[13] “Monument Square is four hundred and seventeen feet from north to south, and four hundred feet from east to west, and contains nearly six acres. It embraces the whole site of the redoubt, and a part of the site of the breastwork. According to the most accurate plan of the town and the battle (Page’s), the monument stands where the southwest angle of the redoubt was, and the whole of the redoubt was between the monument and the street that bounds it on the west. The small mound in the northeast corner of the square is supposed to be the remains of the breastwork. Warren fell about two hundred feet west of the monument. An iron fence encloses the square, and another surrounds the monument. The square has entrances on each of its sides, and at each of its corners, and is surrounded by a walk and rows of trees.
“The obelisk is thirty feet in diameter at the base, about fifteen feet at the top of the truncated part, and was designed to be two hundred and twenty feet high; but the mortar and the seams between the stones make the precise height two hundred and twenty-one feet. Within the shaft is a hollow cone, with a spiral stairway winding round it to its summit, which enters a circular chamber at the top. There are ninety courses of stone in the shaft,—six of them below the ground, and eighty-four above the ground. The capstone, or apex, is a single stone four feet square at the base, and three feet six inches in height, weighing two and a half tons.”—Frothingham’s Siege of Boston.
[14] The old method, established by Julius Cæsar, of counting 365 days in a year, and 366 every fourth year, gave each year about eleven minutes too much, which overplus amounted in 1582 to ten days. In that year Pope Gregory XIII discontinued the “Julian” and established the “Gregorian” calendar, by setting forward the date of a day ten days. This change was adopted (the dropping of an additional day being needed) by the English Parliament in 1751,—September 3, 1752, to be called September 14. At present, the New Style gives 366 days to every year divisible by four, excepting 1800, 1900, etc.
[15] March 5, 1770, a conflict called the “Boston Massacre” took place between English troops and Bostonians, three of the latter being killed. Samuel Adams, the people’s leader in Boston, in consequence compelled the Governor to withdraw the soldiers from the town.
[16] Documents giving the royal custom-house officers the right to search any house for alleged smuggled goods.
[17] Parliament closed the port of Boston, in 1774, in retaliation for the destruction of taxed tea by the Colonists in 1773, in the so-called “Boston Tea-party.” Under the Port Bill all exports and imports were prohibited save food and fuel.
[18] The parliament of Holland.
[19] Prior to 1804 the “presidential electors” voted for two candidates from previous page: for president; the one receiving the highest number to be president, and the one having the next highest vice-president.
[20] John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, 1825-1829.
[21] The fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the United States. The Jews of the Old Testament celebrated every fiftieth anniversary of their entrance into Canaan. Leviticus xxv. 10.