Today marks the 150th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, a move that basically ended the Civil War.
While the nearest battle ever to Boston was in south-central Pennsylvania, the region, a hotbed of abolitionism before the war and of patriotic vigor once the conflict started, could not escape history as this 16-point map shows.
Nor does the region want to forget that history: Several points on this map direct you to monuments, markers and at least one entire building commemorating the conflict and its victims.
It also includes the Beacon Hill alleyway that was a hiding place along the Underground Railroad; the Harbor Island that served as a prison for top-ranking Confederates; and the hotel where John Wilkes Booth stayed a week before he murdered President Lincoln.
Perhaps the most famous Civil War memorial in the Boston area, thanks to the movie "Glory," the bronze relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens commemorates the first African-American regiment in the U.S. Army.
The 275-acre Jamaica Plain cemetery is the final resting place of William Lloyd Garrison, one of the nation’s leading abolitionists, who was very nearly killed by a lynch mob in Boston before the war.
The elaborate memorial on Flagstaff Hill, erected in 1877, served as a model for Civil War monuments nationwide (not least because it commemorated ordinary soldiers as well as top officers).
Abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was beaten to within an inch of his life on the floor of the Senate in 1856 by South Carolina congressman Preston Blair. The beating was a flashpoint for the war, with Southerners praising Blair and Northerners supporting Sumner. (Sumner is buried in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn cemetery.)
The legendary hall hosted many pre-war and wartime rallies, perhaps none more famous than the one in 1830, when Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster declared, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
The fort on Georges Island was a military prison for high-level rebels, including Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens and Confederate Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan.
The original publisher of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the bestselling American novel of the early 19th century and a leading literary catalyst for the war, had its offices and bookstore here.
John Wilkes Booth stayed at the inn (now the Omni Parker House) for two nights a week before shot President Lincoln. He used a shooting range two blocks away for target practice. Abolitionist John Brown, whose 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va., would divide the nation further right before the war, also visited the Parker House.
The first integrated church in the U.S. also hosted the first Greater Boston reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The current building dates from the 1890s.
Unveiled in 1903, it commemorates Joseph Hooker, who commanded the Army of the Potomac in 1863, declaring, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”
Perhaps the most famous Civil War memorial in the Boston area, thanks to the movie "Glory," the bronze relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens commemorates the first African-American regiment in the U.S. Army.
The 275-acre Jamaica Plain cemetery is the final resting place of William Lloyd Garrison, one of the nation’s leading abolitionists, who was very nearly killed by a lynch mob in Boston before the war.
The elaborate memorial on Flagstaff Hill, erected in 1877, served as a model for Civil War monuments nationwide (not least because it commemorated ordinary soldiers as well as top officers).
Abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was beaten to within an inch of his life on the floor of the Senate in 1856 by South Carolina congressman Preston Blair. The beating was a flashpoint for the war, with Southerners praising Blair and Northerners supporting Sumner. (Sumner is buried in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn cemetery.)
The legendary hall hosted many pre-war and wartime rallies, perhaps none more famous than the one in 1830, when Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster declared, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
The fort on Georges Island was a military prison for high-level rebels, including Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens and Confederate Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan.
The original publisher of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the bestselling American novel of the early 19th century and a leading literary catalyst for the war, had its offices and bookstore here.
John Wilkes Booth stayed at the inn (now the Omni Parker House) for two nights a week before shot President Lincoln. He used a shooting range two blocks away for target practice. Abolitionist John Brown, whose 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va., would divide the nation further right before the war, also visited the Parker House.
The first integrated church in the U.S. also hosted the first Greater Boston reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The current building dates from the 1890s.
Unveiled in 1903, it commemorates Joseph Hooker, who commanded the Army of the Potomac in 1863, declaring, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”
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