January 30, 1841: Henry David Thoreau Follows a Fox

“I tread in the tracks of the fox which has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tiptoe of expectation, as if I were on the trail of the spirit itself which resides in these woods, and expected soon to catch it in its lair.

The snow falls on no two trees alike, but the forms it assumes are as various as those of the twigs and leaves which foxreceive it. They are as it were predetermined by the genius of the tree. So one divine spirit descends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit in each. The divinity subsides on all men, as the snowflakes settle on the fields, and ledges, and take the form of the various clefts and surfaces in which it lodges.

Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching quarter of a mile across the pond. Now I am curious to know what has determined its graceful curvatures, its greater or less spaces and distinctness, and how surely they were coincident with the fluctuations of some mind. Why they now lead me two steps to the right, and then three to the left–If these things are not to be called up and accounted for in the Lamb’s Book of Life, I shall set them down for careless accountants. Here was one expression of the divine mind this morning.

The pond was his journal, and last night’s snow made a tabula rasa for him. I know which way a mind wended this morning. –what horizon it faced by the setting of these tracks–whether it moved slowly or rapidly; by the greater or less intervals and distinctness–for the swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace.”

January 29, 1861: Bleeding Kansas is admitted to the Union

On this day in 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as Free State. It was the 34th state to join the Union.

Bleeding KansasExcept that South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana had just seceded from the Union. So it was the 28th state. Texas and Virginia would soon leave as well, and Kansas would shortly be only the 26th state in the dwindling Union.

Exactly 11 years before, on January 29, 1850, Henry Clay had introduced the Compromise of 1850. It was meant to be a grand bargain that would address the sectional conflict of the increasingly fragile United States: California would become a free state, slavery in the Utah and New Mexico Territories would be decided by popular sovereignty, the slave trade would be abolished in Washington, D.C. (but not slavery itself); and the Fugitive Slave Act would be strengthened.

It didn’t work for long. In 1854, Kansas and Nebraska were organized as territories. Again a popular vote would decide the issue of slavery.

There was little debate in Nebraska as the territory was filled with settlers from the Midwest. But in Kansas, where many settlers were anti-slave or abolitionists, many pro-slave Missourians lurked just over the border. When residents in the territory cast their votes on the issue, many fraudulent votes were cast from Missouri.

Blood started to flow. On May 21 1856 Border Ruffians from Missouri burned down the “Free State Hotel”, destroyed two newspaper offices, and ransacked homes and stores in the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas.

The following day Senator Charles Sumner made his “Crime Against Kansas” speech from the floor of the Senate. He mocked and vilified pro-slavery senators and accused them of attempting to “rape a virgin territory”. Two day later Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Sumner with a gutta-percha cane and very nearly beat him to death on the floor of the Senate.

Two nights later on May 24, 1856, John Brown and his company of Free State volunteers raided pro-slavery settlements along the Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas and murdered James Doyle and two of his sons, William and Drury.

Three years later, after John Brown was captured at Harpers Ferry, Doyle’s widow wrote him a personal letter:

Chattanooga Tennessee
     20th November 1859.

John Brown
     Sir
    Altho vengence is not mine, I confess, that I do feel gratified to hear that you ware stopt in your fiendish career at Harper’s Ferry, with the loss of your two sons, you can now appreciate my distress, in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing, you cant say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one, but has only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children while I feel for your folly. I do hope & trust that you will meet your just reward. O how it pained my Heart to hear the dying groans of my Husband and children if this scrawl give you any consolation you are welcome to it
                                                                           Mahala Doyle

NB my son John Doyle whose life I begged of you is now grown up and is very desirous to be at Charleston on the day of your execution would certainly be there if his means would permit it, that he might adjust the rope around your neck if gov: wise would permit it
                                                                                 M. Doyle.

January 28, 1934: First Ski Tow begins Operation in Vermont

“You ought to be able to think of something to get us up these hills. Each of us is spending $40 apiece to enjoy a weekend in Vermont, yet the most we can do in a day is to climb a hill half-a-dozen times. We want to get in all the skiing we can on these weekends. We want to be carried uphill.”Rope Tow

Tom Gammack had spent most of a day with two friends, Doug Burden, (who would later develop Florida’s Marineland) and Barklie Henry, climbing the slopes of Clint Gilbert’s Hill in Woodstock to enjoy a few brilliant moments skiing down to the bottom.

After their day on the slope the three men, all businessmen from New York City, sat at the White Cupboard Inn, chatting with innkeepers Elizabeth and Robert Royce along with “Bunny” Bertram, the former captain of the Dartmouth ski team, who had given them a bit of instruction.

They all had some aches from the day’s activity and good-naturedly started badgering Elizabeth about easing their uphill trek. Gammack was intrigued by Burden’s report of a rope tow he had seen in Canada that was powered by an old automobile. As the conversation heated up, Bunny asked Mr. Royce if he had a Sears or a Montgomery Ward catalogue so that he could estimate the cost of the rope for such a pull.

According to Bunny, Mr. Royce asked Bunny what he wanted the rope for, and when he deduced what Bunny was planning, made certain to rent the hill before Bunny got to it, paying Gilbert ten dollars for the season.

The ski tow cost $500 altogether, $300 coming from the three New York businessmen who each invested $100. It ran up a 900-foot incline, hoisting skiers with 1800 feet of rope that circled through pulleys that were attached to a tree at the top and to the drivewheel of a Model T Ford at the bottom of the hill.

They soon announced the grand opening of the “White Cupboard Skiway” and celebrated with a parade through town featuring a band, the Woodstock Fire Department, and “the big red Maxim truck.”

The first to ascend the lift on January 28, 1934, were three local boys – Bobby Bourdon, Lloyd Brownell, and Buster Johnson. In order to use the tow, they had to grab onto the rope and hold on for dear life as the rope sped them to the top. They soon learned to approach the rope carefully, grabbing with both hands, “one hand in front of the other, bending their knees and pitching their center of gravity back over their heels.” If they felt the ride was slow they would yell “Step on the gas!” and the operator in the truck would floor it.

As the rope pulled, it twisted, wringing and often stealing gloves from skiers as they reached the top. If a skier wasn’t careful, they could get hung by their own scarf.

One woman was unlucky enough to have a thread of her heavy knit sweater catch in the twisting rope. It began to unravel as the rope hauled her to the top and, as it was spring and she had gone to the slopes with nothing but the sweater to cover her top, she arrived at the top of the hill completely bare-chested.

Bobby Bourdon quickly presented her with his ski jacket.

January 27, 1964: Margaret Chase Smith announces her Candidacy for President

“Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics.”
–  Margaret Chase Smith

Margaret Chase SmithFirst elected to the House of Representatives in 1940, following the death of her husband, Rep. Clyde H. Smith, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the Senate in 1948 and in 1950 she stood up to fellow Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy:

“The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as ‘Communists’ or ‘Fascists’ by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

In 1952, a reporter asked her what she would do if she woke up one morning and found herself in the White House. “I’d go straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. Then I’d go home.” she replied.

By 1964 Margaret Chase Smith, the only woman in the U.S. Senate, was well known across the country. The Republican nomination for President was wide open with no shortage of candidates including Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, Bill Scranton and Harold Stassen.

Senator Smith started to receive packages of gag hats to “toss in the ring” along with letters urging her to run. She Margaret Chase Smith buttonwrote back to her supporters thanking them, but noting “it could not possibly happen.” However, when a news story reported she might consider a run, Smith got mail from all 50 states and realized that people were taking her candidacy seriously.

In a speech to the Women’s National Press Club on Jan. 27, 1964, Smith listed the reasons people offered for her to run. She had more national experience than other candidates, she would be breaking a barrier for women, and she was a moderate choice. Also, as she did not have a lot of money nor was she part of a political machine, she would be more politically independent.

There were reasons given why she should not run. Some argued that women should not be president. Others said she was unlikely to win, that she would not have the physical stamina, the financial resources, nor the political organization needed. A major argument against running was that she would have to miss Senate votes and end her consecutive roll call record of 1,590 votes.

She told the Women’s National Press Club that there were “heavy odds against me.” But she said, “because of the compelling reasons against my running. I have decided I shall.”

The Bangor Daily News ran a political cartoon the next day showing her picking out a pair of running shoes.

While Smith assured people that she was a “serious” candidate, she also pledged she would not accept campaign funds. She had no paid campaign workers, planned no radio or television advertising, and pledged to campaign only when the Senate was not in session voting on legislation.

Smith began her New Hampshire campaign on Feb. 10 near the Canadian border. The temperature was 30 below zero. She drove over 1,000 miles visiting barbershops, newspaper offices, diners, dry goods stores and post offices, shaking hands with everyone she met. She came in fifth.

Her next campaign stop was Illinois. As in New Hampshire, her campaign motto was, “There is nothing more effective than a handshake and a little conversation.” Smith campaigned just two weekends in Illinois and spent $85. Nevertheless, she got about 26 percent of the vote — a quarter of a million votes.

By summer Barry Goldwater seemed to have the nomination wrapped up. The early days of the convention were contentious. The party was bitterly split between Barry Goldwater’s conservatives and the more liberal wing of Nelson Rockefeller.

Vermont Governor George Aiken offered Margaret Chase Smith’s name in nomination. “I am severely restricted in what I can offer you for your support. Not a cabinet job, an ambassador’s appointment, or even a government contract. I can’t even invite you all out for coffee, because my candidate sent every big check, every little check, every $10 bill, every $1 bill, and every penny straight back where they came from.”

Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to have her name placed in nomination at a major party’s political convention, was blunt: “ I’d like to be President. I think my experience and my record are greater than any other candidate or any other of the unannounced candidates. It’s a real challenge, and that’s one of the paramount things. When people keep telling you that you can’t do a thing, you kind of like to try it.”

She came in second in the balloting, with votes from 27 delegates.
Barry Goldwater won the nomination, but lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide in November.

January 26, 1784: Benjamin Franklin prefers the Turkey to the American Eagle

Writing to his daughter Sally (Mrs. Sarah Bache) in Philadelphia, Franklin declared his bias:

“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad Turkeymoral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

“With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country…

“I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

January 23, 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman MD in America

Elizabeth Blackwell was initially repelled by the idea of studying medicine. She said she had “hated everything connected with the body, and could not bear the sight of a medical book… the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust.”

BlackwellInstead she went into teaching, then considered more suitable for a woman. It was only after a close friend who was dying confided that she would have been spared her worst suffering if her physician had been a woman that she set out to become a doctor..

Blackwell had no idea how to become a physician, so she consulted with several physicians known by her family. They told her it was a fine idea, but impossible; it was too expensive, and such education was not available to women. Yet Blackwell reasoned that if the idea were a good one, there must be some way to do it, and she was attracted by the challenge. She convinced two physician friends to let her read medicine with them for a year, and applied to all the medical schools in New York and Philadelphia. None would admit her.

She applied to twelve more schools. None would admit her, until the faculty of the Geneva Medical College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) in western New York, assuming that the all-male student body would never agree to a woman joining their ranks, allowed them to vote on her admission. As a joke, the students unanimously voted “yes,” and she gained admittance.

Two years later, in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated at the head of her class and became the first woman to receive an M.D. degree from an American medical school. She worked in clinics in London and Paris for two years. She studied midwifery at La Maternité, but somehow she contracted “purulent opthalmia” from a young patient and lost sight in one eye.

Blackwell returned to New York City, giving up her dream of becoming a surgeon. She set up a practice in New York, but had few patients and few opportunities for intellectual exchange with other physicians and missed “the means of increasing medical knowledge which dispensary practice affords.”

She applied for a job as physician at the women’s department of a large city dispensary, but was refused. In 1853, with the help of friends, she opened her own dispensary in a single rented room, seeing patients three afternoons a week. The dispensary was incorporated in 1854 and moved to a small house she bought on 15th Street. Her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, joined her and, together with Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, they opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children at 64 Bleecker Street in 1857. This institution and its medical college for women (opened 1867) provided training and experience for women doctors and medical care for the poor.

The hospital continues to this day as the Lower Manhattan Hospital, one of the main campuses of the New York Presbyterian Hospital.

January 22, 1943: If You Don’t Like the Weather, Wait a Minute

In mid-January 1943, a sea of polar air pushed southward from Canada across the central United States. By the morning of January 19, temperatures were well below zero as far south as Kansas and in the single digits across Texas. Thankfully, on January 20, warmer air started to spread eastward from the Pacific.Weather

When the wave of warmer air approached the front range of the Rockies temperatures began to rise sharply, with Casper WY reaching 22 degrees while Rapid City, further east, remained at 20° below.

Eventually the Chinook winds blew the warm air aloft onto the higher elevations of the Black Hills. Temperatures warmed into the 30s at Custer and Lead located higher in the hills, but the temperature remained below zero in Rapid City and Spearfish as cold air still possessed the lower plains.

The following day the front advanced again to the northeast, and temperatures reached the 40s in the Hills but struggled to get above zero on the plains. At 11 a.m. on the east side of the Alex Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, winter still held its grip, but spring had suddenly arrived around the corner on the south side, not 50 feet away, only to be swept away by another blast of  winter, and then return again.

At one time the temperature at Lead was 52° while at Deadwood, just three miles away (but in the canyon), it was 16° below. Plateglass windows cracked as the temperature rapidly rose. Streets were coated instantly with a peculiar light frost, and motorists had to pull over, unable to see through the thick frost that instantly iced their windshields from the sudden warm wind.

In Spearfish, the temperature rose from -4° at 7:32 a.m. to 45 degrees in just two minutes. A couple of hours later, it plunged from 54° back to -4 degrees. In downtown Rapid City, the temperature had warmed to 5 degrees by 9:20 a.m., then it shot up to 54 degrees by 9:40 am.

Cedric Barnes was driving to his job at the Black Hills Airport:

“I live at St. Onge, about 5 miles north and 3 miles east of the station. When I left, the temperature was between 5° and 10° below zero F., which was expected. About half way south, the windshield on the car frosted so suddenly and so heavily that I was well toward the ditch before I could get stopped.

When I got out to clean the windshield of the car, it felt like a warm spring day with about 15 miles of wind from the SW. When I reached the station, about 8:15 a. m. the temperature was 45° F., with WSW 44-mile wind, and rain showers.

Having no extra thermometer at the station, I took the operator who had just gone off watch, and returned to St. Onge, where I had a glass, centigrade, chemical thermometer, which I knew was reasonably accurate. We left St. Onge about 9:15 a. m. The temperature was then -18° C. In the next 2 miles the temperature rose to -16.1°  C. In the next ¼ mile it raised to -13.0° C. This distance is in a creek bottom from 20 to 50 feet below the surrounding land.

In the next 200 to 300 feet, the windshield frosted as it had before. We got out to clean it. From tracks in the snow we found that we were only 10 feet from where I had stopped an hour before! The thermometer read plus 9.8° C.

We had come up about 80 feet out of the creek bottom. A little further south and a little higher up we looked back. There was a line of white, thick stratus following the creek, the tops from 100 to 150 feet above the surface, with heavy snow blowing from the northeast. The wind was about 30 mile SW where we were, 1/4 mile away.”

As waves of the front moved northward, lower elevations of the Black Hills felt the warm air encroaching above the sea of cold air; but fluctuating waves of cold continued to cause extremely sharp variations. At low ebb, almost the entire island would emerge from the cold, but then the tide would reverse and the cold air become progressively deeper, until the entire island lay submerged.

The front finally shifted south again late in the afternoon, and winter cold returned to the Black Hills.

January 21, 1908: New York City Prohibits Women from Smoking in Public

“Little Tim” Sullivan was outraged. He had heard the announcements made just before New Year’s Eve that certain restaurants in New York would permit women to smoke in their establishments during the celebrations.

He admitted that he had never seen women smoking in public places in his district (the Lower East Side), but he hadsmoke2 consulted several leading restaurateurs and they were very much in favor of an ordinance  restricting this outrageous behavior.

He proposed an ordinance which made it an offense for the manager or proprietor of a public place to allow women to smoke therein. A violator might suffer the revocation of his license and also be fined.
Eleven women and fifteen men showed up at the Board of Aldermen’s hearing on the proposed ordinance.

Dr. Charles J. Pease wanted to make an amendment making it a crime for “any person or persons” to smoke in a public place where there were women, who ought not to be forced to inhale tobacco fumes. John Henry Smith, shaking his fist at Alderman Sullivan, said it would be much better for the board to concern itself with the hardships of the poor than with “such nonsensical things” as smoking by a few women in a restaurant. If the Aldermen were going to take up the matter at all, “why didn’t they prohibit everybody smoking, especially boys under 21?”

Alderman Doull recalled old William Kieft, Governor of New Amsterdam, who tried to prohibit all smoking, and how the burghers sat around his house and actually smoked him out. He recalled Peter Stuyvesant’s order that all women should wear broad flounces and only dance “shuffle and turn” steps, bring down on his head the wrath of all the women who threatened to wear no petticoats at all, and finally were allowed to do as they pleased, “a privilege they have jealously guarded ever since.”

“Bobbie” Roberts and a lot of other girls from Wallack’s had their carfare paid by the press agent of “A Knight for a Day,” and Miss Roberts told how “we girls from Chicago” thought the policemen ought to stop automobiles going so fast that they made the ladies of the theatrical profession “hop, skip, and jump” across the street instead of passing anti-smoking ordinances. “We girls from Chicago don’t smoke anyway.”

Source: NY Times January 22, 1908

January 20, 1961: Robert Frost recites “The Gift Outright”

I wasn’t yet ten years old, but I vividly remember watching the big black and white television in the upstairs room of our house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as the parade and ceremony and speeches were broadcast from the District of Columbia. A big storm had just cleared out and snow banks lined streets. Was it a snow day, or did school close for the Inauguration?

Even on a black and white set, anyone watching could tell that the day was crisp and cold and bright in Washington as Frost JFKMarian Anderson sang the Star Spangled Banner, and the Marine Band played a fanfare by Leonard Bernstein.

And even at my young age I could sense that we had arrived on the cusp of a new era. The men on the podium wore great morning coats and top hats! That seemed a curious nod to the past in this moment for youth, for bareheaded men and women with radiant smiles and for music and art and lofty rhetoric.

Everyone was bundled against the cold. An elderly man approached the podium; my mothered said it was Robert Frost. And then came an awkward moment. The old poet’s papers flickered and shimmered in the bright fresh breeze. Lyndon President Johnson held out his top hat in an attempt to shield the papers from the glare of the snow and the sun, but the crusty poet clearly couldn’t see.

He stowed his new “Dedication” manuscript. Instead, he pulled an old poem from memory, a poem he referred to as “a history of the United States in a dozen [actually, sixteen] lines of blank verse.”

“The Gift Outright”

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

January 19, 1770: First Blood of the Revolution is shed on Golden Hill

On May 20, 1766, news reached New York of the repeal of the Stamp Act. Two weeks later the city celebrated the news LibertyPoleon the King’s birthday. A great pole with twelve tar barrels at its top was erected, and twenty-five cords of wood were placed at its base. As twenty-five guns fired a salute, the royal standard was raised, and the great bonfire set ablaze as the crowd cheered.

Meanwhile, the Sons of Liberty planted a rival pole, a Liberty Pole, in what is now City Hall Park.  The Sons of Liberty pledged resistance against another round of taxation without representation.

The Liberty Pole was to be their rallying point. It was a tall wooden pole, planted in the ground and capped with red felt hat – a Phrygian cap— the sort of hat worn by freed slaves in the time of the Roman Republic. New Yorkers of the day were well aware of how, after Julius Caesar was assassinated, a Phrygian cap placed atop a pole at the Forum announced to all that Rome had been freed from Tyranny.

The new Liberty Pole stood provocatively near the barracks of the soldiers of the Crown, who had to pass it every day. On August 10th, a band of resentful soldiers from the 28th Regiment cut the Pole down.

The following day a crowd assembled to replace the Pole. The soldiers intervened, and a melee broke out. Complaints were made, but the authorities did nothing.

A second Liberty Pole was quickly erected. It stood for a few days, and then got cut down. Within two days, a third Liberty Pole was raised. This time Governor Moore ordered the soldiers to back off and allow the Pole to stand.

The following spring citizens gathered on the Commons to celebrate the first anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act. That night, after the Sons of Liberty had retired for the night, the pole was again leveled to the ground.

The next day the Sons of Liberty set up a more substantial Pole, one wrapped with iron bands. That night an unsuccessful attempt was made to cut it down; the following night an attempt was made to blow it up with gun-powder. For three successive nights the Sons of Liberty fended off attacks on the Pole.

The Governor again ordered the soldiers to desist from this game, and the Pole stood undisturbed for three years, until December, 1769, when the Assembly acquiesced to the Quartering Act and agreed to fund some of the upkeep of the soldiers.

The Sons of Liberty were outraged. They started holding protests on the Commons, burning effigies and making inflammatory speeches. Afterwards they would hole up at Montagne’s Tavern on Broadway, opposite the Fields where the Pole stood. On January 13, 1770, when several patrons came out of the tavern they discovered smoke wafting from a lit fuse by the pole. Yelling “Fire!” they interrupted the culprits – from the 16th Regiment – from completing their mischief. The discovered soldiers proceeded to ransack the tavern instead, beating up the waiter and breaking windows and china.

The Sons of Liberty called for another meeting the next Wednesday, but the soldiers finally succeeded in blowing up the Liberty Pole the night before. When the destruction was discovered, a mob of citizens approached the barracks. The soldiers lined up with drawn bayonets, but officers corralled them back inside.

On January 19, handbills began appearing around town, provocatively defending the soldiers and taunting the Sons of Liberty. When Isaac Sears apprehended two soldiers posting bills, he marched them to the mayor’s house. A crowd gathered, and then 20 soldiers showed up to rescue their friends. Alarmed by the crowd, the captive soldiers told their friends to leave, which they did, but the crowd followed them, harassing them with epithets.

When the soldiers reached Golden Hill, a small hill where wheat was grown, another group of soldiers arrived in reinforcement. The soldiers turned and faced the angry crowd. One of the soldiers cried out, “Draw your bayonets and cut your way through them!”

They attacked the crowd, lunging at anyone who came across their path. Francis Field, a Quaker bystander, was slashed across his right cheek. A tea-water man driving his cart was knocked down and stabbed, as was a fisherman and a sailor. A boy going for sugar was cut him on the head with a cutlass, and the soldiers lunged with a bayonet at the woman who came to protect the boy.

Finally, British officers arrived and were able to get control of their men, fortunately before anyone was killed.

Six weeks later, the first deaths would arrive at The Boston Massacre.

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