the city. Maverick was buried from his
mother's house in Union Street, and Gray, from his
brother's, in Royal Exchange Lane. The four hearses formed a
junction in King Street, and then the procession marched in
columns six deep, with a long file of coaches belonging to
the most distinguished citizens, to the Middle Burying
Ground, where the four victims were deposited in one grave;
over which a stone was placed with the inscription:

'Long as in Freedom's cause the wise contend,
Dear to your country shall your fame extend;
While to the world the lettered stone shall tell
Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell.'

"The anniversary of this event was publicly commemorated in
Boston by an oration and other exercises every year until
our National Independence was achieved, when the Fourth of
July was substituted for the Fifth of March, as the more
proper day for a general celebration. Not only was the event
commemorated, but the martyrs who then gave up their lives
were remembered and honored."

Thus the first blood for liberty shed in the colonies was that of a real
slave and a negro. As the news of the affray spread, the people became
aroused throughout the land. Soon, in every town and village, meetings
were held, and the colonists urged to resist the oppressive and
aggressive measures which the British Parliament had passed, and for the
enforcement of which troops had been stationed in Boston, and as we see,
had shot down those who dared to oppose them. In all the colonies
slavery was at this time tolerated, though the number of slaves was by
no means large in the Northern Colonies, nor had there been a general
ill treatment of them, as in after years in the Southern States. Their
war-like courage, it is true, had been slackened, but their manhood had
not been crushed.

Crispus Attucks was a fair representative of the colonial negro, as they
evinced thereafter, during the prolonged struggle which resulted in the
Independence of the United States. When the tocsin sounded "to arms, to
arms, ye who would be free," the negro responded to the call, and side
by side with the white patriots of the colonial militia, bled and died.

Mr. Bancroft in his history of the United States says:

"Nor should history forget to record, that as in the army at
Cambridge, so also in this gallant band, the free