. In Broadside, that’s the key: Revere doesn’t chase glory. He chases responsibility. He’s proud, practical, and rooted in the daily life of Boston with orders to fill, apprentices to manage, neighbors to look in the eye.
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| Paul Revere etching a copper plate with his kids and an old sailor. |
And there are a lot of neighbors under his roof. Revere is a family man in the most literal sense: two marriages, sixteen children, eight with his first wife, Sarah, eight with his second wife, Rachel. Sarah dies in 1773, right as Boston is boiling toward the Tea Party, and he remarries quickly, not because he’s unfeeling, but because a household that size can’t pause. Grief doesn’t get its own season when there are babies crying and work due at dawn. That loss hardens him and softens him at the same time: he knows how fragile life is, and he still has to be steady.
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| After a long day of work he checks on his wife Sarah |
So what motivates him? Protection. Not abstract “liberty” for a speech protection of his home, his street, his people, and the future he wants for his kids. He’s proud of Boston’s dignity and furious at being treated like a subject who can be managed from across an ocean. And because his shop sits in the middle of everything, he’s tuned to the city’s pulse: sailors, merchants, printers, organizers. He hears what’s shifting before it hits the headlines.
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| Paul Revere provides logistics for the courier network through the colonies |
That’s why Dr. Joseph Warren’s secret planning pulls him in. Revere is useful: he can move quietly, observe, carry messages, and get places fast. He becomes part of a network because he’s reliable and because he understands something the “big talkers” sometimes forget... a revolution is logistics. What keeps him up at night is the math between duty and danger: If I’m caught, what happens to my family? If I’m not caught but I fail, what happens to everyone else’s family? Fatherhood pulls him home; conscience pulls him into the street. His courage isn’t fearless, it’s calculated, and it’s exhausting.
