They should drink the waters of
the fountain at the source of our colonial and early history.
You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in
1770. There you should learn how your fathers strove for community
rights. And near the same spot you should learn how proudly the
delegation of democracy came to demand the removal of the troops from
Boston, and how the venerable Samuel Adams stood asserting the rights of
democracy, dauntless as Hampden, clear and eloquent as Sidney; and how
they drove out the myrmidons who had trampled on the rights of the
people.
All over our country, these monuments, instructive to the present
generation, of what our fathers did, are to be found. In the library of
your association for the collection of your early history, I found a
letter descriptive of the reading of the church service to his army by
General Washington, during one of those winters when the army was
ill-clad and without shoes, when he built a little log-cabin for a
meeting-house, and there, reading the service to them his sight failed
him, he put on his glasses and, with emotion which manifested the
reality of his feelings, said, "I have grown gray in serving my country,
and now I am growing blind."
By the aid of your records you may call before you the day when the
delegation of the army of the democracy of Boston demanded compliance
with its requirements for the removal of the troops.
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