Great Americans of History
BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL.D. AUTHOR OF A "Cyclopaedia of
Universal History," "Great Races of Mankind," "Life and Times of
William E. Gladstone," etc., etc.
THE CHARACTER OF JAMES OTIS BY CHARLES K. EDMUNDS, Ph.D.
WITH AN ESSAY ON THE PATRIOT BY G. MERCER ADAM Late Editor
"Self-Culture" Magazine, Etc., Etc.
Near the northeast corner of the old Common of Boston a sectionof ground was put apart long before the beginning of theeighteenth century to be a burying ground for some of the heroicdead of the city of the Puritans. For some quaint reason orcaprice this acre of God was called "The Granary" and is socalled to this day. Perhaps the name was given because the deadwere here, garnered as grain from the reaping until the bins beopened at the last day's threshing when the chaff shall be drivenfrom the wheat.
Here the thoughtless throng looking through the iron railing maysee the old weather-beaten and time-eaten slabs with theircurious lettering which designate the spots where many of the menof the pre-revolutionary epoch were laid to their last repose.The word cemetery is from Greek and means the little place whereI lie down.
In the Granary Burying Ground are the tombs of many whom historyhas gathered and recorded as her own. But history looks in vainamong the blue-black slabs of semi-slate for the name of one whowas greatest perhaps of them all; but whose last days were sostrangely clouded and whose sepulchre was so obscure as to leavethe world in doubt for more than a half century as to where thebody of the great sleeper had been laid. Curiosity, whetted bypatriotism, then discovered the spot. But the name of anotherwas on the covering slab, and no small token was to be foundindicative of the last resting place of the lightning-smittenbody of James Otis, the prophetic giant of the pre-revolutionarydays. He who had lived like one of the Homeric heroes, who haddied like a Titan under a thunderbolt, and had been buried asobscurely as Richard the Lion Hearted, or Frederick Barbarossa,must lie neglected in an unknown tomb within a few rods of thespot where his eloquence aforetime had aroused his countrymen tonational consciousness, and made a foreign tyranny foreverimpossible in that old Boston, the very name of which becamehenceforth the menace of kings and the synonym of liberty.
Tradition rather than history has preserved thus much. In theearly part of the present century a row of great elms, known asthe Paddock elms, stood in what is now the sidewalk on the westside of Tremont Street skirting the Granary Burying Ground.These trees were cut away and the first section of the burialspace was invaded with the spade. Tomb No. 40, over which theiron railing now passes, was divided down as far as where theoccupants are lying. Within the sepulchre were several bodies.One was the body of Nathaniel Cunningham, Sr. Another was RuthCunningham, his wife. The younger members of the family werealso there in death.
When the lid of one coffin in this invaded tomb was lifted, itwas found that a mass of the living roots of the old strong elmnear by had twined about the skull of the sleeper, had enteredthrough the apertures, and had eaten up the brain. It was thebrain of James Otis which had given itself to the life of the elmand had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thusbreathing itself forth again into the free air and the UniversalFlow.