ed the Canton Packet.
For years it was a standing taunt of white boys in Boston to negroes:

"Who blew up the ship?
Nigger, why for?
'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection
An' shake paw-paw."

Paw-paw was a gambling game which was played on the Common with four
sea-shells of the _Cypr[oe]a Moneta_.

The 14th of July was observed by Boston negroes for many years to
commemorate the introduction of measures to abolish the slave trade. It
was derisively called Bobalition Day, and the orderly convention of
black men was greeted with a fusillade of rotten fruit and eggs and much
jesting abuse. It was at one of these Bobalition-Day celebrations that
this complimentary toast was seriously given and recorded in honor of
the newly elected governor: "Governor Brooks--May the mantelpiece of
Caleb Strong fall on the hed of his distinguished Predecessor."

In other localities, notably on the Massachusetts coast, in Connecticut,
and in Narragansett, the term "Nigger 'Lection" was applied to the
election of a black governor, who held his sway over the black
population. Wherever there was a large number of negroes the black
governor was a man of much dignity and importance, and his election was
a scene of much gayety and considerable feasting, which the governor's
master had to pay for. As he had much control over his black
constituents, it is plain that the black governor might be made useful
in many petty ways to his white neighbors. Occasionally the "Nigger
'Lection" had a deep political signification and influence. "Scaeva," in
his "Hartford in the Olden Times," and Hinman, in the "American
Revolution," give detailed and interesting accounts of "Nigger
'Lection."

A few rather sickly and benumbed attempts were made in bleak New England
to celebrate in old English fashion the first of May. A May-pole was
erected in Charlestown in 1687, and was promptly cut down. The most
unbounded observance of the day was held at Merry Mount (now the town of
Quincy) in 1628 by roystering Morton and his gay crew. Bradford says:
"They set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days
togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and
frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies rather." This May-pole
was a stately pine-tree eighty feet high, with a pair of buck's horns
nailed at the top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern
Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, an