EVERY SCHOOL KID SHOULD VISIT BOSTON

I like Boston, Massachusetts - the site of the National Conference of State Legislators I attended last week. It’s impossible to walk anywhere in Boston without crossing the historic paths of America’s great events and great people, plus the regular folks who helped in the battles for freedom but whose names never made the history books - but who were great nonetheless.

The Battle of Bunker Hill (which actually occurred at Breed’s Hill - adjacent to Bunker Hill), the Boston Tea Party, and nearby Lexington and Concord where Minutemen first defeated the British regulars. The great Patriots John and Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, John Prescott, Dr. Warren, William Dawes, James Otis, Robert Paine, and Crispus Attucks the patriot Negro who died at the Boston Massacre walked the streets of this historic city. Boston is also the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin, and the place where abolitionist Frederick Douglass started awakening the American conscience to the evils of slavery, and where William Lloyd Garrison gave his first antislavery speech in 1829 (the year my great-great grandfather Jeremiah French Lynn was born). And the USS Constitution called “Old Ironsides” rides proudly at anchor as across the Charles River; it’s the oldest American warship still in commissioned service. If it were possible, every American school kid should visit Boston.

The photo at the left is Paul Revere's home. The photo at the right is the superstructure of Old Ironsides.