Jake:
[0:00] Hi listeners. Before we start today, did you know that you could help Hub History win a fan favorite award at the 2020 Boston Preservation Awards?
Just go to bostonpreservation.org/fan-favorite or look for the link in this week’s show notes. Vote early and often.

Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:26] Welcome to Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is Episode 203 The Railroad Jubilee. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week I’ll be talking about an enormous party thrown by the city of Boston in September of 1851.
I originally planned to air this show last week so it would have corresponded with the anniversary of the event on September 17th through 19th.
That’s right. This party was so big that it lasted three days.
After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered in Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the Port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line steamers giving access to the markets in England,
to celebrate this new era of railroading the city threw a grand railroad jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the governor general of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country.
Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs, Boston’s ever present competition with New York City and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.

[1:46] But before we talk about Boston’s Railroad Jubilee, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:55] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is one of my favorite titles about Boston in the 19th century, and it’s the first place I ever read about Boston’s 18 51 Railroad Jubilee, published in 2011.
A City So Grand. The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 18 50 to 1900 by Stephen Puleo.
Help me turn an interest in Boston history into a tour company and eventually into the podcast you’re listening to right now.

[2:24] The book traces the development of Boston in the second half of the 19th century and bold strokes from the rescue of accused fugitive Shadrack mink ins to the sudden influx of Irish immigrants to the construction of America’s first subway.

[2:38] Here’s how the authors website describes the book. The second half of the 19th century is, quite simply, a breathtaking period in Boston’s history.
Unlike the frustrations of our modern era, in which the notion of accomplishing great things often appears overwhelming or even impossible,
Boston distinguished itself between 18 50 1900 by proving a could tackle and overcome the most arduous challenges and obstacles with repeated and often resounding success.
A city so grand chronicles this breathtaking period in Boston’s history.
For the first time, readers will experience the abolitionist movement of the 18 fifties, the 35 year engineering and city planning feet of the Back Bay Project,
the arrival of the Irish that transformed Boston demographically, the Great Fire of 18 72 in the subsequent rebuilding of downtown,
Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in Boston and the many contributions Boston made to shaping transportation, including the Great Railroad Jubilee of 18 51,
and the grand opening of America’s first Subway,
thes stories and many more painting extraordinary portrait of a half century of progress, leadership and influence that redefined Boston as a world class city.

Upcoming Event(S)

[3:54] And after the upcoming event, I have three options for you to choose from.
First Up is a virtual program from the Royal House and Slave Quarters in Medford titled Acts of Rebellion and Envisioning a New Society.
The talk this Wednesday, September 23rd, will feature Dr Vincent Brown, who teaches American and African American history at Harvard, and Dr Timothy McCarthy, who is a human rights activist on the faculty of the Kennedy School.
Together, they’ll talk about the role of protests and revolts in shaping black resistance and freedom movements, from slave rebellions in the 18th century Atlantic World to the black lives matter movement.
Today, registration for the interactive Zoom Oven is limited to the 1st 100 people, though the talk will also be live streamed on Facebook in case of an overflow crowd.

[4:44] Next, I want to feature another installment in the reflecting addicts Siri’s from revolutionary spaces as they explore the life and world of Boston massacre victim Christmas addicts to mark the 250th anniversary of the massacre.
The event, coming up on September 29th, is titled Imagining Addicts, and it will focus on how addicts has been portrayed in visual media like paintings and engravings.

[5:10] As a black man, Christmas addicts didn’t fit the narrative that artists of the time, like Henry Pelham and Paul Revere, tried to portray with their engravings of the massacre.
So he was left out of the picture in the 18th century, when addicts was rediscovered in the 19th century, Artist painted him back into the picture, with each successive generation projecting their own values under the canvas.
The Panelists for this talk will include a playwright who’s writing a show about Christmas addicts.
The living history interpreter plays him in the Boston Massacre reenactment each year and the author of a book about Christmas addicts in American memory.

[5:48] And finally, I have another event in the Charter Day, Siri’s from our friends at the Partnership of Historic Boston’s.
The partnership is dedicated to telling the stories of Boston, Massachusetts and Boston Lincolnshire, which means that they usually focus heavily on the experiences of the 17th century.
Puritans who came for the town in Lincolnshire Toe found the town in Massachusetts on September 30th.
Next Wednesday, they’ll be taking a very different approach to the history of 17th Century Boston by highlighting the experiences of the indigenous peoples who lived along the shores of Massachusetts Bay before the Puritans arrived,
their guest speaker will be Dr Larry Fisher, Ph.
D. In council Chiefs Age Um, who bears the traditional name chief Sachem Wampum Ikhwan Wamp, Attock.

[6:37] Dr. Fisher is a direct descendant of the grand stadium Chiquita Bit, who have discussed on the show in the past, and he’s also the presiding council chief Sachem for the Maddock Isa tribe of the Massachusetts nation.
Dr. Fisher will interpret the human experiences of the Indian nations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and their relations with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Here’s how the partnership in the Massachusetts nation described the event the land from the Merrimack River south to the Taunton River was shared among the Massachusetts nation, which includes today’s known surviving tribes.
The Maracay Sit Natick, Ponca POG and a mascot.
Chief Sachem Larry Fisher and other spokespersons will examine the partially interpreted history of 16th and 17th century Massachusetts up to the present.
We believe all aspects of our common history shall be preserved and remembered together.
We recognize that only with inclusion, honesty and honoring our individual and distinctive tribal histories well, we truly achieve our mission.

[7:41] All three virtual events require advanced registration and all three air free, though a donation is strongly encouraged.
As we’ve mentioned on the show in the past, historic sites in history organizations of all stripes are suffering during the pandemic.
And just because the doors were closed to visitors doesn’t mean there aren’t expenses.
For example, the Royal House discovered a critical threat to their Buildings Foundation that required immediate repair during the lock down, which added to their financial needs.

[8:13] So check out the show notes this week at hub history dot com slash 203 for links toe all three upcoming events and a link to purchase Stephen Polio’s a city so grand.

[8:26] Before I move on with the show, I just want to thank our patryan sponsors Hub history as a completely independent podcast without the benefits of a corporate parent or a podcast network.
Well, that gives us total control over what we cover on the show and how we cover it.
It also means that we need sponsors to help us cover the cost of making the show your contributions.
Cover website hosting and security podcast media hosting, transcription, audio processing and much, much mawr for his little is $2 a month. You can help us keep making her history.
If you’re not a sponsor and you’d like to become one, just goto patryan dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support link a big thank you to all our new and returning sponsors.
And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Main Topic: Boston’S Railroad Jubilee

[9:21] In a city So grand Stephen Polio describes President Millard Fillmore’s grand entrance as he visited Boston for the first time on September 17th, 18 51.

[9:32] President Millard Fillmore Road tall astride a black cavalry charger, gazing at the resplendent assembly spread before I’m on Boston Common.
Handling his horse with graceful ease. Fillmore High step the Steve between dozens of rows of military regiments, their colors held high, inspecting the men who stood at attention under a red streaked early evening sky.

[9:55] Thousands of cheering Boston residents throng the gently rising hill that nearly encircled the field, waving flags and handkerchiefs, echoes of booming cannon discharge.
Minutes earlier to announce Fillmore’s arrival on the common hung in the air,
the president wrote along the whole front, saluted by each company as he passed artillery and light infantry regiments, rifle brigades and color guards, all part of Massachusetts volunteer militia.
Then the line broke into columns and marched in review before the commander in chief and after circling the field, formed in the line again.
Later, President Fillmore declared that the crisp display was the finest he had ever witnessed.
Bostonians who watched the spectacle agreed this was the president’s first trip to Boston exactly three years before the Fillmore campaign had come to Boston.
But Miller himself wasn’t with, um as we discussed back in Episode 1 28 A number of campaign proxies came to Boston, instead headlined by the future president Abraham Lincoln.
The country lawyer and first term congressman stayed in Boston from September 25th to the 23rd, stumping for Fillmore in Boston and around the region.

[11:12] Perhaps the closest the president Fillmore had gotten to Boston prior to September 17th, 18 51 was through his great grandfather, John Fillmore.
Back in 17 23 John was a fisherman from Ipswich who ended up getting taken captive by a pirate named John Phillips.
While fishing off the coast of Newfoundland, he was pressed into service on Philips Ship against his will, repeatedly asking to be set free, even if it meant being marooned on a desert island.
After seven months among the Pirates film or in another unwilling member of the crew saw their chance, they attacked Phillips and his officers with their tools.
John Fillmore personally decapitated Captain Phillips with an ax, then sailed for Boston.
About two weeks later, the town was thrown into much surprise when Fillmore arrived in Boston Harbor carrying Captain Phillips head in a pickle jar.

[12:10] You can learn more about that and more pirate history. An Episode 80.
But in the meantime, I believe that was the last time a film or visited Boston prior to September 18 51 along with the secretary of war in the secretary of the interior president, Fillmore departed Washington, D. C.
On Monday, September 15 they took a train from D. C. To New York, then boarded the steamer Bay State for an overnight truck to Newport, where they arrived at 10 a.m. On Tuesday.

[12:42] The president and his entourage spent the day in Newport being received by local officials, as well as meeting emissaries from Massachusetts who carried further details about the program of events that would begin.
Upon the president’s arrival in Boston, a lieutenant colonel of the state militia described the initial reception that was planned for the president.
A part of the militia will be under orders near and at the line of the City of Boston to escort you to the lodgings, which he understands the authorities of that city have provided for you.
His Excellency has also instructed us to tender to you a review of the troops composing the escort on Boston common at such hours may be convenient to you,
and he’s directed us to attend you in person to the capital of the state, if that should meet your pleasure.
The president said that he’d be happy to participate in a military review as long as he could be provided with a good horse so he could review the troops from horseback and not within a carriage.
He also waxed effusive about the upcoming celebration, saying almost as much about Boston’s Railroad Jubilee while in Newport as he actually did in Boston.

[13:53] In response to a member of the Boston committee, he said, You have eluded sir, to the completion of the long lines of railway connecting the Canada’s and the Great Lakes with Massachusetts and the ocean,
as one of the causes which of occasion, this invitation at this time,
however gratifying it might be to come amongst you at any time.
It is particularly so to be present at the celebration of such an event, for I confess, I feel a deep interest in whatever is connected with the prosperity in the happiness of any part of our common country.
Massachusetts has done a much as any portion of the United States to extend and multiply facilities for trade in intercourse.
And I am glad, sir, that she has now stretched forth her iron arms to the Great West in the Canada’s.
Although I am not sir in favor of annexation in a certain sense of the term, for I think we have territory enough,
yet I am entirely in favor of all the means by which the states and countries can be bound together by ties of mutual interest and reciprocal commercial advantage.

[14:58] You have also spoken served the establishment of a line of American steamships between your principal city and foreign ports.
This, too, is a subject in which I take a deep interest. I rejoice in all measures which extend an increase, our means of intercourse with foreign countries and strengthen and enlarge our foreign commerce.
It must have been noticed that the great improvement, which has taken place in our relations with one another and with other countries is owing principally to the rivalry between our great cities, and this is a generous rivalry.
New York, as you know, has already completed a great work by which he meant Theirry Canal, which extends her trade to the West and in whatever part of our land these enterprises air begun, we all feel a deep interest in their success,
because they served to multiply among us.
The resource is of living, and by giving us mutual interests and making us better acquainted with one another, they must strengthen the bonds by which we’re joined together in common union.

[16:04] After breakfast on Wednesday, the 17th, the president and his party boarded a steamer for the brief trip to Fall River,
at Fall River, he transferred to another steamboat, where he was greeted by members of the Boston committee and gave brief remarks praising Fall River, Boston and Massachusetts in general.
After catching his first brief glimpse of the Bay State from Fall River, President, Fillmore aborted the Old Colony Railroad, which took him to Harrison Square in Dorchester.
There are more speeches, and a company of lancers accompanied the president’s carriage to the Roxbury town line, where more speeches were given and the party swelled with MAWR officials and more members of the public.
They all arrived at Boston Neck to start the official parade at noon, where they were met with a 21 gun salute, much like Lafayette’s visit in 18 24 which you can learn more about in episode 1 63.
Every street corner was decked out with flags, red, white and blue bunting and signs bearing patriotic slogans.

[17:09] The trip from Washington to the Boston town line had taken from Monday morning toe Wednesday at noon, basically two full days.
This was considered a remarkably fast time. When Mayor John P. Bigelow greeted President Fillmore upon his arrival in Boston, both men focused on the changes that had taken place since Boston.
First welcome to US President George Washington in 17 89.
You can hear more about that visit in episode 1 47.
The mayor contrasted the state of the city and nation in 18 51 to that in 17 89.

[17:47] Sir, the people of Boston now crowd her gates to receive, with their tokens of honor, the great head of the Republic and in their name, I bid you welcome to this metropolis.
We regard it as a happy omen that we receive you on the spot where our fathers gathered to hail the coming of Washington in the first year of his presidency.
The contrast exhibited between that period and this is striking and instructive.
The salutations extended to the first president, where the offering of only 18,000 inhabitants the welcome tendered to a successor this day is the voice of a population of 140,000.
The ruler, who was then received, administered the affairs of less than four millions of people who had but lately emerged from the smoke of a battle for independence.
And we’re just beginning under the auspices of Liberty and Union to take rank among the nations of the Earth.
You, sir, we acknowledges the executive chief of the population of 25 million’s living in the enjoyment of an amount of prosperity and happiness almost unparalleled in the history of the world.

[18:54] In reply, President Fillmore focused on how fast his trip to the hub had been when compared with a certain past president who made a similar ship to Boston.

[19:03] You have alluded to the visit of General Washington to this city.
What a change has taken place since the time when he first visited the city, not for the purpose of receiving the cordial congratulations of her citizens, but for that of defending her against that great and then adverse power of the mother country.
If my memory serves me right, that son of Virginia, he who connected the fate of that state with yours when appointed that Philadelphia commander in chief of the armies of the United Colonies set out forthwith from that place for the seat of war.
History tells us that he traveled from Philadelphia to this vicinity in 11 days and that on his arrival, the good people of Watertown gathered together and congratulated him on the speed of his journey.
What has brought about this change? Why is it that the distance which it took him 11 days to travel over?
And that too, when a most critical state of affairs called for the utmost speed has now been passed over by me as a matter of pleasure in almost a many hours.
It is owing in great part to the intelligence of your citizens who have also opened avenues of commerce to the western world, which is now through them pouring into your lap. Her rich treasures.

[20:22] The city’s ecstatic reception for the president and the president’s warm reaction stand in stark contrast to Fillmore’s, addressed to the Senate in February of the same year.
Nothing could be more unexpected than that. Such a gross violation of law, such a high handed contempt for the authority of the United States should be perpetrated by a band of lawless confederates at noon day in the city of Boston and in the very Temple of Justice.
In a community distinguished for its love of order and respect for laws among the people who sentiment is liberty in law, not liberty without law nor above the law.
Such an outrage could only be the result of sudden violence, unhappily too much unprepared for to be successfully resisted.
It would be melancholy indeed, if we’re obliged to regard this outbreak against the constitutional and legal authority of the government as proceeding from the general feeling of the people in a spot which is proverbially called the cradle of American Liberty.

[21:23] For those who might not remember the first couple of months of our podcasts run back in episodes 15 and 16 we discussed Boston’s attempts to rescue prisoners who are being held at Boston’s federal courthouse under the Fugitive Slave Act.
In February of 18 51 a group of mostly black abolitionist stormed the courtroom and bodily carried an accused fugitive named Shadrack Mickens out the door.
They turned him over to the Underground railroad, which whisked Minkin out of the state and across the Canadian border before the authorities could react.

[21:58] Two months later, a man named Thomas Simms was accused under the same law.
This time, a long shot planned a spirit. The alleged fugitive away under the cover of night was foiled when iron bars were fitted across his cell window at the last minute.
Knowing now that Boston was a powder keg, President Fillmore sent the U.
S. Navy toe Holloway the prisoner and deliver him back to bondage.
In Georgia, he deputized Boston’s nascent police force, the town marshals as federal officers, and 300 of them march Mr Sims to the docks with swords drawn when it came time to transport him back to slavery.
I’ve been trying not to hit people over the head with comparisons between historical tragedies and President Trump lately.
But after seeing federal secret police snatch protesters off the streets of Portland and throw them into vans, do you think that the mayor would turn around and invite the president to a jubilee in the city?
Or that the people of Portland would turn out by the tens of thousands to cheer him?

[22:58] The unexpectedly warm welcome for President Fillmore was due in part to the desperation of the wig party in Boston to tamp down the anger and sectional is, um,
that many already feared could cause New England to secede from the union over the slavery issue, sparking a bloody civil war.
It was also due in no small part to enthusiasm on the part of the public and the president for railroads.
Stephen Polio, notes that the president Waas, a long time devotee of railroads who frequently wove together the themes of commerce, unionism and peace in his speeches in public statements.

[23:37] The president was in town, after all, for a Grand Railroad jubilee, which marked the culmination of 15 years of rapid railroad development.
Boston The celebration was not for the first railroads, although Boston and the surrounding area made several early advances in railroading.

[23:55] As early a 17 99 and certainly by 18 05 rails were being used on Beacon Hill.
The anthropologist Frederick Gams jumps through rhetorical hoops in the 1992 article to redefine what we should consider a railroad.
In order to call this Beacon Hill contraption, America’s first railroad in 17 99 Charles Bulfinch may have used a railway to help level the top of Beacon Hill,
while in 18 05 Silas Whitney used a similar railway to move material for the cut and fill project that filled the flats of Beacon Hill along today’s Charles Street.

[24:32] In the article, Gamst quotes a carpenter named Abner House, who worked on the 18 05 project describing the Beacon Hill Railway.

[24:42] There was a railroad running in a south westerly direction from the top of the hill.
It struck Cedar Street a little to the south of Mount Vernon Street and struck Charles Street on the east side.
It was used with a large pulley at the top fastened to each set of cars, and one set of cars went up while the others went down, both being attached together.
There were branch rails at the top and bottom. It would be difficult for me to say how many men in teams there were of the branch rails, House said.
At the top, they lead the various parts of the hill and those at the bottom at the places they wanted to fill up.

[25:24] Gaps describes. The Beacon Hill Railway is being about a quarter mile of wooden rails, with horses and men helping to move the cars when gravity wasn’t enough.

[25:34] While the Beacon Hill Railway was a technological marvel at the turn of the 19th century and a boomed the land making efforts of the time, it was still a far cry from what we think of when we hear the word railroad.

[25:47] Another local project gets a little closer to the railroads that we know.
Starting in 18 26 a railway was constructed in nearby Quincy to bring granite from the vast quarries at the foot of the Blue Hills to a war from the Deposit river three miles away.

[26:04] Originally designed to haul the granite selected for the Bunker Hill monument, the Granite Railway deserves its own episode. At some point, it used wooden rails on granite ties with large wooden wagons pulled by horses to haul the granite.
The granite railway drove technological advances like turntables and rail switches, and later in the 19th century, it would get absorbed into the New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

[26:30] A decade later, the first modern railroads arose in Boston.
In 18 30 a corporation was chartered to build a rail link between Boston and Lowell, and the following year corporations were created to construct lines to Providence and Worcester.

[26:47] The Boston and Lowell Railroad roughly followed the course of the old Middlesex Canal, and it terminated near today’s North Station.
It opened in May of 18 35.

[26:59] The Boston and Worcester Railroad came into Boston, parallel to the Charles River.
Then it cut across the unfilled mudflats of the back bay on embankments and short bridges to terminate.
Near today’s South Station, opening on July 4th, 18 35 the Boston and Providence came through Canton on a massive granite viaduct, at the time, the largest in the world.
It entered the city from the south, also crossing the Back Bay mudflats and making an X on period. Maps were across the Boston and Worcester tracks.
The main terminal was in Park Square, and it also opened in July 18 35 after a frenzy of competition to build the first railway into Boston.
Three. Open in quick succession In the summer of 18 35 this railroad building craze of 18 35 wasn’t really driven by competition among the Boston area lines.
Instead, Boston’s ancient rivalry with New York City drove the construction boom.

[28:01] Starting in 18 25 the Erie Canal Open, connecting the enormous natural harbor of New York through the Hudson Valley, up the canal to the Great Lakes,
the Port of New York began carrying the commerce of today’s upper Midwest and what was then Western Canada.
Boston had long been arrival to New York and Philadelphia when it came to trade with Europe, but without a Hudson River to allow oceangoing vessels to penetrate deep into the interior of the continent,
our fair city began to fall behind Justus the rail lines of 18 35 or an attempt to build our way to parity with New York’s Erie Canal.
The celebration in 18 51 represented an attempt to build an answer to the ST Lawrence River.
Boston’s railroad jubilee was meant to celebrate the opening of a new rail connection between Boston and important new markets in Canada.

[28:55] The first letter from the Boston committee that planned the Jubilee to the Boston Atlas describes the importance of this link and the decision to hold a grand celebration.

[29:06] The Northern Lines to Canada are now completed. Before the period of the celebration, Boston will be within 12 hours travel of Montreal and during the next winter.
The facilities for communication will be such that a revolution in the trade between the Atlantic Coast and the candidates will be affected,
after conference with many of our leading merchants and persons connected with great lines of travel, the members of our city government thought that the importance of these means of communication to the trade and commerce of Boston was well worthy the attention of its municipal officers,
and that the present period was the most favorable time to commemorate the completion and success of those vast schemes of internal communication, which are citizens had a great sacrifice, has been able to construct.

[29:50] It was thought that the commemorative services should be upon a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the enterprises.
They were designed to celebrate the officers of the various railway lines in New England and those of our public spirited merchants and capitalists, to whose energy and sagacious foresight our city is mainly indebted for high character,
both in our own country and abroad,
gave their warm approval to the measure and pledged their aid and cooperation.
The work was entrusted to a committee of 23 members of the city government.
It was deemed advisable that a deputation from the General Committee should personally visit the Canada’s to seek cooperation of the provincial and municipal authorities and by interviews with the principal business firms and persons connected with or interested in the lines of travel,
to secure the attendance of those whose visit to Boston would be the most conducive.
To give publicity to the great mass of the people of the completion of the lines of railway.
The facility is now open for freight and travel, and the peculiar advantages are City enjoys is the great outlet on the Atlantic Coast for the immense productions of the West and the Canada’s,
and also the facilities which are open for the transit of merchandise from foreign ports.
Dustin Further Canadian markets.

[31:07] The presidents of all the northern lines of Railway from Boston furnish the committee with free passes over the various roads.
Our merchants and public men gave them letters of introduction to the Canadian merchants and authorities.
They left Boston upon their mission with the determination that every proper effort should be made to render the railroad Jubilee of 18 51 worthy of the great event to be commemorated and the character of the city whose representatives they were.

[31:33] Along with a mission to Canada. The Boston committee also invited the president of the United States.

[31:40] The president wasn’t just coming to town because he liked trains. However, After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and especially the violent rescue of shadow rack, mink ins and militarized extradition of Thomas Sims,
cracks began appearing in the foundation of the wig party,
to which both President Fillmore and Boston Mayor Bigelow belonged.
On one side, unionists argued that preserving the United American states was of the utmost importance, and compromising with slavers in the South was distasteful but necessary.
They worried about the growing willingness of abolitionists to use violence to achieve their ends,
both of the freeing of accused fugitives here in Boston and in the border, violence there was beginning December below the surface in what was then Indian territory, but would soon be known as bleeding Kansas.
As we discussed in Episode 1 95.

[32:34] On the other side, the Freese Oilers held few illusions that they’d be able to end slavery or even reduce the territory where it was practiced within the U. S.
Instead, they were laser focused on preventing slavery from being introduced into the newly created states in the Western frontier.
With the annexation of Texas followed quickly by victory in the Mexican American War, the United States suddenly controlled territory, reaching all the way to the Pacific Ocean, including gold rich California.

[33:07] If slavery was allowed to expand into this new territory, the Freese Oilers believed it would spell the end of the delicate balance between free labor and slave power that have been maintained since the founding era.
They were even rumblings that New England might secede from the union if that happened.

[33:25] In the weeks leading up to the jubilee, it seemed uncertain that the president would be able to attend because his attention was diverted onto two crises.
First, a group of American mercenaries invaded Cuba trying to end Spanish rule and set up a pro slavery republic that might be annexed by the U. S.
Like Texas had been weeks later, for enslaved men escaped from Maryland across the state line into free Pennsylvania.
When they’re in, Slaver pursued them onto free soil. A gunfight broke out in Christiana, Pennsylvania, with armed African American vigilantes killing the enslave ER and wounding his son.

[34:04] So you can see why, as Michael J. Connelly wrote in a 2006 article, when it came to the railroad jubilee,
New England’s wigs were eager participants, for they had faith in the industry’s potential to heal a fractious party and a fractured nation.
Railroads would moderate the classic danger to a Republican government.
Expansive territory through the blessing of speedy travel.
Free soil, wigs and conservative unionist wigs, as well as the diverse populations of South, West and north, would be drawn into closer contact economically and socially,
and the resulting familiarity would help end sectional discord for reformers and ministers.
Railroads would help end slavery by bringing Southerners north and demonstrating to the efficiency injustice oven expanding prosperous middle class New England.
Moreover, railroads were mean to reform or correct.
New England’s geographic isolation, justice, dedication and resolve could reform and shape individual souls.
So, too, could technological ingenuity devised inventions like railroads to subdue, subvert and conquer nature.

[35:16] Thes resounding wig ish themes, conquering political, national and natural divisions and bettering self and nation were present in abundance.
At the Boston Railroad Jubilee wig unionists mounted a spirited campaign in the late spring and summer of 18 51 to form a new Massachusetts Union party around Daniel Webster.
But many loyal lifelong wigs like Robert Winthrop resisted when went through up emerged as the front runner for the WIG gubernatorial nomination in Massachusetts, Webster and his allies attacked his candidacy.

[35:50] Thus, by September 18 51 a further split one between went through its moderates and Webster’s Conservative Unionists splintered the already divided Massachusetts wigs and the party’s chances in the fall elections seem slim.
Perhaps the president, who was an attractive candidate for re election in 18 52 especially among conservatives could reunite Massachusetts wigs as well as a bickering nation around the miracle of railroads,
whether through turnpikes, canals, telegraphs or railroads.
Wigs maintained that increased communication between cities and states reduced prejudice, ignorance and fear and, most important by the 18 fifties would preclude civil war.
Fearful of the economic rivalries and political jealousies that could easily develop within a republic, wigs like Fillmore persistently pushed for any method of communication that would break down the barriers of time and space that separated citizens from each other.
The more quickly men could travel from Boston to mobile mein toh, Alabama, north to south, the less likely they were to succumb to misunderstanding and violence.
Combining a calculating rationalism based on swift technological advances with a soft, reassuring romanticism born of a Republics need for amity and common purpose wigs hoped to forge a national brotherhood on the back of the steam train.

[37:17] Planning for the railroad Jubilee proceeded incredibly quickly from concept to execution.
On July 14th, 18 51 almost exactly two months before the jubilee actually commenced, Boston Mayor John P. Bigelow proposed a resolution, which was passed by the City Council.
It appointed a committee to determine how best to celebrate the upcoming connection of Boston to Montreal by rail.
On August 1st, the city published a circular to its residents explaining the proposed jubilee.

[37:49] The city government of Boston proposed to celebrate in an appropriate manner the final completion of the great lines of railway uniting the Tidewater at Boston with the Canada’s in the Great West,
and also the establishment of American lines of steamers between Boston and Liverpool.
The importance of these events, the great social and commercial interests of our city, can hardly be exaggerated.
We are now about to realize it is believed, the full benefit of those great enterprises in the perfecting of which we have expended so much capital.
The several lines connecting us with the Canada’s northern New York, the Great Lakes in the far west are now completed,
uniting us by railroad and steam navigation, with 13 states of the Union, the to Canada’s the Lakes and bringing within our commercial sphere a population of 10 million’s of inhabitants.
And now what are the advantages which Boston possesses for doing this immense business thes air so manifest that their importance will be readily appreciated?
Her harbor is one of the finest in the world. Her wars and storage accommodations air equal, if not superior to those in any other city and capable of indefinite extension.

[39:03] Her local position is unrivaled, and the enterprise and integrity of her merchants are well known.
The lines of railway to which we have eluded all center in her and radiate from her.
It has ascertained from the actual results of this year’s business that under favorable circumstances, all kinds of provision could be brought from the West through these new lines of communication to Boston, more speedily and at less expense than to any other Atlantic port.

[39:31] Merchandise could be landed at Ogdensburg on Lake Ontario, put on board the cars at that place, brought to Boston without transshipment and from here exported to England by means of our steamships in much less time than it could be done by any other route.
It seems to us then, that Boston has every facility for becoming a great exporting, as well as importing city cargoes from Liverpool and steamships via Boston may be delivered in Montreal in 12 days.
This fact, taken in connection with the fact that the ST Lawrence is closed by ice during five months of the year and that the communication with Boston is uninterrupted during the whole year, must make Boston, as it seems to us, the port of entry for the Canada’s,
thus opening to us a business, the extent of which we have not begun to realize in view of the above facts and in conformity with the expressed wishes of many of the citizens of Boston.
The city government proposed to celebrate the completion of these lines of railways by a festival in Faneuil Hall and other appropriate ceremonies.

[40:38] It is proposed to invite to be present with us on that occasion, the governor general of Canada, his staff and Cabinet, the leading members of the Canadian Parliament, the Corporation of Montreal, the leading merchants in all the Canadian cities, and Ogdensburg,
the president of the United States and his cabinet.
The governors of the New England States, the presidents of all the railways in New England, the mayors of the cities of New England and others interested in railways and steam navigation.

[41:06] We cordially invite the cooperation of our fellow citizens of Boston in order that this celebration, maybe in some degree commensurate with the great importance of the events to be celebrated.

[41:17] The 12 hour journey from Boston to Montreal that the jubilee was meant to celebrate was not yet a reality when the Boston committee set out to recruit attendees from Canada on August 9th, just over one month before the Jubilee was set to begin.
This was long before Amtrak or the commuter rail or any sort of regional or national rail network.
1930 Retrospective of the Boston Transcripts First Century recalls the patchwork of local railways that existed at the time.

[41:48] One railroad was put through after another, generally for local service and as the result of local investment through service, was little thought off.
Passengers going to Springfield went by the Boston and Worcester Toe Worcester and then changed cars and proceeded by the Western Railroad.
If they were bound for Bellows falls, they changed from the Fitchburg Road to the Cheshire Road in Fitchburg.
By the year 18 51 there were 25 separate companies and as many independent railroads operating in New England.

[42:22] The committee traveled by rail through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, changing trains each time One regional railroad ended and a new one began arriving on the shores of Lake Champlain, as closest they’d come to Montreal on this leg of the journey.
On August 11th, a steamboat took him across the lake.
Then another train took them to the Canadian border on the ST Lawrence River at Ogdensburg, New York From there, they took another boat up the ST Lawrence, across Lake Ontario, and landed in Toronto,
the committee reported.
The delegation were received at the landing in Toronto by the mayor and members of the corporation and by several of the governor general’s Cabinet ministers.
The news of the attended visit to the committee had preceded their arrival, and the authorities have made arrangements to receive and welcome them in a short time.
After the arrival of the delegation, the governor general, through the interposition of his aide de camp, assigned an early hour for an interview at the Government House,
at the time, appointed the committee, waited upon Lord Elgin and were received with the cordiality which was quite gratifying to them.

[43:32] The letters of invitation and introduction were delivered and the objects of the mission were stated.
The interview was off the most pleasurable character while they waited to see if the local and national leadership in Canada would accept their invitations to visit Boston for the Jubilee.
Members of the committee took in Toronto, writing to the Boston Atlas with detailed descriptions of the city’s water and sewer systems.
It’s commercial streets and traffic patterns, and, of course, it’s railroads.

[44:03] They also described the chaos of a session of Parliament and the pomp and circumstance of the 71st Regiment of Highlanders.
They visited barracks, churches, schools and an asylum where the presence of a black man who’d escaped after being enslaved by Henry Clay led to a discussion of the many so called fugitives who followed the underground railroad across the northern border.

[44:27] Finally, the committee got their RSVPs. The Mayor Inc accepted the invitation of the committee to visit Boston at the Railroad Jubilee and the principal Mercantile Houses, to whom letters of introduction had been sent.
We’re very much interested in the proposed festivities through the agency of the merchants, bankers and public officers.
The names of the most prominent merchants in Canada West were obtained, and invitations were forwarded to their address.

[44:56] The committee were gratified that Lord Elgin would accept the invitation of the Boston municipal authorities if the state of public affairs would allow him to leave the province.
At the period of the commemorative festivities, his Cabinet ministers, many members of Parliament, officers of the Army and official personages have accepted invitations to be present.

[45:18] The committee left Toronto on August 15th and took the long way home.
They stopped in Montreal to extend an invitation to the Jubilee to the officials of that town, and they met a long lost friend. Along the way, the delegation met the mayor and corporation at their rooms.
Mr Brenly and behalf of the municipal authorities of Boston explained the objects of the mission and extended a formal invitation to the Corporation of Montreal to visit Boston the week of the Railroad Jubilee,
the mayor replied in behalf of his associates and accepted the invitation.

[45:54] The delegation were gratified to find a native of Boston, a member of the Montreal Board of Aldermen, this gentleman resided in Boston when the present city Hall was erected and worked upon the building at his trade of stonemason.
He went to Canada during the last war as a soldier under General Dearborn and after the piece of 18 15 settled in Canada, whereby his enterprising industry he has secured a competence.
He assured the committee that he would visit Boston and call upon them in the building, which he worked upon and which they worked in both at Montreal and during their subsequent visit to Quebec.
The letters from the Boston committee reveal a healthy dose of that old Yankee bias against all things Catholic.

[46:40] The writer remarks disparagingly on the clerical dress of every order of priests, nuns and Jesuits he encounters, and he compares a group of nuns physical appearance unfavorably to the witches in Macbeth.
He patronizingly suggests that by visiting New England and personally witnessing the great results which have been attained here within the past 30 years.
The people of Canada will have evidence which cannot be mistaken, that by a judicious application of capital and a liberal policy or in a word, by following the example of the people of Massachusetts.
A few years only will be required to give such an impetus to their trade manufacturers in agriculture that those now upon the stage will see their cities and towns contained double their present population,
and their agricultural district’s become the abode of a frugal, wealthy and prosperous community.

[47:32] In a tour of two weeks, the committee spread invitations far and wide, and all of them came with an offer of free tickets to Boston and the next year’s annual report for the Fitchburg Railroad.
The company saw a decline in ridership of over 95,000 tickets from the previous year.
They said. This wasn’t a true indicator of problems. Instead, they wrote,
this decreases in part owing to running a less number of excursion trains in 18 52 and passing a large number and passing a large number free over the road from Canada at the railroad jubilee in September 18 51.

[48:13] Notwithstanding, there has been a decrease in the number of passengers carried.
There’s been an increase in their earnings received from passengers, the travel averaging longer than in the former year.

[48:25] The committee returned from Canada at the end of August on September 89 days before the jubilee was set to begin, the city announced the order of arrangements for the three day celebration Wednesday, September 17th.
On this day, the distinguished invited guests of the city will be received with appropriate honors and escorted by a military body and the city government to the house is provided for them.
In the afternoon of this day, the various public institutions of the city and points of interest in its vicinity will be visited and the members of the city government will devote the day and attention to their guests.
Thursday, September 18th On this day, there will be a grand excursion in Boston Harbor and the various objects of interest there in will be visited.
For this purpose, suitable steamers will be engaged and collisions and music provided the shipping in the harbor will be decorated for the occasion.

[49:23] Friday, September 19th On the morning of this day, there will be a civic procession escorted by the Boston Brigade, the route on details of which will be announced hereafter the Children of the public schools.
So take a prominent part in the proceedings of this day.
In the afternoon, a banquet will be given by the city government in honor of their invited guests, which will be held under a pavilion on Boston Common.
On the evening of this day, the public buildings of the city will be illuminated and a display of fireworks made from various parts of the city and harbor.

[49:57] The City Council’s official report on the Jubilee says. In the last days before the official start of the celebration, the city resounded with the stirring notes of preparation and everything but token, the near approach of the long expected day.
The extreme beauty of the weather, the busy activity displayed in the decoration of the streets, the mustering of military companies, the throngs of strangers from all parts of the land, every train bringing accessions of welcome visitors,
and the certainty that the president of the United States and the governor general of Canada were on their way hither.
All gave promise of a full realization of the most sanguine anticipations.
In the course of the day Tuesday, a telegraphic dispatch was received by the mayor announcing that a large number of Canadians, including the city authorities of Montreal, Toronto, Coburg and other places, were on their way to Boston.
A committee was forthwith deputed to receive. The guests in 12 carriages were dispatched to the local railroad station to convey them to their respective hotels.
Lowell Street was handsomely decorated in honor of the strangers, and the English and American flags becoming Lee arranged in festoons, were displayed near the depot.

[51:11] The first day of the Jubilee, as I’ve already described, was largely occupied, with the grand parade escorting the president into Boston and then the military review on Boston Common.
When those festivities drew to a close, President Fillmore got settled into his lodgings at the Revere House Hotel, receiving a few visitors, including members of his Cabinet.
Then, at 4 p.m. He went up Beacon Hill for a statehouse reception.
Their governor, George Boot, well, welcome to warmly inspiring the president to respond and to obliquely addresses earlier harsh stance against Boston’s radical abolitionists.

[51:49] You have said, sir, that Massachusetts is prepared to sustain the Constitution in the Union,
sir, as I passed through this city and saw its streets lined for miles with a dense multitude of people,
and witnessed the perfect order that everywhere prevailed, I could not for a moment believe that this community, though often excited, could ever be brought to commit treason against the United States.
Sir, it has been my duty, sometimes a painful one toe. Execute the laws of the Union upon those who did not approve of them.
This must inevitably be the case with all who occupy the position which I now hold.
But, sir, I see manifested in the faces of this intelligent community that which assures me that insofar as the city is concerned and I believe so far as the state is concerned,
this duty, however painful it may be, may hereafter be performed with ease.

[52:43] The speechifying continued for quite a while with wigs. Wig Robert Winthrop up next on the subject of railroads, he said, Consider them for an instant in connection with the extent of our own widespread republic.
By what other agency than that of railroads? Could a representative government like ours be rendered practicable over so vast a territory?
The necessary limits of such a government were justly defined by one of our earliest and wisest statesman to be those within which the representatives of the people could be brought together with regularity. Uncertainty as often is needful to transact the public business.

[53:23] And by which do you think, sir, of the old fashioned modes of transportation or travel the stage coach? The pack saddle with long wagon?
Could delegates from California, Utah, or even from some of our less recent and less remote acquisitions,
be brought to our sessions of Congress at Washington and carried back at stated intervals to consult with the wishes of their constituents within any reasonable or reliable time?
Mr Mayor and view of this and many other considerations to which I may not take up further time by alluding and which indeed are too familiar to require any illusion.
I feel that it is no exaggeration to say that our railroad system is an essential part of our representative system and that it has exerted an influence second in importance to no other that could be named material political or moral.
In binding together in one indissoluble brotherhood, this vast association of American states,
it is hardly too much to add that it seems to have been providentially prepared as the great centripetal engine re, which is destined to overcome a neutralized forever.
Those deplorable centrifugal tendencies, which local differences and peculiar institutions and sectional controversies have too often engendered.

[54:39] The secretary of state was followed by the secretary of the interior and then the secretary of war.
After everyone had said their piece. It was time for a formal dinner at the Revere House, and the president was in his rooms by 11 p.m.

[54:53] The next morning dawned clear and warm. By that time, there were thousands of visitors in town from around New England.
In Canada, they began lining up a long war for early in the morning in hopes of securing a place on one of the eight steamships they would take the president and the other guests of honor on a guided tour of Boston Harbor.
The City Council report on the Jubilee estimates that between 3500 and 4000 people managed to pack their way onto the steamers before the scheduled departure time of 10 a.m. arrived.
The flotilla paused at the Cunard Line. Wars in East Boston toe formally inaugurate service on the new Grand Junction Railroad, which was the last link uniting Cunard Steamship Service to Liverpool, England, with the Boston Concord Montreal Railway.
As the first car ceremonially crossed the town line from Chelsea in the East, Boston then slowly made its way onto the pier, symbolically linking western Canada with old England.
Battery of militia cannons fired a 21 gun salute.

[55:53] That was far from the last artillery salute fired that day.
As the fleet made its way down the harbor, revenue cutters and shore batteries fired repeated 21 gun salutes, while the crowds that lined the shores shouted themselves hoarse and enthusiasm.
They steamed out past Castle Island into the outer harbor, then turned south toward Cohasset.
President Fillmore wanted a chance to see Minnows Ledge, where to Lighthouse keepers and the original Minnows Lighthouse have been lost in a storm a few months back.
The party ran out of time before getting too far out of Boston Harbor, though, and they turned back upon disembarking. It was time for the evening’s many banquets, with the one attended by the president held again at Revere House.
In the middle of the meal, Governor General Lord Elgin arrived on the Western Railroad.
Along with Lord Elgin came a contingent of advisers, officers and an honor guard, leading to the disconcerting appearance of scarlet clad British officers striding the streets of Boston as though it was 17 70 all over again.
This time, however, they got along a bit better with locals. As Robert C. Winthrop recalled in a letter declining a July 4th dinner invite in 18 53.

[57:08] Among the most agreeable results of this lapse of time has been the gradual abatement.
May I not say the almost complete extinction of those feelings of bitter animosity and resentment toward the mother country, which were so naturally engendered by our long struggle for independence?
It was not a little edifying, certainly at your recent railroad jubilee, to find the reappearance of the British red coats in our streets hailed and greeted with as much.
Cordy Ality is if they had never been associated with the arbitrary measures of Lord North and governor gauge.
After exchanging formal greetings with the mayor at the depot, Lord Elgin was conducted to the president’s table at Revere House that evening. There were no formal speeches.

[57:52] Don’t worry, though. On the final day of the Jubilee, there would be plenty of speeches to go around. For everyone.
It was another beautiful day. Or, as the City Council report put it, the morning of Friday, Sept.
19 the last day of the celebration, disappointed, no fondly indulged hope but dawned brightly and beautifully, filling the hearts of thousands with joy and gladness and exciting the highest anticipation of pleasure,
and all that the morning promised was fully realized.
No cloud dimmed the mild splendor of the sun, no harsh breath from the east till the air from sunrise to sunset. The weather was glorious.
An entire success crowned all the proceedings of the day.
The banks, the custom house, the market house and most of the stores in the business part of the city were closed, and the occasion was observed by all classes of citizens as a holiday.
The streets were thronged from early dawn to midnight with dense masses of happy people in holiday attire and on no previous occasion, perhaps in the history of the city, had so large a multitude been gathered within our limits.
Yet order and decorum everywhere prevailed and gladness ruled the hour.

[59:05] The day’s first event was another parade. President Fillmore wasn’t feeling well, so he decided to watch the procession from his hotel window rather than leading it from horseback.
For every militia unit, marching band, government official, railroad company, officer, elementary school class, social club, abstinence society and trade association toe have its moment in the sun took from 9 a.m.
Toe lunchtime for lunch.
An enormous tent was erected on Boston common for the president, the governor general, the other honorees and tables for 3600 guests.
Banner over the main entrance carried a picture of a locomotive and railcars and motion under the motto Literature, Science and the Arts.
Encouragement to All Inside the tent was decorated with the flags of the US, Britain and countries around the world.
There was bunting and streamers and penance, an enormous maps of the various railroads that connected Boston to the world.

[1:00:07] The City Council report includes pages upon pages of detail about the decorations who sat at which table and exactly what was served in each course.
Then, only about 15 minutes into the meal, Mayor Bigelow announced that the president would have to leave early to attend to the nation’s business,
president, Fillmore, than rose and bade farewell to the city that had so warmly welcomed and lavishly celebrated them just five months after he had threatened to send troops into its streets.

[1:00:38] Mr Mayor and fellow citizens and acknowledging the compliment which you have paid the high office, which it’s my fortune toe hold.
I rise rather for the purpose of excusing myself than to make an address.
You’ve been pleased to drink my health, I would. That it were is perfect on this occasion is it usually is.
But unfortunately for me, a slight indisposition within the last 24 hours has deprived me of the pleasure I should have enjoyed this day and participating in your exercises.
And I am now incapable of partaking in attempting violins over which your miles of table grown.
Indeed, I’m scarcely able to enjoy the Feast of Reason in the flow of soul.
And more than all this, I am compelled by imperious circumstances to leave you thus early in the banquet because I feel that my public duties require that I should be in Washington with the utmost possible dispatch,
I have stolen from the hours that were perhaps due to the nation Ah, brief space to meet my fellow citizens of Boston.

[1:01:38] I meet you as citizens of Boston on this festive occasion. We know no party distinction, fellow citizens, I cannot same or but my heart is full.
I had no conception of what I have witnessed today. From my window I thought when I entered your city that I saw Boston in all its glory.
I knew that it had its merchant princes. But I did not know until today that it had its mechanic nobleman of nature.
But fellow citizens. Pardon me. Permit me to bid you. Would you?
I can assure you that this joyous occasion will be remembered by me and that to the latest hour of my life. I shall look back upon it with delight.
May our glorious union which sheds its inestimable blessings over 25 millions of happy people, continue until time shall be no Mawr.

[1:02:28] Lord Elgin Rose and gave his response. Then, as the president left, the secretary of the interior spoke then the secretary of war.
Now that everyone had said goodbye to the president, the rest of the officials returned to their prepared remarks.

[1:02:44] The mayor gave an address. Then Lord Elgin rose again to give a longer speech,
after offering his regard to the US his pleasure that the rift between Britain and America caused by the revolution had been healed and extolled the benefits of railroads, he began coming to a conclusion.

[1:03:03] Now, gentlemen, before I take my seat, permit me to close. Why, gentlemen, it must be the heir of Boston.
For I have never made so long a speech before in my life.
I will now offer you as a sentiment, prosperity to the trade and the city of Boston.
No one, I am sure will question the sincerity with which I propose this toast her most assuredly. If I did not wish well to the trade in the city of Boston, I should not be here now.
It may be that some of those western towns which spring up in the night and passing the twinkling of an eye from small villages to mighty cities, may as respects. Population merely have advanced more rapidly than Boston.
But there is a stability and a solidity about Boston, which I may say is agreeable to an old country man like myself.
I see buildings in Boston which look as if intended not only for the owners, but for their sons and their sons. Sons toe live in after they’re dead and gone.
I know it has been the practice to say that a Yankee would not be satisfied with paradise if there was any place further West which he could go.
But I think it’s very clear that a good many genuine Yankees have found Boston and exceedingly proper place for a permanent location, although it happens to be one of the most easterly points of the continent.

[1:04:21] Next up was the governor, followed by famous orator Edward Everett, who are called long era of so called French and Indian wars between Canada and the colonies.

[1:04:32] Ah, horrible wilderness, rivers and lakes unspent by human art path Lis swamps, dismal forests that it made the flesh creep to enter.
Threatened by nothing more practical than the Indians trail echoing with no sound more inviting than the yell of the wolf and the war whoop of the savage these it was that filled the space between us and Canada.
The inhabitants of the British colonies never entered Canada in those days, but his provincial troops or Indian captives and lucky he that got back with a scalp on this state of things existed less than 100 years ago.
There are men living in Massachusetts who are born before the last party of hostile Indians made an incursion to the banks of the Connecticut River.
As lately is, when I had the honor to be the governor of this commonwealth, I signed the pension warren of a man who lost his arm in the year 17 57 in a conflict with the Indians and French from one of those border wars and those dreary Canadian forests.
His honor the mayor will recollect it for he counter signed the warrant a secretary of state now, sir, by the magic power of these modern works of art.
The forest has thrown open the rivers and lakes, air bridged, the valleys rise, the mountains bow their everlasting heads.
And the governor general of Canada takes his breakfast in Montreal and his dinner in Boston.

[1:05:55] After a few speeches by Canadian officials, the sun went down in the gathering darkness.
The people demanded to hear from former Mayor Josiah Quincy Junior, who closed out the night with a few brief remarks and ended the jubilee by saying,
the Canadians and Bostonians they may meet after sunset in without candles but could never again be in the dark as it respects the sentiments they entertain for one another.

[1:06:22] In the technological triumphalism of the railroad jubilee, the pastor of the Hollis Street Meeting house. So a different vision.
Reverend Thomas Starr. King was a famous speaker and thinker who would eventually be one of the most influential politicians in California.

[1:06:38] In 18 51 though, he was one of Boston’s leading Unitarian ministers and he gave a sermon on the Sunday after the Jubilee in which he coined a new and lasting term for the era in human history. He saw beginning with Boston’s railroad Jubilee.

[1:06:53] The mention of the spectacle that recently adorned our streets leads us to some especially appropriate illustrations of our theme.
We have entered into a period of society which will be characterized hereafter as the industrial age.
It is plain that about 50 years ago a new direction was given to human affairs.
A new force up Rosen Civilization and different objects loomed ahead to draw the energies of the world.
The subject. Gatien of nature. The increase of material, conveniences in comfort, the binding of nations together by communion of traffic, the conquest of space and compression of time thes air.
What the civilized world is now beginning to be in earnest about it is looking toe labor, not toe armies and diplomacy for its resource and the accomplishment of its dearest ambition, not Mars nor Apollo, nor even Mammon.
But Vulcan stands preeminent in its regard in the pantheon of its deities.
Worship is the only word that’s deep enough to express the Anglo Saxon relation to the mechanic powers and arts.
We revere what they can produce more than anything else. Take us is a race We love speed and perfection in the necessary fabrics of life and skill in the combination of powers that gives supremacy over nature,
better than we love, wealth, comfort, leisure, knowledge of God’s world, a cultured manliness and religious nobility in peace.

[1:08:20] There is description of a new and dawning industrial age is full of apprehension and phrased as a warning.
Even King could see the promise and potential of a nationwide rail network to bind the country together in the recent Jubilee.
In the closing pageant within our city, an illustration has given how God draws the good of, ah, higher sphere out of the benefits that lie in a lower order.
That pageant was, in honor of the completion of many years, endeavor to perfect the intercourse of the metropolis of New England and our own neighborhood with the North and West.

[1:08:54] The causal motive of the enterprise that has covered New England with nerves of which our city is the brain was not distinctly philanthropic.
Perhaps it was chiefly selfish.
Each line of road was schemed with direct reference to the return of interest on the investment and the securing of a larger trade within our streets.
Not till the prospect of profit was clear. Could one of these undertakings be carried through.
It was not the direct intention of a single board of directors of a single railroad company to do especially Christian deed to bind states and communities together and holier ties to defuse a spirit of goodwill and strengthened civilization.

[1:09:35] The stockholders, as they subscribed and paid their installments, had no such motive and purpose.
The plans in the acceptance of them were for dividends and wealth.

[1:09:45] But Providence had another and higher use for those iron tracks and flying trains After the Mercantile hearted devised and secured them, God took them for his purposes without paying any tax for the privilege.
He uses them to quicken the activity of men to send energy and vitality. Where before were Silence and Baroness to multiply cities and villages studded with churches dotted with schools and filled with happy homes and budding souls.
Thio increase wealth, which shall partially be devoted to his service in kingdom and all along their banks, to make the wilderness blossom as the rose without any vote of permission from the legislators and officials.
Even while the cars air loaded with profitable freight and paying passengers and the groaning engines air earning the necessary interest,
Providence sends without charge, it’s cargoes of good sentiment and brotherly feeling disperses the culture of the city to the simplicity of the Hamlet and brings back the strength and virtue of the village and mountain to the wasting faculties of the metropolis,
and fastens toe every steam shuttle that flies back and forth and hither and dither an invisible threat of fraternal influence, which entwining seashore in Hill Country Mart and Grain field for Jin factory, Worf and mine,
slowly prepare society to realize one day the savior’s prayer,
that they may all be one.

[1:11:10] Despite Reverend King’s cautious optimism and the rather less cautious optimism of the wigs who organized the Jubilee, The new railroads did not create a techno utopia that could bind our fractured country together and stave off the coming of a civil war,
as Connolly said in his article.
But the railroads could not destroy slavery, nor could they save the wig party.
In fact, in an ironic twist, railroad development tended to nurture every evil the wig set out to annihilate.
Instead of harmonizing wigs, views, railroads had the effect of promoting a consensus with Democrats, thus diminishing the wigs ability to present their party as a compelling political alternative.
Americans could no longer tell the difference between a film or wig and a pierced Democrat.
Both were in favor of economic development, including transcontinental railroads, and both were pro expansion.

[1:12:04] As a result, the American political system was upended and reorganized, the wigs passed out of existence.
The Democrats slowly declined in national prominence and the newly hatched Republicans pro railroad but anti slavery dominated national politics. For the remainder of the 19th century.
The wigs notion that increased communication and travel among the regions of the country would usher in an era of national peace was also devastatingly wrong.
By 18 60 North and South were intimately connected, both socially and commercially, and both were widely engaged in the international economy.
And still, war broke out.

[1:12:46] Indeed, the conduits of communication and cooperation that the wigs it financed and boosted in the 18 fifties carried the agents and implements of War South. A mere decade later.

Wrap-Up

[1:12:59] To learn more about Boston’s railroad Jubilee, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 203,
I’ll have links to the City Council’s report on the Jubilee, Michael Connelly’s article about the politics of the Jubilee, the text of Thomas Starr King Sermon, a detailed description of the Boston Committees, adventures in Canada and many more sources.
I quoted from this week I’ll also have pictures of the tent where President Fillmore on the other dignitaries spoke,
the president reviewing the troops on Boston Common City Hall decorated for the Jubilee and several street scenes during the Jubilee.
And, of course, I’ll have links to information about our three upcoming events, and Stephen Polio’s a city so grand, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at Podcast a hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you could go toe hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
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If you do drop us a line, we’ll send you a hub. History sticker is a token of appreciation, that’s all for now. Stay safe out there listening.

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