Boston II

This time we went for the history, not the tea.


We started off with a visit to the Massachusetts State House,

To the right, the outside of the gold-domed Statehouse, completed in 1798.



To the left, inside, a stainglass ceiling celebrating the Declaration of Independence. In the middle is the Massachusetts Arms - an Indian with a bow and arrow (not a Minuteman, afterall), and in the 12 circles around the central circle are the arms of the other 12 states who signed the Declaration of Independence.



Beneath, in an adjacent room, the first-ever full-length portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

The explanation we were given was that at 6'4" he was considered freakishly tall for the time, and refused to pose standing up.

We were also told that at the time painters charged according to how many limbs were displayed, so in order to cut costs, only one arm was commissioned. Hence the saying, 'it cost an arm and a leg'. Seems pretty stingy to give old Abe only one arm.

This is a bad photo of the 'sacred cod' which has hung inside the debating chamber of the House of Representatives since 1784 (There was an earlier State House).


It served to remind members of the importance of cod fisheries to the welfare of the state.

The State Senate got jealous and installed a 'holy mackerel' in their chamber.





Outside the state house a monument to another first: the country's first almost all-black Regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Regimen. When the civil war broke out in 1861, free blacks in Massachusetts wanted to enlist to fight against slavery but were barred from fighting. After pleas from the Governor, the War Department agreed to allow blacks to join up, but as soldiers only; a white officer (Robert Shaw) had to lead them.







These are two of the first sites on the 'Freedom Trail': a walk through the city's Revolutionary history. The walk is also interesting from an immigration perspective.





Early Massachusetts was, of course, heavily influenced by its Pilgrim settlers. The fact that the Pilgrims left England through choice, as religious dissenters, meant that they brought with them considerable economic resources, along with their strong belief in education.





It was in Boston that the first American public school was founded in 1635, educating a number of America's most famous sons.



A couple of those listed in this plaque went on to play central roles in the American Revolution.





John Hancock became a leader of the independence movement after his boat, Liberty, was seized by the British on account of his not having paid customs duties on his cargo of molasses, and it was to warn Hancock of the approaching Redcoat army that Paul Revere made his midnight ride in 1775.




Hancock's lasting claim to fame is that his is the first signature on the Declaration of Independence, and, nowadays, 'John Hancock' is American slang for a signature. Who would know?




Another alumni was Charles Bullfinch, architect of the Massachusetts State House, built on Hancock's lawn. Oh, and Benjamin Franklin, (a personal favourite of Graeme's, if I remember correctly?)





This, however, is the old State House, built by the British, and the scene of much ferment before the breakout of war.

Here occured the Boston Massacre, and it was on this balcony that the Declaration of Independence was read to a crowd of cheering Bostonians in 1776.






After that they knocked down and burned the lion and unicorn you can see atop the building - hated symbols of British colonial rule (replaced by replicas).




Now it is a very cool museum; air conditioning rocks.



Inside, reminders of a different kind of migration.














Then, from the 1820s onwards, large numbers of Irish immigrants began to arrive in Boston, in time greatly outnumbering those of Pilgrim and other English ancestry.






This sculpture was part of an instalment commemorating 'The Great Hunger'; the potato famine which began in 1845 and lasted until 1850. Over a million people died, an eighth of the population. Another two million Irish migrated to the Eastern cities of North America.


Irish novelist William Carelton wrote of the famine: 'The features of the people were gaunt, their eyes wild and hollow, and their gait feeble and tottering. Pass through the fields and you were met by little groups bearing home on their shoulders a coffin.'



The discrimination these Irish immigrants faced in Boston is legendary.



On the way back to Amherst we visited a different kind of Irish shrine: the JFK library at UMass, Boston.


It was full of campaign memorabilia, television news reels, the notes from which JFK read speeches, family photos, Jackie's dresses.


Bought a replica fridge magnet - 'Leadership for the 60's Kennedy - Johnson'. Exciting, really.



Ah, but will there be such a shrine to Obama a few years hence?