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=Pope's Day= Pope's Day, also known as Pope's Night, was an annual holiday celebrated on November 5th in Boston, Massachusetts. This holiday was founded in 1630 by John Winthrop. In the mid 1700s the annual commemoration quickly turned from a peaceful celebration into an anti-catholic riot, where death was a common occurrence. Effigies of the devil, pope, and political figures were carted around the city and fought over by two rival mobs, one from the North End and the other from the South End of Boston. The two mobs would violently fight over the others effigies and which ever side stole the others effigies first would then burn them in a huge bon fire. Depending on which side won the effigies would either be burned at Copp's Hill or The Commons, if the North End won the bon fire would take place at Copp's Hill and the South End mob would be at The Commons.

In Esther Forbes book Paul Revere and the World He Lived in she talks about the shift from the celebration of Pope's Day in the morning to night, "In day time, companies of little boys might be seen in various parts of the town, with their little popes, dressed up in the most grotesque and fantastical manner, which they carried about some on boards and some on little carriages. But with the coming of night the big boys and grown men took over. A huge wagon, from twenty to forty feet in length and five to six feet in width, was built. On this platform was a paper lantern capacious enough to hold, in addition to the lights, five or six persons. Behind that, large as life, sat the mimic Pope and several other personages, monks, friars, and so forth. Last, but not least, stood Old Nick himself with the appropriate horns, tail and pitchfork. Boys under the platform could work these figures like marionettes, by strings."

By the late 1700s, right around the time of the American Revolution, Pope's Day was being condemned in America for being too violent, in 1764, a boy was crushed to death by one of the carts caring the effigies. The growing violence and the many complaints by residents, this holiday soon became less and less celebrated. In 1775 George Washington was commanding his army, as it fought against the British in Boston and Canada. Washington learned that many of his soldiers were planning on celebrating Pope's Day and he issued these orders: “As the Commander in Chief has been apprized of a design form’d for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the pope—He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this Juncture; at a Time when we are solliciting, and have really obtain’d, the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, whom we ought to consider as Brethren embarked in the same Cause. The defence of the general Liberty of America:

“At such a juncture, and in such Circumstances, to be insulting their Religion, is so monstrous, as not to be suffered or excused; indeed instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our Brethren, as to them we are so much indebted for every late happy Success over the common Enemy in Canada.”

Ebenezer Mackintosh and The Stamp Act
In 1765 people started to oppose the The Stamp Act in Boston and many influential figures in Boston disapproved of The Stamp Act including, Samuel Adams and James Otis, Jr.. On August 14 1765 Boston had its first public protest against The Stamp Act, this took place in the South End, with Ebenezer Mackintosh, a shoemaker by trade, and the leader of the South End mob, as one of the original orchestrators. The protest used many of the same type of effigies that were used for Pope's Day, the effigies were strung up on an elm tree in the South End of Boston, the tree would later be called the "Liberty Tree." Mackintosh created an effigy of Andrew Oliver, a known distributor of stamps in Boston, they took the figure of Oliver to the Town House where the legislators would meet. From there they went to Oliver's office, where Mackintosh believed the building was going to be used to sell stamped paper, the mob destroyed the building and symbolically stamped the timbers before leaving. They then moved on to Oliver's home where they beheaded the effigy and burned it and his stable house. Mackintosh and his mob then threw Oliver and his family out of their house and the mob began to loot and destroy the entire house. The next day Oliver requested to resign, but Mackintosh demanded that he could only resign if he did it under the "Liberty Tree" in front of everyone.

Mackintosh did not stop with Andrew Oliver, he led another attack on Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who was rumored to favor the Stamp Act. Mackintosh's attack on Hutchinson was very similar to the attack he previously led on Oliver, the mob evicted the family, destroyed all the furniture, tore down the interior walls of the house, and looted the wine cellar. Governor Francis Bernard offered a 300-pound reward for information on the leaders of the mob, but he never received any information about Mackintosh.

The next month British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and in 1766 Mackintosh left his role as mob leader and married. He later took part in the Boston Tea Party, fought in the Revolutionary War, and he eventually died in New Hampshire. Ebenezer Mackintosh has a historical marker located in Haverhill, New Hampshire and is buried in nearby Horse Meadow Cemetery.