Googling around for books targeted at that audience, from that time, the ride is all about guns in every version of the story. I cannot find any version, except in more recent books, that his mission was primarily about the planned arrest of Sam Adams.
http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=#page1From these movements, we expected something serious was [to]
be transacted. On Tuesday evening, the 18th, it was observed, that a number
of Soldiers were marching towards the bottom of the Common.
About 10 o'Clock, Dr. Warren Sent in great haste for me, and beged
that I would imediately Set off for Lexington, where Messrs. Hancock
& Adams were, and acquaint them of the Movement, and that it was
thought they were the objets.
Revere himself said that.
You are saying that children's books didn't say that. You have decided that what's important is how well Mrs. Palin remembers the children's books she heard when she was young, and you present as evidence a children's story printed in 1898.
If that's the standard, it seems to me the children's book we should be looking at would be _Johnny Tremaine_, which I think was by far the most popular fiction about Paul Revere in the 1950's. It says it both ways, in passing. But the book isn't that important, it's nearly 300 pages. What you'd have us judge Palin's memory about would be the movie. That movie came out in 1957. I think I saw it in 1976 but I don't remember it all that well myself. I don't want to download it and look at it again to see what it said. It's not worth it.
So here's what she said, that you're defending:
"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed," she explained to reporters in Boston, Massachusetts Thursday.
"You realized you messed up about Paul Revere?" Fox News host Chris Wallace noted in an interview with Palin Sunday.
"You know what, I didn't mess up about Paul Revere," Palin replied. "Here is what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming and they were going to try to take our arms and we have to make sure we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so they couldn't take it."
She continued: "Remember, the British had been there, many soldiers for seven years in that area. Part of Paul Revere's ride -- it wasn't just one ride -- he was a courier, a messenger. Part of the ride was to warn British that we're already there. You are not going to succeed. You are not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual private militia we have. He did warn the British."
This is what you're defending.
We've had Vice Presidents before who sometimes talked to reporters with their right-brain without letting their left-brain interfere. Dan Quayle, for one. And we've gotten some interesting quotes from our current vice president, for that matter.
And all sorts of politicians have said stupid things sometimes. Romney got a lot of bad press because he tried to change his Vietnam stance and said he'd been brainwashed about it. What he was saying was actually reasonable but when he said it that way the media jumped all over him. Ford said that Poland was not dominated by the USSR when everybody believed it was, and then he stood behind it for several days.
Just a few months ago Michelle Bachmann said that Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire, and then apologised for her mistake. At one point Obama said he'd visited 57 states. He later said he was mistaken, and of course the correct number was 47.
And now here's Palin, she burbles something incoherent and when people tell her it isn't exactly history, she stands behind it. And her "supporters" say she's right, that this is correct history.
What does it take to start with that quote and say it's correct history? Is it four fingers? No, I think it's just one finger, one middle finger stuck out at truth and decency by a bunch of scoundrels.