A Chance to Be on TV (kind of)
Bill Fowler is also host of this New England Quarterly podcast from last summer discussing Richard Brown’s article “‘Tried, Convicted, and Condemned, in Almost Every Bar-room and Barber’s Shop’: Anti-Irish Prejudice in the Trial of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1806.”
Prof. Brown is a very interesting historian of early America who organized one of the first history conferences I attended. This paper grew from the same research that led to The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, written with Prof. Irene Quenzler Brown, and he’s doing other research on the criminal justice system. Even on a topic that obviously means a lot to him, Dick Brown is somewhat dry as a speaker, thoughtful rather than effusive, so to liven up this recording there’s also…
Michael Dukakis!
The former governor, now a professor of government at Northeastern, comes into the conversation because he issued a proclamation acknowledging the injustices of the Daley and Halligan trial, modeled on a similar proclamation about the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Tell me he doesn’t sound loose, casual, and still very smart about government.
An interesting aspect of the discussion, not fully explored, is that Brown concluded that anti-Irish sentiment was not a factor in Daley and Halligan’s conviction, though their defense counsel raised that issue. The prosecuting attorney, James Sullivan, was only one generation removed from Ireland himself, and Massachusetts would elect him governor the next two years. Other Irishmen were acquitted in similar trials at the same time. On the other hand, the rules of the court in 1806 were not what any of us would consider fair today.
3 comments:
The Procrastinators' Society of America staged a tounge-in-cheek demonstration at the Whitechapel Foundry, where the Liberty Bell was originally cast, in 1976. They demanded that the foundry honor their warranty on the defective bell. The Foundry agreed to replace the bell, but only if it was returned in the original packaging.
I heard this story many years ago and assumed that it was an urban legend, but it's reported as fact on the Foundry's own web site:
http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/liberty.htm
That story also shows up in Gary B. Nash’s Liberty Bell book. Back in 1976, I think, more Americans had a sense of humor about American icons. But only in England would we find a firm that’s still in business from the 1750s and can respond to a tongue-in-cheek protest with an even cheekier answer.
(I believe this comment was intended for one of the recent Liberty Bell postings, but I can’t transfer it.)
Guilty as charged -- sorry about that!
Post a Comment