#LIBERTY DAILY HOW TO#

I made a pilgrimage to a modern historic site that also proved to have been lost. This must have played havoc with her mail delivery: “Ben Franklin, I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t live at the Betsy Ross House! I haven’t received my Saturday Evening Post in months.” Christ Church, from 1727, where 15 signers of the Declaration worshiped, remains.īetsy Ross’ home stands too, although it turns out she may actually have lived next door. 1753’s Independence Hall is there, although its wings and interior have been reconstructed, as is 1770’s Carpenters Hall, where the First Continental Congress met. San Bernardino to potential Carousel Mall developer: hold your horses Although my impression, admittedly casual, is that Boston has saved more buildings, enough to stitch together in its Freedom Trail. Perhaps we were less reverent toward our historic sites until more modern times. The Graff House, the spot a few blocks away where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, has been reconstructed the original was torn down in 1883. Benjamin Franklin’s home is gone, replaced by a “ghost structure” of white beams to show its outlines. Who says only Los Angeles disrespects its history? Even more amazingly, the few surviving sections of the property were cleared in the 1950s by the National Park Service to tidy up the site. Subscribe here.Īctually, I had spent a few minutes just outside the Liberty Bell Center at President’s House, an open-air memorial to the house used by Washington and then Adams, our first two presidents, before the capital was moved to Washington, D.C., in 1800.Īmazingly, the house was demolished 32 years later. Sign up for The Localist, our daily email newsletter with handpicked stories relevant to where you live. A check of the Cardinals schedule showed that after the game I would see in St. Louis and wondered if I might like to make a trip from there while I was already two-thirds of the way across the country. I was going to be visiting my family near St. Did you know that in July 1776, James Monroe was 18, Alexander Hamilton was 21 and James Madison 25? No wonder they can bust a rhyme on Broadway. So was subsequently learning that many of the founders were young people. “They switched their style of government twice in 15 years,” park ranger Luke Hopely told our group, “and then settled on something that has lasted more than 200 years.” George Washington came out of retirement to preside. (The more things change…) So everyone gathered in Independence Hall again 11 years later to reboot America.

We won the Revolutionary War and then took our eye off the ball with such a loose form of government that it didn’t really function.

#LIBERTY DAILY HOW TO#

Philadelphia is where each colony sent a delegate to decide how to respond. In short, Boston is where the insurrection started, what with the tea-tax revolt. Philly is rich in history, but like a lot of Americans, I can be a little hazy on the Revolutionary-era roles of Boston versus Philadelphia.

Liberty daily