[Peace-discuss] Oh, Canada...

[C. G. Estabrook]

Yes, five years before.  At the trial of the soldiers who killed five people in
the incident, their defense counsel, John Adams (future president) called the
group surrounding Attucks "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes,
Irish Teagues and outlandish jack tarrs."

None of those terms was praise. "Teague" was used like "hajj" is now in the US 
occupation army in Iraq; it was current in the recent British occupation army in 
the North of Ireland.  On "jack tarr," see the book by my friend Peter Linebaugh 
and Marcus Rediker, "The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the 
Revolutionary Atlantic" (2000).

Generations later Abolitionists made Attucks a symbol, so he's remembered, but
little is known about him historically, except that he was shot.


Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> So where does the legendary Crispus Attucks fit in?  That was earlier in the
> Boston Massacre, right?
> 
> Ricky
> 
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
> 
> --- On *Thu, 9/17/09, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at illinois.edu>/* wrote:
> 
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss]
> Oh, Canada... To: "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com> Cc: "Peace Discuss"
> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> Date: Thursday, September 17, 2009, 7:23 AM
> 
> Other way 'round. The shot "heard round the world" was fired by "embattled 
> farmers" (note often misunderstood word "embattled") by the Concord bridge, 
> against the forces of a government that, the farmers feared, wanted to take 
> their guns away.  (And that's what they did want.)
> 
> Earlier in the day (April 19, 1775) there was an exchange of shots on
> Lexington Green, and one Prince Estabrook, a member of the Lexington militia,
>  took a round in the leg, according to contemporary accounts (a broadside
> printed immediately after the action) -- so I contend that he was the first
> man wounded in the Revolution...
> 
> With local militias, he became part of the Continental army (altho' the 
> Southerner Geo. Washington tried to have Prince and other black soldiers
> removed when he took command in Cambridge) and fought through the war, after 
> which he retired to a farm in Massachusetts.  His application for a pension 
> is in the National Archives (or so I'm told by the leading historian of these
>  events, David Hackett Fischer).
> 
> "Concord Hymn, Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836"
> 
> 
> BY the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze
> unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard
> round the world.
> 
> The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And
> Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
> 
> On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That
> memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
> 
> Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, 
> Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
> 
> --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82)
> 
> 
> John W. wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook
> <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <http://us.mc1126.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=galliher@illinois.edu> 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu 
> <http://us.mc1126.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=galliher@illinois.edu>>> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> The history of political migration from the US to Canada is
> significant for
>> both polities -- war opponents in the 1770s*, escaped slaves
> before the Civil
>> War, the farmers you mention here, war opponents in the 1960s.
> There are
>> undoubtedly others who noticed the contrast between theory and
> practice in
>> the Land of the Free... ____ *Including relatives of mine: half
> the family
>> went to Nova Scotia after the unpleasantness at Lexington and
> Concord (where
>> the first man wounded in what came to be called the American
> Revolution was a
>> member of my family, a slave called Prince Estabrook).
>> 
>> 
>> So Prince Estabrook took the slug from the "shot heard 'round the
> world?"
>> That's extremely interesting, Carl.
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list 
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> <http://us.mc1126.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net>
>  http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 
>