THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY.

LEXINGTON.

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presence and external pageantry, to law itself. It is true, the forefathers carried this supreme regard for the invisible soul of all just supremacy to the extreme of disdain for the tinsel of royal prerogatives and a mitred priesthood; but there was still an intelligent appreciation of essential truth, tried in the fire of manifold and protracted persecution.

March 5, 1773, in his oration on the Boston Massacre, Benjamin Church predicted that some future Congress would be the "glorious source of the salvation of America ;" and, seven days later, Virginia, by her legislative resolves, advised a union of councils throughout the continent; a measure urged with all the earnestness and eloquence of Samuel Adams. Then Philadelphia spoke in behalf of Pennsylvania, denouncing the duty on tea, and branding him who countenanced its importation "an enemy to his country."

Dec. 16, by the Boston Tea-party, at Griffin's Wharf, the “die was cast." Mothers and their daughters lent the inspiration of their affection to the fathers and sons, offering their highest sacrifice on the altar of Liberty.

April 19, 1775, dawned upon Lexington, alive with preparation to meet the descent upon the military stores gathered there, of which the midnight couriers had forewarned the loyal people.

Before the fire of Pitcairn's men fell eight martyrs of Liberty, and ten more were bleeding from the wounds which the arms of England had made. THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION was opened on that day in the streets of Lexington.

"What a glorious morning is this!" exclaimed Samuel Adams as he heard the sound of the guns borne to his ear from the scene of carnage. It is a suggestive fact, that Massachusetts then, and in 1861, gave the first blood of sacrifice to the country; and Virginia, the first to respond to her call in 1775, became the last great battle-field of Rebellion. The stirring events which followed, from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, make up the third grand period in the history of freedom on this continent.

In 1776, Massachusetts had ten thousand troops in the Revolutionary army, whose entire number was forty thousand. She furnished more troops for the war than all the colonies south of Pennsylvania, three times as many as New York, and nearly the same excess over Pennsylvania. Amid the opening scenes of the struggle for Independence, the hideous anomaly in the Christian colonies, African slavery, was not forgotten.

In Worcester, where emancipation, as a measure indispensable to

success in the recent war, was first advocated by Senator Sumner before the people in 1860, a convention of the citizens of the State, lately a colony, in 1775 declared their abhorrence of the enslaving of any of the human race, especially the negroes, in this country, and their purpose to use all means in their power to secure universal freedom. About the same time, Massachusetts took the lead in preparatory steps to a convention of the States, looking toward their confederation; and, in 1787, her action received the approval of Congress. Meanwhile, in the Congress of the Thirteen States, March, 1784, Mr. Jefferson sat on a select committee to report a plan of government for the Western territory, including the extensive region which afterwards formed the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The report presented to Congress an article fatal to the extension of slavery. It read: "That, after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty."

A majority of the votes of all the States was required, and lost only by the absence of the member from New Jersey. New England, New York, and Pennsylvania were unanimous in their votes for the prohibition; Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, against it; and North Carolina divided.

Thus the first great act of justice to the nation and a proscribed race, in Congress, after the dawn of peace, was defeated; and the State solitary to-day at the North, by her position on national questions, and in neglecting to cast her vote for freedom, fastened upon the South the system which ruled the nation, and well-nigh ruined it.*

In the Confederation of 1787, through whose action the States became a nationality, the first condition was the surrender at once and forever of a separate existence, reserving only that degree of local government which would be harmoniously subor dinate to the life and sovereignty of the General Government.

The honorable position of Massachusetts was recognized by the people in the selection of John Adams, in the first presidential election under the Constitution, to sit by the side of Washington in the administration of the power it conferred.

Unfortunately, the objections of the Commonwealth, and of other States in the convention that adopted the instrument, to the

Since these pages were written, New Jersey has taken her position with her loyal sister States.

MASSACHUSETTS ALWAYS ANTISLAVERY.

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legalizing of slavery, of the slave-trade for twenty years, and conceding the right of the slave States to demand the return of fugitives, were overruled by considerations of present expediency; and the system of which Ellsworth said, "Slavery will not be a speck in our country," was destined to become the blackest stormcloud that ever dropped its bolts upon a nation.

In 1780, Massachusetts framed a constitution, which contained the declaration, that "all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights, among which is the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, and that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property." The Supreme Court of the State decided, that, by this provision, slavery was abolished.

New Hampshire followed in the same manner in 1783, and Rhode Island in 1784.

The general consistency of Massachusetts from her earliest existence, on the great questions of human rights, cannot be denied. It has made her the object of special dislike by the friends of oppression, and has given pre-eminence to her sons among those modern Nazarenes in the eyes of the "chivalry," the "YANKEES." Her citizens have not to any extent differed here. Party issues have divided her councils, and the extreme views of some reformers have had the effect either to create silence, or draw forth an apology for the slave-power, whose claims were presented in the name of the Constitution.

Those very reformers, among whom William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips are pre-eminent in talents, and the latter alone in the grace and splendor of his oratory, commanded admiring throngs, because, along with whatever of extravagance entered into their appeals, they reached and interpreted the popular conscience. Their moral courage entitles them to respect, which will be theirs when scorn has branded with eternal shame the last vestige of human bondage.

In the broadening and deepening sweep of Massachusetts' ideas and sentiment, opposed by the sleepless propagandism of the South, and advocated so ably in Congress by John Quincy Adams, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, and Henry Wilson, political expediency and differences have been overborne, until her brow in the van of the world's progress is unclouded, and bright with unfading hope.

After South Carolina passed an act authorizing the imprisonment of colored seamen, found on board of vessels in her ports,

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MASSACHUSETTS IN THE REBELLION.

till they sailed again, this Commonwealth first appeared to ques tion the right, and to protect her mariners. The Legislature resolved to test the constitutionality of the enactment. In conformity with the resolution, the lamented Gov. Briggs appointed the Hon. Samuel Hoar to proceed to Charleston to procure evidence, and institute legal proceedings. He arrived there November, 1844. His threatened life, and expulsion from the city with his daughter, is the brief history of his mission.

The memorable Compromise of 1850, followed by slave-hunting at the North, was no less repugnant to the true heart of Massachusetts because her greatest statesman approved it on the ground of a constitutional demand not only, but that of conciliation and peace. The Nebraska Bill inaugurated a reign of terror in Kansas, among whose persecuted pioneers New-England emigrants were largely represented. But no event ripened more rapidly the general sentiment of the State than the trial and rendition of Anthony Burns in early June, 1854. The peaceful trial in the court-room, the armed soldiery escorting the victim to the UnitedStates cutter "Morris" without molestation, while the Commonwealth throbbed to her extremities with indignation over the intended insult, illustrated, as nothing had done before, her hatred to the system that offered it, and her indestructible love of order. The majesty of law awed the descendants of Revolutionary heroes into silence, while, like the divine Friend of the poor, one of his disciples was led, as a lamb to the slaughter, from freedom to bloody bondage.

May 22, 1856, the outrage upon Massachusetts and the nation, in its Capitol, was repeated by Senator Brooks in his cowardly and ruthless attack upon Charles Sumner. When he lay apparently near death from the wounds inflicted upon his head, the State that sent him to the senate-chamber was moved with inexpressible emotions of grief and horror. The question was not, whether the remarkable speech on the Barbarism of Slavery was faultless in thought and delivery: it was enough to know that the murderous blows laid upon the brow of her senator were intended to express the domineering hate of the oppressor toward the Commonwealth not only, but the liberty-loving North; while it struck down the right of free discussion everywhere.

The very next year, the Dred Scott decision was rendered by Chief Justice Taney, against whose inhumanity Justice Curtis, from Massachusetts, gave his decided opinion, although himself a warm personal friend of Daniel Webster, and belonging to the conservative school.

MASSACHUSETTS ALWAYS ANTISLAVERY.

15

The clergy and the churches, with comparatively few exceptions, have always shown that fealty to the principles of righteousness in the State, which distinguished the days of colonial heroism in the pulpit and in the assemblies of the people.

Thus nearly two hundred and fifty years of conflict with legalized wrongs, and of intelligent thought upon human rights and well-being, had prepared Massachusetts to meet bravely the second great life-struggle of Freedom on this continent. When the popular election of 1860 elevated to the presidency a man, who, in the minds of the people, will ever be associated with Washington, the trial-hour of Nationality came, and found her ready for it.

It will be seen by reference to Congressional records, that of the score of antislavery measures, which, during the four years of war, swept away the defences of oppression reared by the national legislation during fifty years, more than half of them were introduced by members from the single State of Massachusetts, whose prompt support of other bills was not unfrequently the influence that secured their passage. The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the great work of national emancipation, and the Bureau of Freedmen, are forever associated with the names of Massachusetts Congress-men. It is not an occasion for proud comparison with other States, but an historical fact to which we point the friends of freedom the world over, whenever the unfounded sneer is aimed at New England.

The recognition of this providential position occasionally appears in the record of public affairs made by the columns of the newspaper press. When the triumphant vindication of the principles of our Government by the popular elections of 1865 was known, the leading papers of Philadelphia had expressions of congratulation like those we quote in this connection:

To commence with the extreme East, we find that the stanch old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, whose consistency is as eternal as the waves of her bay, has, of course, rolled up her old majority in favor of the cause of freedom. Small in size, small in population, when compared with her sisters, she is great in brain, and large of heart; and her action yesterday was only what we had cause to expect from her record in the past, and her attitude throughout the darkest hour of our national life.

Such a history suggests responsibilities corresponding with the greatness of the work committed to the Commonwealth in the training of her children for the duties before them, not only to