“It has a very different feeling from European sites because it’s part of a revolution which created a government that still exists. People can actually experience this history in a way that doesn’t really translate in books.”
The Freedom Trail
Visitors can gain this experience on a broader scale by following a red line called the Freedom Trail, which connects 16 sites throughout Boston, including the Old North Church. The trail, which is a product of the Freedom Trail Foundation, traces Boston’s role in the American Revolution up through the first part of the 19th century as the country developed into a mature player on the world stage.
“All of the sites along the trail are independent and self operated,” says Sam Jones, creative director for the Freedom Trail Foundation. “The Freedom Trail Foundation helps provide visitors with an overview of the entire thing, offering maps and brochures, audio headsets, and private tours of the Freedom Trail.”
The trail takes you through the early days of dissent to the Old State House where in 1761 James Otis protested the Writs of Assistance, which gave British officials unbridled power to search private homes. It was there that John Adams believed the “child liberty was born.” There’s also the Boston Common, where British troops were encamped while the city was under siege, and the Old South Meeting House, where Samuel Adams gave the signal for the Boston Tea Party to begin.
Independence Hall
Three hundred miles south of the activity in Boston, the Pennsylvania assembly relocated to the second floor of Philadelphia’s State House to accommodate the members of the Continental Congress. The order of business: debating Thomas Jeff erson’s draft of a declaration that would become American scripture.
Delegates assembled in the July heat debating word choice and passages aboutslavery. After two days, they reached an agreement. On July 8, John Nixon read the Declaration to a rowdy crowd in front of what is now Independence Hall, some of them in support, others opposed. In fact, the National Park Service reenacts this reading every July 8 to give visitors a taste of the experience.
In 1787, the delegates returned to Independence Hall’s Assembly Room, this time to create the nation’s Constitution. Every day, some 3,000 visitors pass through this chamber and, in doing so, step back centuries in time. Since the 1960s, the National Park Service has conducted painstaking analyses of decorative details like paint colors to restore the room to its original appearance. And while most of the pieces of furniture are reproductions, one original still remains. Passing through the Assembly Room, visitors will notice George Washington’s armchair and the curious half sun carved on its back.
During the convention, an aged Benjamin Franklin remarked on how he often wondered whether the image on the President’s chair was a rising or a setting sun. After signing the Constitution, he felt confident that it was rising.
Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine
But by 1814, the rising sun of which Franklin spoke was in danger of setting. The British had just burned the nation’s capital, and a fleet of 15 warships and 4,000 soldiers now trained their sights on the city of Baltimore.
Losing the third largest city in the Union would be the final blow to an already demoralized nation, allowing the British to dictate the peace in a conflict that many Americans were calling the “Second War of Independence.” To accomplish this, however, they needed to get past Fort McHenry.
Safely out of range of the fort’s guns, the British attacked on September 13 at 6:30 a.m. For 25 hours, the fort’s defenders endured a relentless barrage of artillery in a rainstorm equally as persistent. As the 200-pound bombs exploded overhead, their shrapnel mixing with the falling rain, the 50,000 men, women, and children of Baltimore climbed to their rooftops and watched in horror.
Early the next morning, the British moved in for the kill believing the fort and its defenders pounded into submission. Once in range, the fort’s 60 guns let loose and forced the British to fall back. Eight miles down river a Georgetown lawyer named Francis Scott Key looked on with elation as the massive 30” x 42” Star Spangled Banner waved above the fort. Baltimore was saved.
Today, volunteers with the National Park Service memorialize this victory through educational programs and reenactments, but Fort McHenry is more than a national park. It’s a shrine where 700,000 people a year visit to honor the hundreds of determined defenders who suff ered the elements of war to preserve a nation and its independence.