1. So many of our constitutional freedoms trace back to the trauma of the police-state imposed on Boston in the years before Lexington—and lately, I’ve been thinking again about one quirky story in particular.
2. It’s a children’s story, told and retold for generations, but it captured something essential about this country, so maybe it’s worth telling again?
3. First, the setting. By winter 1774-75, Boston, a city of some 16,000 inhabitants, had been occupied by roughly 4,000 troops, sent there to quell protests and enforce law and order. Predictably, the surge of forces into the city worsened the problems it was intended to solve.
4. Every winter, the schoolboys of Boston constructed a sled-run, the hard-packed snow glazing into ice that sped them down the hill. It ran past the quarters of General Frederick Haldimand. The general’s servant, worried it was slick, dumped hot ashes on it, ruining the sled run
5. Let’s pause on that for a second. In modern terms, an agent of a policing force deemed something a threat to public safety and removed the hazard.
6. The schoolboys did a very American thing: They elected a committee and chose a chair. Then they marched over to the general’s house, knocked on the door, and insisted on their right to speak with him, laying out the offense and demanding the injustice be rectified.
7. The astonished general ordered his servant to fix the sled run—and then told the story, as a source of amusement, to the rest of the British commanders over dinner. They all had a good laugh. Well, almost all. General Gage, the commander, seems to have been less amused.
8. In one account, he responded that “they had only caught the spirit of the times, & that what was bred in the bone would creep out in the flesh.” But it’s another account that sticks with me.
9. He observed, John Andrews reported, that "it was impossible to beat the notion of Liberty out of the people, as it was rooted in ’em from their Childhood.”
I think it remains impossible to beat the notion of liberty out of the people.
I think it remains impossible to beat the notion of liberty out of the people.
10. By 1775, there were probably more armed British troops in Boston than there were men over the age of 16—but even the schoolboys couldn’t have the notion of liberty beat out of them.
I wrote about the incident, in a more light-hearted context, here:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
I wrote about the incident, in a more light-hearted context, here:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
