HARPER'S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
No. VI.—NOVEMBER, 1850.—Vol. I.
A PILGRIMAGE TO THE CRADLE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.
WITH PEN AND PENCIL.
BY BENSON J. LOSSING.[1]
Shot thwart the earth! in crown of living fire
Up comes the day! As if they conscious quaff'd
The sunny flood, hill, forest, city spire
Laugh in the waking light."
t was a glorious Octobermorning, mild and brilliant,when I left Boston tovisit Concord and Lexington.A gentle land-breezeduring the night had bornethe clouds back to theirocean birth-place, and nota trace of the storm wasleft except in the saturatedearth. Health returnedwith the clear sky, and Ifelt a rejuvenescence inevery vein and musclewhen, at dawn, I strolledover the natural glory ofBoston, its broad and beautifully-arboredCommon. I breakfasted at six,and at half-past seven left the station of theFitchburg rail-way for Concord, seventeen milesnorthwest of Boston. The country throughwhich the road passed is rough and broken, butthickly settled. I arrived at the Concord station,about half a mile from the centre of the village,before nine o'clock, and procuring a conveyance,and an intelligent young man for a guide, proceededat once to visit the localities of interestin the vicinity. We rode to the residence ofMajor James Barrett, a surviving grandson ofColonel Barrett, about two miles north of thevillage, and near the residence of his veneratedancestor. Major Barrett was eighty-seven yearsof age when I visited him; and his wife, withwhom he had lived nearly sixty years, waseighty. Like most of the few survivors of theRevolution, they were remarkable for theirmental and bodily vigor. Both, I believe, stilllive. The old lady—a small, well-formed woman—wasas sprightly as a girl of twenty, andmoved about the house with the nimbleness offoot of a matron in the prime of life. I wascharmed with her vivacity, and the sunny radiancewhich it seemed to shed throughout herhousehold; and the half hour that I passed withthat venerable couple is a green spot in thememory.
MONUMENT AT CONCORD.Major Barrett was a lad of fourteen whenthe British incursion into Concord took place.He was too young to bear a musket, but, withevery lad and woman in the vicinity, he laboredin concealing the stores and in making cartridgesfor those who went out to fight. With oxenand a cart, himself, and others about his age,removed the stores deposited at the house of hisgrandfather, into the woods, and concealed them,a cart-load in a place, under pine boughs. Insuch haste were they obliged to act on the approachof the British from Lexington, that, whenthe cart was loaded, lads would march on eachside of the oxen and goad them into a trot.Thus all the stores were effectual