The Headquarters of the Revolution | Archive of America

[00:00:00]On a narrow lane in Boston's North End, there was a brick building with a copper dragon hanging over the door.

[00:00:08]The salt air had turned it green.

[00:00:10]The locals called it the Green Dragon Tavern.

[00:00:13]Upstairs, the Freemasons held their lodge, but downstairs, in the basement, something far more dangerous was happening.

[00:00:23]The Sons of Liberty met there.

[00:00:25]The Committees of Correspondence met there. The Boston Caucus met there.

[00:00:31]Samuel Adams organized there.

[00:00:34]Paul Revere planned there, and John Hancock hosted there.

[00:00:40]Every secret meeting, every act of coordinated resistance, every whispered plan that built the revolution, passed through the basement of this one building.

[00:00:53]The Boston Tea Party was planned inside the Green Dragon.

[00:00:58]On the night of December 16th, 1773, men walked out of that tavern, disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, and destroyed a fortune in British tea.

[00:01:10]18 months later, it was the Green Dragon where patriots learned the British were marching on Lexington and Concord.

[00:01:18]Paul Revere was sent from that building on his midnight ride.

[00:01:22]Daniel Webster later called it the headquarters of the revolution.

[00:01:27]Not a battlefield, not a government hall, a tavern with a green dragon over the door, where ordinary men decided they had had enough.

[00:01:41]These stories deserve to be told.

[00:01:45]These are the stories they forgot to teach you.

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[00:01:52]Remember the stories.

[00:01:55]Never forgotten.