EARLY ALARM SYSTEMS
The ride of the three men triggered a flexible system of "alarm and muster" that had been carefully developed months
before, in reaction to the colonists' impotent response to the Powder Alarm of September 1774. This system was an
improved version of an old network of widespread notification and fast deployment of local militia forces in times of
emergency. The colonists had periodically used this system all the way back to the early years of Indian wars in the colony,
before it fell into disuse in the French and Indian War. In addition to other express riders delivering messages, techniques
such as ringing bells, pounding drums, sounding alarms, firing guns, setting bonfires, and the playing of trumpets were used
for rapid communication from town to town. They were used in notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts
villages that they should muster their militias because the Regulars in numbers greater than 500 were leaving Boston with
possible hostile intentions. This system was so effective that people in towns as far as 25 miles from Boston were aware of the
army's movements while they were still unloading boats in Cambridge. Unlike in the Powder Alarm, the alarm raised by the
three riders successfully allowed the militia to repel the British troops in Concord, after which the British were harried by
the growing colonial militia all the way back to Boston (Fischer, 138-145).