tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post1738955422211641206..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: A Community Discussion about Faneuil Hall Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-21446679828646488892020-09-08T09:49:33.161-05:002020-09-08T09:49:33.161-05:00I've been to Faneuil Hall many times in my lif...I've been to Faneuil Hall many times in my life, and can verify your statement about how tourists often don't get the whole story behind historic people and places. Specific to Peter Faneuil, it was from this blog where I learned of his role in the slave trade. Even as a long-time resident of Buffalo, where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting something named after Millard Fillmore, this community is just now waking up the fact that he signed the Fugitive Slave Act into law.<br /><br />I'm undecided as to the benefit of renaming or removing monuments to the darker moments of our history. One the one hand, it's wrong to glorify men who owned or supported the owning of other human beings as property; however, if we remove these reminders of the past, we risk forgetting it and how it brought us to where we are today.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-48372314897819548182020-09-04T12:29:37.555-05:002020-09-04T12:29:37.555-05:00This anonymous comment doesn’t really engage in th...This anonymous comment doesn’t really engage in the conversation. <br /><br />First, as the posting above describes, the issue with Peter Faneuil is that he made money from slave-trading and supplying the Caribbean slave-labor plantations, not that he and others owned “a some slaves.” <br /><br />Second, saying “We all know” about slavery in Boston doesn’t acknowledge how many tourists who come to Faneuil Hall and other historic sites say they don’t know that history. In particular, I think most people, visiting and local, are still learning the extent of Boston’s economic interdependence with the West Indian plantations. What is the best way of conveying that history?<br /><br />The description of the history of Massachusetts’s abolition of slavery is debatable. The lawsuits of 1783 were certainly important in making slavery unenforceable in Massachusetts, and no enslaved people were listed on the 1790 census. Visitors could still bring in slaves, however, until another legal decision in the early nineteenth century. <br /><br />With that change, Massachusetts became <i>de facto</i> free territory until the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which was controversial in the state. In ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, Massachusetts did its part to end slavery in the U.S. of A., but it had already abolished the practice locally.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-50281481974862799272020-09-04T11:30:43.566-05:002020-09-04T11:30:43.566-05:00A new name is not necessary. We all know that many...A new name is not necessary. We all know that many wealthy Boston citizens of those days had a some slaves. Slavery in Boston declined significantly after "Commonwealth v. Jennison". Finally, during the Civil War, Massachusetts finally abolished slavery (long overdue).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com