Prior to the Revolutionary War, Sam Adams and other Founding Fathers formed a group called the Sons of Liberty to protest the Stamp Act and similar oppressive legislation. The Sons of Liberty regularly protested outside of the homes of British colonial officials, including the homes of tax collectors. If Balfour and Georgia’s Big Business titans have their way, these protests would be illegal, and Adams and many of the other Founding Fathers would’ve been arrested.That's an awfully charitable reading of the protests in Boston between 1765 and 1770. The Sons of Liberty did not just protest "outside of the homes of British colonial officials" — they tore those homes to pieces, sending the officials and their families fleeing into the night to escape the mobs of armed looters.
In the evening whilst I was at supper and my children round me somebody ran in and said the mob were coming. I directed my children to fly to a secure place and shut up my house as I had done before intending not to quit it but my eldest daughter repented her leaving me and hastened back and protested she would not quit the house unless I did. I could not stand against this and withdrew with her to a neighbouring house where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew fell upon my house with the rage of devils and in a moment with axes split down the doors and entered by some being in the great entry heard them cry damn him he is upstairs we'll have him. Some ran immediately as high as the top of the house others filled the rooms below and cellars and others remained without the house to be employed there. Messages soon came one after another to the house where I was to inform me the mob were coming in Pursuit of me and I was obliged to retire thro yards and gardens to a house more remote where I remained until 4 o'clock by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings and splitting the doors to pieces they beat down the Partition walls and altho that alone cost them near two hours they cut down the cupola or lanthern and they began to take the slate and boards from the roof and were prevented only by the approaching daylight from a total demolition of the building. The garden fence was laid flat and all my trees &c broke down to the ground. Such ruins were never seen in America.In 1770, another group of "protestors" gathered outside of Theophilus Lillie's shop in broad daylight. Lillie's neighbor, Ebenezer Richardson, tried to destroy an effigy they had constructed, so they attacked his house, throwing so many rocks, bricks, and handfuls of feces that they tore the window casements from the walls, leaving ragged holes. After his wife was hit in the head with a rock, Richardson loaded his gun with birdshot and fired into the crowd, killing 11-year-old Christopher Snider.
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| The three high peaks are smallpox epidemic years: 1721, 1730, and 1752. |
Right next door is the Granary Burying Ground. Here you find the graves of three men who signed the Declaration of Independence - John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Adams. Benjamin Franklin's parents are buried here, too - victims of the Boston Massacre. The spot where the patriots were killed is marked by a circle of cobbles, right in the heart of Boston's bustling financial district.This reminds me of one of my colleagues, who tells an awesome story about getting flustered during an oral examination and telling his examiners that Anne Hutchinson was eaten by a bear. I can just see 112-year-old Josiah Franklin throwing snowballs at those darned redcoats.
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| US Senator James Henry Lane |
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| Big Jay |
A Jayhawk is a blue bird with a red head and a big yellow beak that wears boots. It would be hard to confuse it with anyone with terrorist intent, though we admit we have been terrorizing the Tigers on the basketball court for some time. Tigers have been known to kill people. Bears, too.The University may want to rethink its flippancy on this issue. Jayhawks are not really just birds. But, then, Tigers are not really tigers, either, but rather, the Columbia Fighting Tigers, a home-guard unit that protected Columbia, MO from Confederate bushwhackers during the war. I could stand to see both teams cheered on by a Unionist militiaman.
Throughout history, societies have . . .Hopefully, you have crossed these words out and drawn some sort of frowny face before commenting on the inherent weakness of such grandiose statements. In a better world, the student writer would take this advice to heart and learn the joys of being specific. In the actual world, he will go on to write an opinion piece for the New York Times.
The wise Man doth justly condemn the folly of those, that are always saying and complaining, what is the cause that the former dayes were better than these? . . . Such complaints often proceeding from Ignorance in History, or non-observation of the vices in those of former, and virtues in some of the present Generation . . . All this not withstanding, some Times are more corrupt, dark, and miserable than can be said of all . . . Yea, the dreggs of those times are now at hand.That's Increase Mather, on the case in 1679, in his "Call from Heaven," a pamphlet on the raising of godly children.
I'll pledge my friendsThis last line was considered too racy to be copied into the court records.
And for my foes
A plague on their heels
And a pox on their toes.
The grounds have been laid out in regular alleys and gravel paths, and embellished with a great variety of native forest-trees, some of which are of stately growth. The gravestones of many generations have been raised up, and numerous seats located under shady branches, where the aged and weary may pause, and the mourner find a quiet resting-place. Yet it is to be lamented that the mounds and hillocks of the dead have been cut down to an unnatural level, and so many stones misplaces to form a geometrical row on the borders of the paths. This mode of restoring and adorning an ancient churchyard is singular; and to speak of it kindly, and not in anger, it certainly was not the act of good taste.
