History
On 1 August 1834, the Emancipation Proclamation was read at the Sunday Morning Well. This gave slaves their freedom, even though slavery had been officially abolished in 1807.
In 1853, a town-wide fire destroyed nearly every building in Road Town. The fire spread because of angry rioters protested an increase on the cattle tax. Rioters eventually set fire to most of the plantations across the island.
Read more about this topic: Road Town
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)