The Many Meanings of the Bunker Hill Monument

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. While I was getting ready
to kind of wind down for the evening on June fourth,

(00:23):
I was scrolling on my phone. Great thing to do
for your mental health in the evening. I'm kidding, try
not to. I'm trying not to, But I was scrolling
and saw a headline from the Washington Post that said, quote,
Park Service orders removal of woke quotes at Boston's Bunker
Hill Monument. So we've talked about interpretive material being removed

(00:46):
from National parks and other federally managed properties for more
than a year now, after that Restoring Truth Insanity to
American History executive order that came out in March of
twenty twenty five, So this headline was not really surprising,
but I had this initial reaction that was like another one,
and then as I read the article, it veered more

(01:07):
toward confusion. A visitor complaint had led to a quote
about women's suffrage, prompting a review, and then that led
to the order to take all of this other material
down and According to the article, the quotes that were
flagged to be removed did not actually include the one
about suffrage from the initial complaint, but it did include

(01:29):
one about the Vietnam War, one from a letter to
the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and one that was supportive
of foreign born citizens, so immigrants to the United States.
And then I was just confused because there was really
no context in the article about why these quotes were there.
I'm not suggesting that they didn't belong there, It just

(01:52):
it didn't quite make sense. There seemed to be no context.
All of these quotes dated to one hundred years or
more after the Battle of Bunker Hill, only one of
them seemed to reference it directly. An article in the
Boston Globe that I saw the next morning had some
more context, and it actually had pictures of the panels
that the quotes are on. But I still felt like
I was having to piece together for myself what kind

(02:16):
of exhibit these quotes might have been a part of.
None of the news reporting I read explained that part
of it, and that included after some more information was
added to the Washington Post article that I had originally
read later on, so I went down to the Bunker
Hill Monument, and I came away with a sense that

(02:36):
very soon after that monument was completed, it started to
be about a lot more than just the battle that
took place on June seventeenth of seventeen seventy five. But
we will start with the Battle of Bunker Hill as
background for this. Tensions had been escalating between Britain and
its colonies in North America for a while. When the

(02:57):
first shots were fired in Massachusetts April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five,
British forces had marched to Lexington and Conquered to seize
the colonist's weapons and gunpowder. Riders rode out from Boston
to raise the alarm, which was of course the inspiration
for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's eighteen sixty poem Paul Revere's Ride.

(03:20):
Thanks to that warning, colonial militia, including minutemen, who were
required to be ready for battle at a moment's notice,
were ready. They successfully defended Lexington and conquered and drove
the British back to Boston. After this, militia from Connecticut,
New Hampshire, and Rhode Island all marched to the area
around Boston to help defend it. Soon, the British were

(03:43):
besieged in Boston, while the colonies defended and fortified the
surrounding settlements in the area around Boston. By the late
spring of seventeen seventy five, there were still two sites
in particular that were vulnerable to British artillery fire, Dorchester
Heights to the south of Boston, and the hills of
Charlestown to the north across the Charles River. Dorchester Heights

(04:07):
and Charlestown are both part of Boston today, but at
the time they were not. They were separate settlements, and
the landscape around Boston was also a lot different. The
area that's called Back Bay today was an actual bay,
and Boston and Charlestown were peninsulas kind of facing each other,
and each of them connected to the surrounding land by

(04:28):
a narrow neck. British General Thomas Gage intended to seize
both Dorchester Heights and Charlestown in an effort to weaken
the colonists Uprising colonial forces found out about this plan
and decided to fortify Bunker Hill in Charlestown, which was
the tallest hill in the area for unclear reasons the

(04:49):
militia started fortifying Breed's Hill instead. This may have just
been a misunderstanding since these hills were known by multiple
names and Bunker Hill Hill and Breed's Hill are basically
next to each other. The colonial forces built a redoubt
basically a ditch with a wall made from the earth
dug out of it during the night of June sixteenth,

(05:11):
seventeen seventy five. That was followed by a chest high
fortification called a breastwork off to the side. Building these
kinds of fortifications was one of the strengths of the
colonial militias since many of them were farmers and they
were very used to this kind of manual labor. Yeah,
there are several different battles where the British were like,

(05:33):
where did the sport come from? How'd you do that?
Wasn't here yesterday? When the sun came up on June seventeenth,
the British quickly realized what was happening on the hill.
British General William House sent troops to attack the fortification
and to try to take the hill. That hill was
defended by forces led by Colonel William Prescott. A couple

(05:56):
of questionable details have become part of the lad lore
around this battle. One is that the Colonial volunteers were
told to hold their fire until they could see the
whites of the British soldier's eyes. This saying actually predates
this battle, and its connection to Bunker Hill was apparently
popularized by Mason lock Weems, the same person who invented

(06:19):
the story about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree.
Another bit of lore is about the first fatality, which
is often cited as being Asa Pollard of bill RecA,
who was struck in the head by a cannonball that
was fired from a ship anchored in the harbor during
an initial bombardment, so before the fighting had really started.

(06:41):
He was decapitated, to the absolute horror of the men
around him. Some of those men fled because they were
so terrified. There are some inconsistencies in the accounts of this.
There are multiple accounts of somebody being struck in the
head by a cannonball, but articles definitively saying that it
was Ace of Pollard did not appear until around the

(07:03):
fiftieth anniversary of the battle. Regardless of these sort of
problematic and incorrect pieces of lore, the Colonial militia successfully
defended Breed's Hill against two advances by the British army,
but by the third advance the men defending the hill
were exhausted and they were running out of ammunition. The

(07:24):
British force also received reinforcements, while the American force did not,
so the remaining defenders retreated and the British captured the hill.
By that point, a lot of Charlestown had been destroyed.
Most of its population had already fled, leaving only about
two hundred people there and a lot of empty buildings.

(07:45):
General Howe ordered Charlestown to be burned when it became
clear that colonial militia were using the rooftops and the
windows of abandoned buildings as vantage points to fire on
the British. So the Battle of Bunker Hill was a
loss for the colonies. Most sources frame it as a
pueric victory for the British. About four hundred and fifty

(08:05):
Americans were killed, wounded or captured, compared to one thousand,
fifty four on the British side that included nineteen officers.
The British also faced disproportionately greater losses than the Americans.
There were about two thousand, two hundred colonial militia at
the battle and three thousand from the British army. Yes,

(08:26):
so there were more on the British side, but not
enough to account for the difference in the casualty numbers.
After this encounter, the British dropped their plan to try
to capture Dorchester Heights, and that remained unclaimed and undefended
until the Continental Army took possession of it in March
of seventeen seventy six, and then brought up some cannons

(08:48):
they had captured at Fort Ticonderoga. That ultimately led to
the British evacuation from Boston on March seventeenth of that year.
That's now celebrated annually in Boston and other parts of
Suffolk County, Massachusetts as Evacuation Day. The battle also had
an impact on the colonists and on the Continental Army,

(09:09):
which was established on June fourteenth, seventeen seventy five. In
the speech he gave at the dedication of the Bunker
Hill Monument after it was completed, Daniel Webster summed those
impacts up this way, quote, it was the first great
battle of the Revolution, and not only the first blow,
but the blow which determined the contest. It did not

(09:30):
indeed put an end to the war, but in the
then existing hostile state of feeling, the difficulties could only
be referred to the arbitration of the sword. And one
thing is certain that after the New England troops had
shown themselves able to face and repulse the Regulars, it
was decided that peace never could be established, but upon

(09:51):
the basis of the independence of the colonies. When the
sun of that day went down, the event of independence
was no longer doubtful. In a few days, Washington heard
of the battle, and he inquired if the militia had
stood the fire of the regulars. When told that they
had not only stood that fire, but reserved their own

(10:12):
till the enemy was within eight rods, and then poured
it in with tremendous effect, then exclaimed he the liberties
of the country are safe. The consequences of this battle
were just of the same importance as the revolution itself,
or you will get to the consequences after a sponsor break.

(10:40):
The Battle of Bunker Hill lasted for about two hours,
but the Revolutionary War continued for eight years until the
Treaty of Paris of seventeen eighty three. Some time passed.
Then seventeen ninety four, King Solomon's Lodge, which is a
Masonic lodge that still exists today, erected a monument to
honor their Masonic brother and Grandmaster, doctor Joseph Warren, who

(11:04):
had died in the battle. Warren was second General in
command of the Massachusetts forces, but he fought on the
front lines of the battle alongside the regular volunteer militia.
This monument was shaped like a pillar with an urn
on the top, and it was placed at the approximate
site on Breed's Hill where Warren was killed. At first,

(11:26):
there wasn't much discussion of some kind of other Bunker
Hill monument. But in the eighteen twenties, people around the
US started becoming more interested in the Revolutionary War and
in battles that had taken place near where they lived.
By then, even the youngest veterans of the war were
getting into their sixties. People wanted to honor them and

(11:46):
to preserve their memories of the war before they died. Also,
the War of eighteen twelve had ended in eighteen fifteen,
and it had been controversial and divisive. Some people thought
commemorating the Revolution could bolster patriotism and unity in the
wake of that later conflicted war. The fiftieth anniversary of

(12:07):
the Declaration of Independence was in eighteen twenty six, and
of course there were other fiftieth anniversaries related to the
Revolutionary War before and after that, so people were also
just interested in building monuments and planning commemorations throughout this period.
In Charlestown, someone who owned part of the Bunker Hill

(12:27):
Battlefield planned to sell it. The Bunker Hill Monument Association
was formed in eighteen twenty three to purchase this land
and preserve the battlefield, as well as to construct a
monuments and to maintain their tradition of commemorating the battle
every June seventeenth. The Association took out a loan to
buy fifteen acres of the battlefield site in eighteen twenty four,

(12:50):
and then raised funds to repay that loan and to
start construction on a monument. King Solomon's Lodge also donated
their original monument and the land that it was on,
with the understanding that their monument would be represented somehow
at the new monument. It had fallen into disrepair already,

(13:10):
so it couldn't just be left standing. There is a
model of that monument in the bottom of the Bunker
Hill Monument today. In eighteen twenty five, a call went
out for artists to submit proposals for the monument's design.
The winner was Horatio Greenow, who would go on to
become one of the first American sculptors to attain international recognition.

(13:33):
He would also do some controversial commissions for the federal government.
I feel like that's a whole other story. The Monument
Association had planned for it to be shaped like a pillar,
but Greenhouse's design was an obelisk. As he said in
his memoirs, quote the obelisk has to my eye a
singular aptitude in its form and character to call attention

(13:55):
to a spot memorable in history. It says, but what word?
But it speaks loud. If I understand its voice, it
says here it says no more. The Marquis de Lafayette
laid the monument's cornerstone at a ceremony on a fiftieth
anniversary of the battle. On an earlier visit to the battlefield,

(14:16):
he had called it quote where the blood of American
patriots early and gloriously spilled, aroused the energy of three millions,
and secured the happiness of ten millions and of many
other millions of men in times to come. So side note.
The Marquis de Lafayette was another freemason, and another side note.

(14:38):
He collected soil from the battlefield during that earlier visit,
and his son sprinkled it on his grave after Lafayette
died in eighteen thirty four. In eighteen twenty five, Solomon
Willard was hired to be the architect and superintendent of
the monument. A plan evolved for the obelisk to have
a spiral staircase on the end side and to be

(15:00):
built from granite quarried from Quincy, Massachusetts, eleven miles away.
These granite blocks were transported to the Naponset River by
one of the first horse drawn railways in the US.
It was the first known to operate commercially, and then
they were carried the rest of the way by ship.
This project ran out of money repeatedly. Part of the

(15:25):
battlefield was sold off in the eighteen thirties because of
a lack of funds. Their first wave of construction built
eighty five feet of obelisk out of a planned two hundred,
and then it stopped. The obelisk just sat there, not
quite half finished. For about a year and a half.
There were repeated fundraisers, including a donation drive that was

(15:47):
specifically aimed at women and children, hoping they would donate
the small amounts of money they had. In eighteen forty,
Sarah Josepha Hale organized a lady's Fair at faniel Hall Market,
which is now known as Quincy Market. Hale was already
a big part of the fundraising efforts, especially it came
to those ones that were aimed at getting women and

(16:08):
children to donate small amounts, and her efforts were pretty controversial.
There were people who thought that women had no right
to give money from their household funds, which really belonged
to their husbands. Although charitable women's fares already existed, some
people thought this one, in particular, was unseemly because the
women were raising money for a war monument, not doing

(16:32):
something like helping the poor. In spite of all this,
over the course of September tenth through fifteenth of eighteen forty,
this fair raised more than thirty thousand dollars. That was
about a quarter of the money that was still needed,
and that success inspired a couple of other major donations,
along with a lot of smaller fundraising efforts. The Bunker

(16:53):
Hill Monument was finally completed in eighteen forty two, seventeen
years after Lafayette had laid that first corner stonn At
two hundred and twenty one feet, it was the tallest
monument in the US until the creation of the Washington
Monument that wouldn't be completed until eighteen eighty four. There
are two hundred and ninety four steps inside leading up

(17:15):
to the top. The Bunker Hill Monument was dedicated on
June seventeenth, eighteen forty three, on the sixty eighth anniversary
of the battle. Daniel Webster, again another freemason, gave its
dedication speech, and that speech makes it clear that the
monument already was not just about the battle. He called

(17:36):
the monument a shrine to liberty and said quote it
brings to our contemplation on the seventeenth of June seventeen
seventy five, and the consequences which have resulted to us,
to our country, and to the world from the events
of that day, and which we know must continue to
reign influence on the destinies of mankind to the end

(17:58):
of time. The elevation with which it raises us high
above the ordinary feelings of life, surpass all that the
study of the closet, or even the inspiration of genius
can produce. Today, it speaks to us, its future auditories
will be the successive generations of men, as they rise
up before it and gather around it. Its speech will

(18:21):
be of patriotism and courage, of civil and religious liberty,
of free government, of the moral improvement and elevation of mankind,
and of the immortal memory of those who, with heroic devotion,
have sacrificed their lives for their country. Later, he said,
let us remember that we have duties and obligations to

(18:44):
perform corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let Us
remember the trust, the sacred trust attaching to the rich
inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us
feel our personal responsibility to the full extent of our
power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of
civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it

(19:08):
is only religion and morals and knowledge that can make
men respectable and happy. Under any form of government. Let
us hold fast the great truth that communities are responsible
as well as individuals, that no government is respectable, which
is not just that without unspotted purity of public faith,
without sacred public principle, fidelity and honor, no mere forms

(19:32):
of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to
political society. In our day and generation, let us seek
to raise and improve the moral sentiments, so that we
may look not for a degraded but for an elevated
and improved future. And when both we and our children
shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living,

(19:54):
may love of country and pride of country glow with
equal fervor among those to whom our names and our
blood shall have descended. And then when honored and decrepit
age shall lean against the base of this monument, and
troops of ingenuous youths shall be gathered around it, And
when that one shall speak to the other of its objects,

(20:15):
the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious
events with which it is connected, there shall rise from
every youthful breast to the ejaculation. Thank God, I I
also am an American, obviously an intensely patriotic work, but

(20:36):
also one that's basically like, this work isn't done yet,
we must all carry it on with us. Other work
at the monument, meaning physical work, not sort of the
moral work of the country followed afterward, including a statue
of Joseph Warren installed in eighteen fifty seven and one
of Colonel William Prescott in eighteen eighty one. A Greek

(20:58):
Revival style lodge was built next to the monument to
act as both a museum and a place to sell
tickets to climb up those interior steps, with that money
helping to pay for the monument's ongoing maintenance and upkeep.
That lodge was finished in nineteen oh three. In nineteen nineteen,
the Bunker Hill Monument Association handed the monument, lodge and

(21:20):
grounds over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston National Historical
Park was established in nineteen seventy four, and the monument
was transferred to the National Park Service a year later.
The Bunker Hill Museum opened in a building across the
street from the monument in two thousand and seven. That
building had been home to the Charlestown branch of the

(21:42):
Boston Public Library, which had moved to a new location.
Some of the displays and dioramas that had been in
the lodge moved into the new museum. On the seventy
fifth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill in eighteen
fifty seven, years after the monument's completion, at the Word Everett,
one of the founders of the Monument Association, gave a speech.

(22:05):
He talked about the Battle of Bunker Hill and the
growing division between the North and the South, and his
hope for the union to be preserved, and he also
talked about the monument's meaning beyond just commemorating that one
battle quote. We borrowed the form of the monument from
the structures of ancient Egypt, but we did not intend

(22:26):
that it should stand, like the obelisks and pyramids, a
silent mystery to the successive generations that gaze upon them.
We wished that from time to time there should go
forth a faithful record of the glorious event and of
the all important principles to which the monument is consecrated.
And while the majestic shaft itself from the clouds to

(22:47):
which it towers, shall address its solemn eloquence to the
eye that the pen and voice to the end of
time should interpret its illustrious significance to the understanding and
the heart. I would say, I don't know that he
thoroughly understands the purpose of ancient Egyptian monuments and structures,
but these again saying that this is a monument for

(23:12):
works and ideas that are continuing. We will get to
this idea and how it manifested after we pause for
a sponsor break. To my knowledge, the panels that I

(23:33):
saw when visiting the Bunker Hill Monument on June six,
twenty twenty six are still up now ten days later
as we are recording this on Friday, June twelfth, which
is now four days ago. As of this recording, United
States District Judge Angel Kelly forbade the Department of the
Interior and the Park Service from taking any further action

(23:56):
to implement the Secretary of the Interiors Restoring Truth in
Sanity to American History order at National Park sites. So
they are not supposed to be taking things down at
the National Parks anymore, pending further court work. So this
is the second time that I have written an entire
episode of this podcast about material being removed from the

(24:19):
National parks, and then the legal situation surrounding that material
has changed in between writing it and recording it, and
I have had to go in and make additions and changes.
We are still going to talk about these panels, though,
even though to min as far as I know, unless
something else changes legally, they are not currently at risk

(24:39):
of being removed, because again, this whole episode was already
written when that happened. Some of what is on the
panels is the kind of material that people would probably
expect at this kind of monument. There's a quote from
the Bunker Hill Monument Association about the monument, and that
is paired with a painting by John Trumbull depicting the

(25:00):
death of Joseph Warren. There's information about the original memorial
that was raised by King Solomon's Lodge, about the formation
of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, how long it took
to build the monument, and how expensive it was. There
is a quote from Sarah Josepha Hale about raising those funds.

(25:21):
But the panels are not just about the battle and
the building of the monument. The way that the room
is laid out, the panel that a person would probably
walk past first on the way to go climb all
those steps end quote. Today, more than two hundred and
fifty years later, you are visiting the legacy of many

(25:42):
generations since they came here to build, create, retail, and
challenge stories about the Battle of Bunker Hill and the
creation of the United States of America. The challenges start
on the very next panel with a quote from Caleb Stark,
whose name is as Caleb Strong on the banner. Caleb

(26:03):
Stark was only sixteen years old and too young to
serve in the militia, but he ran away from home
to do it anyway. After the Battle of Bunker Hill.
He spent the next eight years in the Continental Army.
After the war was over, Stark got married and had
children and started advocating for the rights of veterans. By

(26:23):
this point, a lot of veterans viewed the Revolutionary War
as a whole string of broken promises and unmet obligations
on the part of the government. Some soldiers were promised
land in lieu of back pay, and they never received it.
The first pension programs applied only to soldiers who had

(26:44):
served in the Continental Army, not in the militias or
the state regiments. That way, more people served in. While
there was some state and federal support for impoverished and
disabled veterans, the first really broad pension program applying to
all veterans was the Pension Act of eighteen thirty two

(27:04):
that was passed almost fifty years after the end of
the Revolutionary War, after a lot of those veterans had
already died. Stark's own land grant came through only after
a lawsuit against the government that ended in eighteen twenty eight.
To my knowledge, Stark was not focused on the rights

(27:25):
of the enslaved people who had volunteered thinking that it
would help free them, But that is another thing that
was going on. Regardless, though, Stark thought that all of
that stuff that I just said about broken promises and
mispayments and all of that, he thought that was not right.
So when he was elected to the Bunker Hill Monument Association,
he refused to join. In his letter to the association,

(27:48):
he wrote, quote, I have powerful national objections to the
adoption of this project for the following reasons. First, those
who made this notable stand on this sanguinary hill have
almost all passed to those shades where military honors are
not more highly appreciated than they have been in the
United States. Secondly, the actors in this bloody scene the

(28:12):
Revolutionary War, after having performed their part in a manner
perhaps unparalleled in ancient or modern history, were refused by
the government the rewards that were so solemnly promised in
the hour of the most critical danger. And while the
government has found ways and means to satisfy all other
legal and many illegal demands, they still continue a deaf

(28:35):
ear to the crying demands for justice claimed by the
disbanded officer and soldier and now sir in room of
giving them the bread that was solemnly promised. The debt
is to be paid by a stone. Stark was not
alone in these feelings. During that period when the monument
stood half finished, it really became emblematic of the unpaid

(28:58):
soldiers and the unfulfill promises. Today. In the exhibit in
the Lodge at Bunker Hill, an abridged version of this quote,
ending in the part about it being paid in a stone,
is juxtaposed with information about the King Solomon's Lodge monument
and the building of the one that still stands today
at Bunker Hill. When they were built, both of these

(29:19):
monuments were really criticized as being a big waste of money,
especially given all of that about the veterans. Another panel
at the monument pairs a quote from Daniel Webster's eighteen
forty three dedication oration with one from a letter published
in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper The Liberator that was
published in eighteen forty six. Webster's quote describes the monument

(29:43):
as quote, a memorial of the last and a monitor
to the present and to all succeeding generations. The quote
from the letter in The Liberator, written by GB Stebbins,
is one of the ones ordered to be removed. It
reads quote, as we drew near to Boston, there stood
Bunker Hill Monument, towering up towards the heavens, as if

(30:05):
in silent, bitter mockery of the millions of slaves, guarded
by the professed lovers of liberty who reared its lofty column.
This letter was written only three years after the monument
was completed, but before the Civil War and the abolition
of slavery in the US except in punishment for a crime.
So within three years of the monument's completion, abolitionists were

(30:30):
talking about the contrast between the Bunker Hill Monument as
a monument to the freedom of the Revolution and the
freedom that was denied to the nation's enslaved, which is
reflected in this panel in the Lodge. Another of the
quotes to be removed from the monument was published in
an Irish Catholic newspaper called The Pilot that was printed
in Boston on May eighth, eighteen seventy five. This followed

(30:54):
an address that George William Curtis had given on the
one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Kong.
Curtis had been an abolitionist and was a supporter of
women's suffrage, and he also advocated for the rights of
black and indigenous people. But he had anti Catholic and
anti immigrant views, and in this address he criticized the

(31:15):
changes that he thought immigration was causing in the United States.
He said, quote, this enormous influx of foreigners has added
an immense ignorance and entire unfamiliarity with Republican ideas and
habits to the voting class. He claimed that newcomers to
the US had no connection with the revolution or its ideals.

(31:38):
This peace, published in the Pilot, which was published by
the Archdiocese of Boston, was in response to this The
quote on display in the lodge at Bunker Hill read's quote,
Now that a public orator has declared that foreign born
men have no association with the men of the Revolution,
it is our duty to show that, in love of

(31:59):
freedom and loyalty to the Republic, the citizens of foreign
birth take no second place. This piece went on to
say that Curtis's newspaper was known to publish malevolent attacks
on foreign born citizens and had a record for attacking
Catholics and Irish people. It called Curtis quote too small

(32:20):
in heart and brain to grasp the significance of the centennial,
before going on to say quote, a full grown adult
man would exult in the vast power of the one
hundred year Republic, would proudly point to the world ships
steering westward, laden with strong men, foreign men like the
fathers of those who drove the British from conquered. Such

(32:41):
a man would find hope and power in the thought
that our generous country is great enough to take to
her breast the people of all races and creeds, there
to live in peace and goodwill. The writer of this
piece did not really make note of all the people
who fought on the side of the Revolution in spite
of not being born in North America, people like the

(33:03):
Marquis de Lafayette, who's come up a bunch in this episode,
and Kasimir Pulaski, who we just talked about on the show,
and all of the other European military men who joined
the fight something we talked about in that Kasimir Pulaski episode,
and just people who were immigrants before the revolution started.
He did note that there were many men of foreign

(33:24):
birth who fought for the Union during the Civil War,
including the Irish Brigades. By the time Curtis gave this
oration and the response was printed in the Pilot, Charlestown
had a large and growing Irish Catholic population, many of
whom had immigrated to the United States in the wake
of the Great Famine. The annual observance of the Bunker

(33:46):
Hill Anniversary was becoming interconnected with Irish identity and pride
in the neighborhood. In eighteen seventy five, Irish American Catholics
explicitly put out a call for Irish people to take
part in the procession that took place at Bunker Hill
that year, solidifying this tradition through the nineteenth and into
the twentieth century. The panel containing this quote from the

(34:09):
pilot also shares a quote from Lucy Stone, which I
think is the quote that provoked this whole investigation, but
was not actually slated to be taken down. It reads quote,
the battle is celebrated for the justice of the cause, which,
because it was just was triumphant. The woman's suffrage battle

(34:30):
is like that of Bunker Hill, not one today, but
sure to be later. Meantime, Bunker Hill Monument is our monument.
The third quote ordered for removal from the monument is
from a letter printed in the Boston Globe. It was
written by Arthur Johnson and Bester Cram, New England, coordinators
of the Vietnam Veterans against the War, and it reads quote,

(34:52):
we find upon reflection that our duty to our country
has not ended. We as Vietnam veterans, feel strongly that
the United States should cease to build memorials to death
and begin to glorify life. So there's an ellipsis in
that quote, and part of what is left out is
just before that last part of the statement, and it

(35:14):
says quote, later this month, this country celebrates Memorial Day,
a day which commemorates all American war dead. It's after
saying that that they say that the United States should
stop building memorials to death and instead glorify life. Elsewhere
in the letter, Johnson and Cram also wrote, quote, we
find in retrospect that what we believed to be patriotism

(35:37):
was in fact a disservice to humanity. This letter was
printed on May twenty third, nineteen seventy one, days before
Vietnam Veterans against the war held a protest in Massachusetts.
More than two hundred people marched from Lexington and conquered
to the Bunker Hill Monument, essentially following the reverse route

(35:58):
of Paul Revere's famous They camped overnight at the monument,
with the protest ending on May thirty first, which was
Memorial Day. This protest was deliberately intended to draw parallels
between the American Revolution and the march and the ideas
behind it. It was called Operation Pow, based on the

(36:19):
idea that in the context of the ongoing Vietnam War,
all Americans were prisoners of war. Organizers also made a
lot of connections between the American occupation of Vietnam and
the British occupation of North America before and during the
Revolutionary War. On the display at the monument, the quote
from the Boston Globe appears alongside one from journalist and

(36:43):
civil rights advocate William Monroe Trotter's Bunker Hill Day Addressed
from nineteen twenty five, and that quote reads quote Colored
Americans were here that day fighting with other patriots, our
own ancestors, of whom we are justly proud, and on
whom we base our claim for full liberty and equality
as citizens. There is also a photo of the protesters

(37:07):
gathered at the monument on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy one.
So this is like two different statements with very different
perspectives about how to think about veterans, including ones who
died in a war. So the last panel that a
person would walk past into the obelisk as you're walking
through the lodge has a quote from the twenty twenty

(37:27):
five Bunker Hill Day Address from author and historian Nathaniel Philbrick,
whose books include Bunker Hill, A City, A Siege, a Revolution,
which was published in twenty thirteen, and then at the
bottom of the panel, there's a statement that to me
really ties together what all of the other panels in
this exhibit are doing. It reads quote, as you prepare

(37:49):
to climb the monument, or simply take in the views
from the ground, consider the many voices this monument echoes.
What voice might you add today the message to future generations?
And to be clear, the voices from these panels are
not the only ones that have been part of the
legacy of protest and advocacy and involvement that has surrounded

(38:12):
the Bunker Hill Monument over the last two hundred and
fifty plus years. There is also an online exhibit at
the National Park Service website called Bunker Hill Memory that
includes more information about all of these quotes that we've discussed,
along with a number of others, and it discusses what
the monument has meant over the years and the concept

(38:33):
of historical memory quote, the ways that people understand and
interpret their shared past. So beyond that, beyond what is
part of the exhibition there in the lodge and online,
just as some other examples. In the nineteen seventies, Boston
faced a court order to integrate its school system, and
that was being done through bussing. A lot of the

(38:55):
anti bussing protests were ostensibly about keeping children their local
neighborhood schools, but there was often an underlying threat of
racism in these arguments. On September eighth, nineteen seventy five,
protesters against the buzzing of black students rallied at Bunker Hill.
There was explicit racism involved, including burning an effigy of

(39:18):
a black student, but demonstrators at this protest still tied
what they were doing to the ideals of freedom and liberty.
In this case, they were arguing that it was the
freedom to control where their children went to school and
who they went to school with. In nineteen ninety eight,
a protest against a newly passed gun control law in
Massachusetts also took place in Bunker Hill. This law banned

(39:42):
the sale of twenty five types of military style assault weapons,
it set greater penalties for certain gun crimes, and it
prohibited people with felony convictions from getting a gun license,
as well as other reforms. Organizers said Bunker Hill was
chosen as the protes test site because it was symbolic
of Americans defending their freedoms. That same year, a public

(40:07):
art installation at the Bunker Hill Monument also drew intense controversy.
Artist Christoph Whdischko filmed family members talking about the loss
of their loved ones due to street violence in Charlestown.
He filmed these family members from below and then he
projected this video at the top of the monument, and
it was accompanied by a sixteen minute audio loop of

(40:29):
their interviews. From the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties,
Charlestown had an alarmingly high murder rate and a code
of silence meant that most of these cases went unsolved.
Among the interviewees was Sandray King, whose sons Chris and
j were both murdered several years apart. She described being

(40:50):
devastated and almost unable to get out of bed when
Chris was murdered, but when Jay was murdered it was
quote the murder heard round the world. She said, you
would never stop fighting for justice for him. People involved
with this art installation also tied it to the idea
of freedom. There was the freedom of speech for the
installation itself, and Marty Blatt, supervisory historian for Boston National

(41:15):
Historical Park, was quoted as saying, quote what could be
more symbolic of freedom than these women who have lost
their loved ones. It was the ultimate denial of freedom
to have no one come forward. This was the most
extraordinary moment I've ever seen in public art. The artist
also said that he felt that these women were as

(41:36):
brave for speaking out as the volunteers who fought at
the Battle of Bunker Hill. One of the reasons this
installation was so controversial was that the residents of Charles
Down thought that it was basically airing their dirty laundry.
There is more information about this installation at the National
Park Service website for the Bunker Hill Monument. In two

(41:56):
thousand and three, historians Sarah J. Purcell published a pay
for in the Public Historian about the monument and this installation,
and in it she says something that also runs parallel
to the exhibit currently installed at the lodge, writing quote,
the meaning of a monument is never fixed, but rather
is always determined by an intersection of architectural intentions, viewer reactions,

(42:21):
and historical interpretation. The Bunker Hill Monument has been a
site of dialogue between past and present, local and national
male and female partisanship and impartiality. Almost since its inception.
Before we get to listener mail, I just want to
shout out to the folks at the National Park Service

(42:41):
who created this installation and its online exhibit back in
twenty twenty three. I'm truly indebted to them, both for
inspiring this episode and for the exhibits themselves and the
creation of this episode. I found the whole exhibit really
thought provoking in a way that I don't often find
in these kinds of exhibits. And also just thanks to

(43:02):
the rangers who were there when I went. Both of
the ranger talks that I saw were very enjoyable and informative.
Three cheers to the National Park Service. Yeah, I have
listener mail from Martha. Great. Martha said some very kind
things in the first paragraph, and I'm just gonna skip
over them because I feel self congratulatory trying to read

(43:23):
them out loud, and then said the other prompting episode
was on the history of the IUD. The references to
camels and stones brought to mind the practice of putting
a sterile glass marble in a mare's uterus to suppress
estras coming into heat as a method of reducing marrish
behavior that can accompany estras. This technique carries several risks

(43:46):
and their other methods of behavioral management. I am not
a proponent of the marble technique, but your mention of
the camel stones made me wonder if there may be
some camel based story behind the development of the practice.
Before I close, I wish to add one more thing.
Some time ago, you had a discussion regarding camping versus Marriott.

(44:07):
In my book, it's definitely hotel, and the more stars
the better. My questions during a vacation should be pool
or ocean and restaurant or room service turned down, service
with chocolates on the pillow adds just the right touch.
Insert laughing emoji here for pet tax. Here are two
photos of my thirteen year old dog, Tiva. I did

(44:27):
not try to figure out how to pronounce that, so
I hope it was correct. In one, he probably holds
a street find a piece of cardboard. The other he's
enjoying some sunshine in the yard. Thank you for your podcast, Sincerely, Martha.
We have very cute dog pictures, hopers. I had not
heard that there was this practice of putting a sterile
glass marble into the uterus of a mare, and that

(44:51):
makes me wonder if there is maybe more to this
whole camel Stone story. Yeah, then I gave it credit
for Yeah, you can say maybe. So. Thank you so much,
Martha for writing to us about this. We will talk
more about the Bunker Hill Monument on Friday if you
would like to send us a note, or at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. If you want to see

(45:14):
our show notes, including links to all of these things
that we used as research today and all that stuff
from the National Park Service, we are at mistonhistory dot com,
and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.

(45:34):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Many Meanings of the Bunker Hill Monument