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Revolutionary Spaces

**Revolutionary Spaces ** connects people to the history and continuing practice of democracy through the intertwined stories of two of the nation’s most iconic sites—Boston’s Old South Meeting House and Old State House. We foster a free and open exchange of ideas, explore history, create gathering places, and preserve and steward historic buildings.

https://www.bostonhistory.org

Caroline Healey Dall: Daughter of Boston

Thu, Oct 20, 2005

Helen R. Deese discusses the 45 volume diary of Bostonian transcendentalist Caroline Healey Dall, which is perhaps the longest diary written by any American and the most complete account of a nineteenth century woman's life in existence. Bostonian Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912) was a transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and an extremely active diarist. Caroline Healey Dall kept a diary for 75 years that captured the fascinating details of her sometimes agonizing personal life, the major figures who surrounded her, and many facets of nineteenth century Boston.

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Scam, Scandal, Murder and Mayhem in Colonial Boston

Mon, Oct 31, 2005

In this lecture, writer D. Brenton Simons discusses his book Witches, Rakes, And Rogues: True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder, And Mayhem in Boston, 1630-1775 , in which he paints a darker picture of Colonial Boston than was previously imagined. In Boston's early years, before electricity, police departments, telephones and other modern conveniences, Boston was a scary place. Exposing this puritan underbelly is author D. Brenton Simons, COO of New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston. When most people think of Boston between its founding in 1630 and the height of the American Revolution, they imagine a procession of Puritan ministers in black followed by revolutionaries like Paul Revere on horseback. By scouring family records and public archives, Simons demonstrates convincingly that the narrow, twisting streets of colonial Boston were also crawling with murderers, con men, identity thieves, and other blackguards. Bostonians may have been prayerful, but they were also prurient and violent. Added to his extraordinary rogues gallery are several misunderstood women who were tried and executed as witches. Simons even uncovers the truth about the first documented serial murder in Boston history.

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Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War

Fri, Oct 28, 2005

Nina Silber, associate professor of History at Boston University, traces the emergence of a new sense of self and citizenship among the women left behind by Union Soldiers. Using the diaries and letters of these women, Silber shows the women of the North discovering their patriotism and acting with greater independence in running their households and in expressing their political views. Women serve as fundraisers, post mistresses, suppliers, nurses, government workers and teachers. With a greater public role, women find "their personal, intimate relationships subjected to intense... scrutiny, not only from neighbors and kin but also from state and federal officials." Those who work as nurses are "required to be plain looking women." The result, Silber argues, was a change in the way that the regulatory function of marriage worked within society in ways that continue to reverberate through homes and jobs.

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Literary Trail of Greater Boston

Thu, Jun 23, 2005

Professional photographer and writer Susan Wilson brings Boston's Freedom Trail to life with highlights from the newly revised edition of her beloved guidebook. No city in America can match the literary heritage of Boston. Just as the city has a Freedom Trail connecting its Revolutionary sites, it also has a literary trail connecting the homes, workplaces, and final resting places of its great writers.

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War of Words: The Last Colonial War in American Literature

Wed, Sep 21, 2005

As a young author, James Fenimore Cooper set out to write a series of Revolutionary War era novels, but abruptly changed his plans after his first visit in 1825 to several classic French and Indian War sites in northern New York. Professor Wayne Franklin of Northeastern University explains how *The Last of the Mohicans* the first of Cooper's many "colonial" novels, helped to create a popular understanding of the discontinuities and radical disruptions of this country's first 150 years.

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American Indians and the French-English War

Wed, Sep 28, 2005

Professor Colin G. Calloway of Dartmouth College focuses attention on the motivations and experiences of American Indian peoples who fought in the French and English War.

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1776: Town Meeting with David McCullough

Fri, Sep 30, 2005

David McCullough, host of PBS' *American Experience*, tells the story of Americans in the ranks: men of every shape, size, and color; farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers.

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Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Wed, Oct 5, 2005

Author Lyndall Gordon argues that Mary Wollstonecraft was not a born genius--she became one. Gordon discusses how this independent, compassionate woman who devised a blueprint for human change achieved that distinction. Wollstonecraft's wide, evolving circles of friends, benefactors, mentors, admirers and detractors are richly sketched out by Gordon, and drama (a money-squandering, abusive father; a sister trapped in a tyrannical marriage; financial crises; unfaithful lovers; attempted suicides) abounds. Wollstonecraft's life was an adventurous one; in Paris, she watched as the admired French Revolution became the Reign of Terror. Yet Wollstonecraft's adventurous life illuminates rather than obscures the philosophical and historical work that made her the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality, and the institution of marriage.

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Ponzi's Scheme: True Story of a Financial Legend

Thu, Nov 3, 2005

Mitchell Zuckoff discusses Charles Ponzi's mercurial rise and fall as he conjured up one get-rich-quick scheme after another. Zuckoff reveals how The Boston Post uncovered this "robbing Peter to pay Paul" system (as it was then known), and how Ponzi's life unraveled. Before Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) sailed from Italy to the shores of America in 1903, his father assured him that the streets were really paved with gold and that Ponzi would be able to get a piece. Ponzi learned as soon as he disembarked that though the streets were often cobblestone, he could still make a fortune in a culture caught in the throes of the Gilded Age.

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Death in the Haymarket

Thu, Mar 30, 2006

James Green, professor of history at UMASS Boston and Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States discuss the exhilarating rise of a visionary union movement and its downfall in the wake of the Haymarket tragedy. In May of 1886 Americans awoke to the news that a bomb had exploded a Chicago labor rally, killing several policemen. Coming in the midst of the largest national strike Americans had ever seen, the bombing, the mass hysteria it created, and the sensational trial and executions that followed, made headlines across the country. National sentiment turned against the burgeoning labor movement, ending a moment of hope for the nation's working class.

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