ABSTRACT
Independence Day broke warm and cloudless over Boston Harbor in 1810. The town reverberated with ringing bells and cannon fire echoing from Fort Independence in the Charlestown Navy Yard to the heights of Bunker Hill. Bostonians had been assembling along the city's serpentine streets since early morning, angling for the best view of the executive procession as it made its way from the State House to the Third Street Baptist Church for the day's commemorative oration. Inside the close and crowded church, the day's orator, Daniel Waldo Lincoln, age twenty-six, ascended the pulpit steps. Already a veteran public speaker, Daniel knew that he needed to deliver more than the usual July Fourth paean that extolled the virtues of its founders and excoriated British treachery. Miraculously for Levi, a savior appeared. Ebenezer Gay, the influential pastor of Hingham's First Parish Church for over fifty years, thought Levi better suited for the ministry than as a maker of nails and horseshoes.
