{"product_id":"a-city-so-grand-isbn-9780807001493","title":"A City So Grand","description":"\u003cb\u003eA lively history of Boston’s emergence as a world-class city—home to the likes of Frederick Douglass and Alexander Graham Bell—by a beloved Bostonian historian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e “It’s been quite a while since I’ve read anything—fiction or nonfiction—so enthralling.”—Dennis Lehane, author of \u003ci\u003eMystic River\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eShutter Island\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eOnce upon a time, “Boston Town” was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis to emerge as one of the world’s great metropolises—one that achieved national and international prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature, commerce, and transportation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLong before the frustrations of our modern era, in which the notion of accomplishing great things often appears overwhelming or even impossible, Boston distinguished itself in the last half of the nineteenth century by proving it could tackle and overcome the most arduous of challenges and obstacles with repeated—and often resounding—success, becoming a city of vision and daring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eA City So Grand\u003c\/i\u003e, Stephen Puleo chronicles this remarkable period in Boston’s history, in his trademark page-turning style. Our journey begins with the ferocity of the abolitionist movement of the 1850s and ends with the glorious opening of America’s first subway station, in 1897. In between we witness the thirty-five-year engineering and city-planning feat of the Back Bay project, Boston’s explosion in size through immigration and annexation, the devastating Great Fire of 1872 and subsequent rebuilding of downtown, and Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone utterance in 1876 from his lab at Exeter Place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese lively stories and many more paint an extraordinary portrait of a half century of progress, leadership, and influence that turned a New England town into a world-class city, giving us the Boston we know today.\u003cb\u003ePart One: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eA City So Bold\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 1: Abolitionists and the Fugitive Slave Law\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 2: The Great Railroad Jubilee\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 3: The Irrepressible Irish\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 4: Filling the Back Bay\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 5: The Gallows Glorious\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Two: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eA City Transformed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 6: No Turning Back\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 7: War\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 8: Peace, Expansion, Perserverance\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 9: An End and a Beginning\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Three: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eA City So Grand\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 10: The Centennial, the Sensational, and Beyond\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 11: Breaking New Ground\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEpilogue\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBibliographic Essay\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIndex“It’s been quite a while since I’ve read anything—fiction or nonfiction—so enthralling.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dennis Lehane\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Stephen Puleo’s new book is more evidence of the urban role in civilization, as it reminds us of the remarkable accomplishments of late nineteenth-century Boston.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Edward Glaeser, \u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Stephen Puleo, a historian of Boston who has written about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 and the Italian community in the North End, takes a wider view in his new book, \u003ci\u003eA City So Grand. \u003c\/i\u003eThe cast of characters includes Frederick Douglass and Alexander Graham Bell. The Big Dig equivalents are the opening of the city’s underground subway system and the Great Boston Railroad Jubilee marking the beginning of train service to Montreal and Chicago.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jan Gardner, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “‘No period in Boston’s history was more dynamic’ than the second half of the 19th century, writes Puleo in this smoothly narrated account of that time and place. . . . Despite tensions and disasters, Boston emerged as one of the world’s leading cities. . . . A thorough history.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eStephen Puleo\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e best seller \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Italians\u003c\/i\u003e and of the critically acclaimed Boston-area best seller \u003ci\u003eDark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. \u003c\/i\u003eA former award-winning newspaper reporter and contributor to \u003ci\u003eAmerican History\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, he holds a master’s degree in history and teaches at Suffolk University. He and his wife, Kate, live in the Boston area.\u003cb\u003eCHAPTER ONE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTuesday, April\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003e8, 1851\u003c\/b\u003e. The conspirators would wait one more\u003cbr\u003eday, and then strike under cover of darkness.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThey knew full well the risks—arrests, fines, perhaps prison—but\u003cbr\u003ethe justness of their cause outweighed any personal consequences,\u003cbr\u003eand the timing of events made delay impossible. Though hastily conceived,\u003cbr\u003etheir plan withstood scrutiny; sound in concept, its brazenness\u003cbr\u003ewas equaled only by its simplicity.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe men stood clustered in a tight circle, their voices low, their\u003cbr\u003edemeanor somber, unaffected by the disbanding crowd, which still\u003cbr\u003ebuzzed with excitement. The boisterous meeting had ended, but\u003cbr\u003ethose who attended would long remember the thunderous speeches\u003cbr\u003edelivered inside the Tremont Temple this day, ten hours of addresses\u003cbr\u003ethat represented more than rhetoric to the small band of abolitionists\u003cbr\u003ewho now gathered in one corner of Boston’s downtown meetinghouse.\u003cbr\u003eTo them, the day’s oratory cried out for justice and demanded\u003cbr\u003eaction.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLed by the fiery Unitarian minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson,\u003cbr\u003ethese men saw their mission in the clearest of terms: free the\u003cbr\u003eimprisoned runaway slave Thomas Sims and convey him to a stop\u003cbr\u003ealong the Underground Railroad for eventual safe passage to Canada.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf they failed, Sims would be hauled back to Georgia to face punishment\u003cbr\u003efrom his former owner and resume a pitiful existence in slavery’s\u003cbr\u003eshackles, a life he had fled when he stowed away on a brig that left\u003cbr\u003eSavannah in late February.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe twenty-three-year-old Sims had already overcome daunting\u003cbr\u003eodds on his journey to freedom, making his current confinement\u003cbr\u003eall the more tragic. For two weeks during the vessel’s wintry northern\u003cbr\u003evoyage he had escaped detection, avoiding the crew and providing\u003cbr\u003efor himself. Then, on March 6, with Boston’s lights in sight, the\u003cbr\u003ebrig’s mate discovered the stowaway. “Sims was cursed at, struck, and\u003cbr\u003ebrought before the captain,” according to one newspaper account, and\u003cbr\u003ethen locked in a cabin while the ship lay anchored outside Boston\u003cbr\u003eHarbor. But the crew had failed to take his pocketknife. That night,\u003cbr\u003eSims jimmied the lock, lowered one of the ship’s lifeboats into the\u003cbr\u003ewater, and rowed toward freedom. He landed in South Boston and\u003cbr\u003e“took lodging in a colored seaman’s boardinghouse, and while in the\u003cbr\u003ecity, made no effort to conceal himself.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBut then Sims made a grave mistake. Destitute and hoping to arrange\u003cbr\u003efor funds to bring his free wife and children to Boston, he wired\u003cbr\u003eto Savannah for money—and the telegram included his return address.\u003cbr\u003eSomehow, Sims’s whereabouts reached one James Potter, who\u003cbr\u003eclaimed that Sims was his property. One week later, Potter’s agent,\u003cbr\u003eJohn Bacon, arrived in Boston seeking Thomas Sims as a fugitive\u003cbr\u003eslave. Bacon secured a warrant for Sims’s arrest on the morning of\u003cbr\u003eApril 3, and Boston police cornered the runaway slave on the street\u003cbr\u003ethat evening. Fighting for his freedom, Sims stabbed officer Asa Butman\u003cbr\u003ein the thigh with his pocketknife, snapping the knife in two.\u003cbr\u003ePolice then overpowered Sims, tossed him into a carriage, and drove\u003cbr\u003ehim to the courthouse; witnesses heard him cry, “I’m in the hands of\u003cbr\u003ekidnappers!”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNow, five days later, a plan had emerged to disentangle him from\u003cbr\u003ethose clutches.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eOnly a handful of men would know details of the plot, and fewer\u003cbr\u003estill would take part in the actual breakout. This had less to do with\u003cbr\u003ethe need for secrecy than with the reticence of the larger abolitionist\u003cbr\u003ecommunity to act boldly, a stance that had prevailed during the\u003cbr\u003egathering to discuss the fugitive slave’s case. In a hall that one account\u003cbr\u003edescribed as “packed almost to suffocation” with an excited and angry\u003cbr\u003eaudience, Higginson had delivered a spellbinding speech calling for\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003edecisive action, even force, to save Sims, during which the assembly\u003cbr\u003e“trembled” and the community “was brought to the eve of revolution.”\u003cbr\u003eBut the speaker who followed Higginson, influential attorney\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mayo Ellis, protested the clergyman’s combative tone, issued\u003cbr\u003ea plea for calm, and, Higginson despaired, “threw cold water upon\u003cbr\u003eall action.” Instead, the group adopted resolves condemning the Fugitive\u003cbr\u003eSlave Law—which forced Northern states to return runaways\u003cbr\u003eto bondage—and the proceedings against Sims. “The law and order\u003cbr\u003emen prevailed,” one abolitionist reported. Higginson concluded: “It\u003cbr\u003ewas evident that if anything was done, it must be done by a very few.”\u003cbr\u003eHe wasted no time. Immediately following Ellis’s address, Higginson\u003cbr\u003egathered a small group of men who were inclined to do more\u003cbr\u003ethan pass resolutions, men who “seemed to me to show more fighting\u003cbr\u003equality than the rest.”","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304544588005,"sku":"NP9780807001493","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807001493.jpg?v=1767720364","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-city-so-grand-isbn-9780807001493","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}