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shouted to his followers: "The way to get rid of these
soldiers, is to attack the main guard; strike at the root;
this is the nest!"  And at the same time he rushed fear-
lessly upon the English led by Captain Preston.  Attucks
was killed at the first fire, and Samuel Gray and Jonas
Caldwell fell at his side.   Samuel  Marwick  and Pat-
rick  Carr were  mortally wounded.       Thus  began  the
great revolution, of which Webster says: "From that mo-
ment we may date the severance of the British Empire."
Excitement ran at high tide.  The patriotism of the people
found fit expression in speeches and resolutions; and amid
the ringing of bells and booming of cannon, soldiers were
enrolled to protect the liberties of the colonists, both relig-
ious and political.
    Three days after the fight, the martyrs were buried with
great pomp and solemnity. All the stores were closed, and
business of every kind suspended. The body of Crispus
Attucks, the negro slave, was laid in Faneuil Hall, and all
the bodies were followed by a procession with columns
six deep, closed up by a long line of the carriages of
the most respectable citizens of Boston. The four bodies
were interred in one grave, marked by a stone bearing the
following:
       "Long as in freedom's cause the wise contend,
        Dear to your country shall your fame extend;
        While to the world the lettered stone shall tell,
        Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray, and Mavorick fell."

    Notwithstanding the servile condition of the negroes in
the eastern colonies, they imbibed a spirit of liberty, and be-
came the loyal and trusted allies of the fathers. And there
is no battle-field, from Bunker Hill to New Orleans, where
he did not nobly do his part.  To take the negro out of the
history of the Revolution, is to rob it of one of its most at-




			

OHS Archives/Library Pamphlet Collection

Centennial: The American Negro from 1776-1876; Oration Delivered at Avondale, Ohio, 1876

W.