"On the southwest side of Massachusetts Bay is Boston, whose name is taken from a town in Lincolnshire, and is the metropolis of all New England. The houses in some parts joyn, as in London. The buildings, like their women, being neat and handsome. And their streets, like the hearts of the male inhabitants, being paved with pebble." The leadership of Boston in a thousand works of charity and kindness, during these two centuries, has completely refuted the hasty censure of this roving Englishman; and it is to be hoped that the Boston of the future, like the Boston of the past, will do its fair share in the development of that ampler American civilization of which all present achievements suggest only the promise and the dawn. "Then and there American Independence was born." THE BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE HE American Revolution began in Boston. Different dates are set for the beginning. John Adams says of Otis's speech in 1761 in the Council Chamber of the Old State House, "Then and there American Independence was born." The visitor to Boston should go, very early in his visit, into the Old State House; and when he stands in the Council Chamber he will remember that as distinguished a person as John Adams fixed that place as the birthplace of independence. But one does not understand the history of the opening of the great struggle without going back a whole generation. It was in 1745 that Governor William Shirley addressed the Massachusetts General Court in a secret session. He brought before them a plan which he had for the conquest of Louisburg in the next spring, before it could be reinforced from France. The General Court (which means the general assembly of Massachusetts) at first doubted the possibility of success of so bold an attempt; but eventually Shirley persuaded them to undertake it. The Province of New Hampshire and that of Connecticut co-operated, and their army of provincials, with some assistance from Warren of the English navy, took Louisbourg, which capitulated on the 17th of June, 1745. Observe that the 17th of June is St. Botolph's day; and that he is the godfather of Bos ton. When Louis XV. was told that this handful of provincials had taken the Gibraltar of America, he was very angry. In the next spring, the spring of 1746, with a promptness and secrecy which make us respect the administration of the French navy, a squadron of more than forty ships of war, and transports sufficient to bring an army of three thousand men, was fitted out in France and despatched to America, with the definite and acknowledged purpose of wiping Boston from the face of the earth: |