If you're a first-time traveller to Boston, you won't want to miss the Freedom Trail. Actually, the trail is more of a concept than a footpath—a hard-won concept of liberty. In United States history, it got birthed over two centuries ago—and has been developing ever since. When you visit some of the sites that make up the Freedom Trail, as I did recently, that concept of liberty catches fire within you. It warms you with thankfulness for how far humanity has come in self-emancipation. But it also tells you we haven't come to the end of the trail. There are political, moral, and spiritual freedoms worldwide that haven't been won yet. And your heart burns to get on with the victories ahead.
Many of the sites along the Freedom Trail hark back to the Revolutionary War, the colonists' fight to win freedom from rule by Great Britain. You can visit the Old South Meeting House, where the "Sons of Liberty" gathered in 1773 to protest the British tax on tea—and then dumped four hundred chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Or you can stop by the home of Paul Revere, who galloped to Lexington under cover of night to tell the patriots the British were coming. Or you can see the Old State House, where the Declaration of Independence was first proclaimed to the citizens of Boston in July of 1776.
The book continues today to ring out bells of "universal freedom."
