Today Boston celebrates the anniversary of its famous tea party. They are not celebrating in Buckingham Palace.
As a radical patriot Dr. Douglass knew the revolutionary streets of the Puritan City for more than a half-century. When President John Tyler visited Boston speculation circulated that a delegation of abolitionists, including Douglass, planned to meet him and deliver a petition of demands. In 1849 Douglass spoke at Faneuil Hall. Before embarking on his Grand Tour, a group of Bostonians honored Douglass in September 1886.
Did you know in 1873 Dr. Douglass traveled from Washington City to the City on a Hill to celebrate one of the most defining moments of civil disobedience in our history?
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. – At Boston, yesterday, the New England Woman’s Tea Party celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the throwing of tea into Boston harbor. About five thousand persons were present.
Col. T. W. Higgins[on] presided. Wendal [sic] Phillips made the opening address, giving an historical account of the destruction of tear in Boston harbor. Addresses suitable to the occasion were made by Rev. J. Freeman Clarke, Rev. Mr. Bartol, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth K. Curtis, Mary F. Eastma[n], Henry B. Blackwell and others.
Poems were read by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and Christopher Cranch. Letters from Abby Stuart Phelps, Abby K. Folsom, Ralph Waldo Emerson and others were read. The meeting adjourned after adopting resolution recommending that measures be taken to defeat Mr. Frelinghuysen’s Utah Bill.
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