I let these words, the first taste of rebellion sink in, like a foot stuck in quicksand. I’d just found an amazing artifact, a diary, written by a girl named Marideth Merriman, a girl in the turmoil of the American Revolution of the 1770s! I’d learned about the American Revolution in school, and I’d always known about the two opinions of Loyalists and Patriots, but hearing it through this diary, written by a girl who just witnessed what I think to have been the Boston Massacre, it had a different feel, an entrancing, and exciting, yet dangerous feel, like the tingling you get in your gut when you free fall on a roller coaster. After thinking about my discovery for a few minutes, I heard my aunt sound the horns which signaled a meal time (Don’t ask!), and hurried off to dinner, my thoughts as mixed as a bag of Scrabble pieces ready to play.
The next morning, after I’d shoveled down my breakfast, rinsed my plate and glass, and said good morning to my half-asleep aunt, muttering as always, I hurried down the stairs and into the basement to take my second dip into the past. I spent the whole time after breakfast and right through lunch skimming through of Meredith’s diary. Marideth explained her lifestyle as a spy for John Adams and the Patriots, her favorite pastimes, and her characteristics to her diary (And me.) until I felt like I knew her, not as a story or a soul preserved in a diary, but a real person, who used to breath air, just like me, one who was real flesh and blood, just like me. It made me feel like this was a real adventure, not just a musty old diary from a girl who lived 240 years before me. After a few minutes I stumbled upon a very familiar event, The Boston Tea Party.
December 17, 1773
Dear Diary,
The Patriots have added another barb onto their thorn in the side of Britain. late last night, after the wind made its last sigh, and before the moon began its reign over the skies, Samuel Adams gathered the Sons of Liberty into my father’s tavern, the Liberty Bell, to have a meeting. If you know my parents and you are reading this, please don’t tell them of what I’m about to tell you! I would be made to scrub the stables for the rest of my life! Anyways, that very night, I snuck to the bottom of the stairway (We live in an adjoining residence above the tavern.), and listened in on the men’s conversation.
“We must take action!” A voice I recognized as John Adams’ proclaimed. “We cannot have them pushing us around like little children! Who fought for this land!? Who protects it day in and day out!? Not the British, but us! You, me, and the rest of the colonies! Not some British nut who wears a gold crown and sits around getting all the fatter! No!” He cried, “ Not them, but us! Then why should we be treated like we are nothing more than a few measly rats!? Let’s show them that we’re as strong as we were when we fought the Indians and the French! Let’s show them!” He rallied, banging his fist on our wooden tables.
There was a jumble of shouts, and cries of agreement that were so loud, I’m sure the king of Britain could hear them! At that point, I could hear Father coming towards the stairs, most definitely to get more ale jugs for the men below, so I was forced to rush back into bed where I know lay, my heart ready to fly out of my chest in fright! But one thing I most definitely heard was the words, “We shall go tonight! To the Boston Harbor!”, then the sounds of men dumping their smoke pipes onto the weathered tables and running out of the door whooping like they were mad lunatics, but I knew they were mimicking the war cry of the Indians, a plan Father had discussed with me a few days earlier. He had told me that the Sons of Liberty would dump all the tea into the harbor but they wouldn’t harm anything else, in fact, he told me that the Sons of Liberty are planning to sweep the deck clean! Sure enough when I looked out the window that was what I saw!
Still Ready for whatever the British do,
Marideth Merriman