Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 181.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording this episode on April 17, 2025, in New Orleans.

We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without intentional presentism.

This episode, however, is a sidebar, which is our term for occasional episodes, such as this one and the last one, that are off the sequential timeline of the history of

the Americans. This is the second of two episodes we are doing in honor of the 250th anniversary

of Paul Revere's famous ride, which we will celebrate on April 18th tomorrow by putting two lights in a window of our house that night.

You probably know that reference, but if not, maybe you're not American, you'll learn it in this telling,

which you will enjoy much more if you've already listened to Part 1.

After the powder alarms, and especially the humiliation of the regulars at Salem,

Boston was on edge. The garrison came to loat the locals, and the Bostonians became

contemptuous of the soldiers. Anything could start a crisis, and the town came very close to exploding into violence

because of those East Anglian Boston accents we talked about last time.

On March 5, 1775, the crowd gathered in the Old South Meeting House to mark the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

Many of Boston's Whig elite were there, almost certainly including Paul Revere and John Adams, and any number of British officers, probably to keep tabs on the event,

and perhaps to make trouble out of boredom.

Dr. Joseph Warren was the featured speaker, and he delivered in David Hackett Fisher's words

a major speech in a flowery provincial style that was much admired in Boston, but little to the taste of English gentlemen.

When Warren had finished, Sam Adams stood up in his pew and proposed that the town thanked Warren for his excellent oration,

to which the British officers hissed disapproval.

One of them yelled out, O-Fi, O-Fi, spelled F-I-E, meaning, per the Googles,

an interjection used to express disgust, distaste, or mock dismay among the posher sort in 18th century England.

Unfortunately, this was not how the locals understood it.

...