THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON.

REMARKS AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, MARCH 16, 1876.

I NEED not assure you, Gentlemen, how glad I am to welcome you all once more under my own roof. Our old Society, as every one knows, has not been unobservant of any of those great historical events which succeeded each other so closely and so marvellously a century ago. As the dates of those events have come round, we have felt bound to put into shape, upon our records, such materials as our archives might contain, or as the researches of our members might supply, for a just and worthy illustration of the great deeds of our fathers.

We meet for this purpose to-night, on the eve of a most interesting and most memorable anniversary. It is not too much to say, that, from the day when our City had “a local habitation and a name" to the present hour, there has been no event in its history of greater magnitude and moment than that which is to be publicly celebrated for the very first time, I believe-to-morrow.

The 17th of March, 1776, might well stand second only to the 17th of September, 1630, in the illuminated calendar of Boston. Indeed, in the annals of our whole country, there is hardly a date more significant and signal. We can never do too much honor to the men of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. The events, however, which made those men immortal, were, after all, but glorious defeats, on a larger or smaller scale. But here, a hundred years ago to-morrow, was

a glorious success; all the more glorious that it was effected, as Washington said in his letter to the selectmen of our town, "with so little effusion of human blood." It was the first victory of the Revolution. It was the first triumph of Washington. It gave assurance to all the world, not only that Independence must soon be declared, but that the declaration, whenever made, would be maintained and vindicated. It gave, too, the desired prestige of a grand success to him, who, in the good providence of God, was destined to lead our armies so nobly in the long and trying struggle which awaited them.

In all its relations, local, national, and personal,-to Boston, to our Country, and to the Father of our Country, - the influence and importance of the event, of which to-morrow is the hundredth anniversary, cannot be over-estimated.

To Boston itself it was a day of unspeakable deliverance, never to be forgotten, nor ever to be remembered without the most grateful acknowledgments to God and man. Dr. Ellis, in his Oration, will tell us all to-morrow how great that deliverance was; and Mr. Frothingham will, I trust, renew our remembrance this evening of some of those striking scenes of which his "Siege of Boston" is so full. But in vain would any one attempt, at this day, to give an adequate idea of the emotions which must have filled every patriot heart to overflowing when that Sabbath morning dawned, for the 17th of March, 1776, was Sunday, -and when the great result was revealed and gradually realized, that the enemy had at last embarked, that the British fleet was under sail, and that our town and harbor were once more to be freed from military occupation and oppression.

It was the grand finale of the first act-a long and eventful act of the great drama of Independence; and the scene was not slow in changing. Boston, so long the source and centre of the most stirring words and deeds of that stirring period, now passed into comparative peace and quiet, never again for a century, thank God, -never again, as we hope and believe, till time shall be no more, -to be trodden by a hostile soldiery. Her crown of martyrdom, which had so attracted the sympathy and the succor of all America, was now exchanged for a crown of triumph; and she wore it becomingly and worthily.

We do not forget to whom, under God, Boston owed that great deliverance, and to whom the Continental Congress awarded the grand Medal which commemorated it; and if it shall prove to-morrow as it is now more than whispered that this very Medal, after remaining in the family of the Father of his Country for a hundred years, is to find a place henceforth in our Boston Public Library, as the property of the City, it will add an interest to our Centennial Day which hardly any thing else could equal.1

No ingot of gold which ever came from the land of Havilah or from the mines of Ophir, or which was ever wrought into exquisite form by the most renowned artificers of Greece or Rome, could be so precious to us and our children, for a thousand generations, as the identical Medal, which was designed under the direction of John Adams and John Jay and Stephen Hopkins, under the order of Congress, and which was won and worn by George Washington for driving a foreign army out of the oppressed and suffering Boston of a hundred years ago.

But I will not anticipate what the Mayor may say publicly to-morrow, or what he may feel willing to communicate to us privately this evening. Inheriting as he does the blood of him who said he would sit as a judge, or die as a general," I am sure he will say and do the right thing now and always.

Meantime, before calling on the Mayor, I am unwilling to conclude these few introductory remarks without reading to you a brief letter from the noble John Adams to his son the late John Quincy Adams, not then nine years old, which is full of the true feeling for to-morrow, and which ought to be read in all our schools on every returning seventeenth day of March:

PHILADELPHIA, 18 April, 1776.

I thank you for your agreeable letter of the 24th March. I rejoice with you that our friends are once more in possession of the town of Boston; am glad to hear that so little damage is done to our house.

I hope you and your sister and brothers will take proper notice of these great events, and remember under whose wise and kind Providence

1 See Note on next page.

they are all conducted. Not a sparrow falls, nor a hair is lost, but by the direction of Infinite Wisdom.. Much less are cities conquered and evacuated. I hope that you will all remember how many losses, dangers, and inconveniences have been borne by your parents, and the inhabitants of Boston in general, for the sake of preserving freedom for you and yours; and I hope you will all follow the virtuous example, if, in any future time, your country's liberties shall be in danger, and suffer any human evil rather than give them up.

NOTE.

CITY OF BOSTON.

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be presented to the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP and his associates for their active interest and successful effort in procuring and presenting to the City of Boston the valuable Medal which was given to GENERAL WASHINGTON, in commemoration of his distinguished services in compelling the evacuation of the town of Boston by the British army in 1776.

Resolved, That the Members of the City Council are especially gratified that this precious memorial of WASHINGTON is henceforth to abide in this City, whose relief from peril was the occasion of its emission one hundred years ago.

Approved, March 28, 1876.

SAML. C. COBB, Mayor.

THE SANDERS THEATRE.

SPEECH AT THE DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JUNE 28, 1876.

I AM greatly obliged and honored, Mr. President, by the kind words with which you have introduced me once more to the Association of the Alumni. I have so rarely been in the way of attending their festivals of late years, that I feel myself quite in need of a fresh introduction of some sort, whenever I come here. Indeed, my relations to my Alma Mater have become in more than one sense quite pre-historic, my only official tie being as Chairman of the Trustees of that Archæological and Ethnological Museum, which, under the direction of the late lamented Jeffries Wyman, has grown to be so interesting an addition to the scientific department of the University, and so worthy a memorial of its beneficent founder, Mr. Peabody. Before another year shall have passed away, I trust that, with the assistance of Colonel Lyman and Professor Alexander Agassiz, we shall have completed the Museum Building, which we are just commencing, and be in a condition to display the treasures we have collected in a manner more commensurate with their interest and their importance.

I thank you, sir, for associating my name so pleasantly with that venerable ancestor, under whose auspices, as Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, the very first appropriation was made for the establishment of this College, two years before the legacy of John Harvard. It has sometimes been doubted, I am aware, whether the infant Colony ever paid that appropriation. If not,