In today’s Boston Globe, columnist Alex Beam quotes me and Prof. David Hackett Fischer on what other Revolutionary holidays Massachusetts could add to (or substitute for) our current selection of Evacuation Day (17 March), Patriots’ Day (19 April), Bunker Hill Day (17 June), and the Fourth of July (um, 4 July).
How about Massacre Day (5 March)? Pope Night (5 November)? Or my most serious suggestion, Powder Alarm Day (2 September), which could be the equivalent of Evacuation Day for Massachusetts outside of Boston?
One clarification: During what became known as the “Powder Alarm” the 4,000 militiamen who crowded into Cambridge intimidated members of the governor’s Council, not the city council—which didn’t exist yet.
I think the two holidays should stay the same as they have been. Now they talk about the cost of the day off for Suffolk County employees. What about the cost of the lives that were involved and should be remembered.
ReplyDeleteThis is indeed a superbly written blog.
ReplyDeleteTea Party Day--December 16. (Of course in Lexington we would celebrate it 3 days early, on December 13, the day we burned our tea!)
ReplyDeleteI listed Tea Party Day for Alex Beam as well, but it didn’t make the column.
ReplyDeleteThere were tea protests of various sorts up and down the Atlantic coast. Some, like Concord, involved symbolically destroying tea that was already on the market, and on which any duties had already been paid.
The Boston action struck at the new Tea Act by destroying a huge quantity of tea just before the duty was officially due, thus hurting both the British government and the East India Company.