...By 1770 Boston was no longer Winthrop’s ‘city upon a hill’ whose citizenry had a covenant with God. Instead, Boston was the commercial and political epicentre of the Thirteen Colonies, and had been engulfed by a hot atmosphere of colonial discontent at the British, brought about by years of war, taxes and occupation. The discontent boiled over into riot on the evening of 5 March 1770, when Captain Thomas Preston and his seven guards arrived to relieve a Sentinel of his harassers amidst taunts of “you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare!” from an ever-swelling crowd of eighty. One of Preston’s men responded to being struck with a weapon by firing into the crowd. The ensuing chaos left five colonists dead, six more injured and the city inflamed. Whilst it is almost certain that Preston didn’t order his men to fire, he would have faded into the mists of history, had his innocence not been later challenged during the American Revolution. Patriots idolised and misconstrued the incident; John Adams claims it laid “the foundation of American independence” from their British tyrants. Their flawed imageries of the so-called ‘Boston Massacre’ reverberated across the Thirteen Colonies, and it’s the idealism they propagated more so than the incident itself which stirred colonists to revolting against the Crown. The odds had never in Preston’s favour that faithful night, indeed it was a mixture of the provocative taunts from the ever-swelling crowd and the darkness that...
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...Twelves Hewes and the American Revolution In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the city of Boston became a hot bed of colonist rebellion against the British Government. The citizens in Boston, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had become fed up with unjustified taxation levied against them by the British. The colonists of Boston also saw it to be problematic that the colonies were subject to British rule, but were not represented in Parliament. In the half-decade prior to the Revolutionary War, the city of Boston hosted two monumental events that rallied the colonists into the direction of independence; the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. A man named George Roberts Twelve Hewes had the honor of being able to witness and take direct involvement in both the Massacre and the Tea Party. George Roberts Twelve Hewes was born and raised in Massachusetts and saw the development of the Revolution from the perspective of an “everyday” colonist. He was born on August 25th, 1742. Hewes was a shoemaker by trade and was never able to amount an impressive net worth. If anything, it can be argued that Hewes was very much more poverty stricken than anything else. Money never seemed to influence Hewes’s actions; instead George Roberts Twelve Hewes was a man of principal and integrity. Prior to the Revolutionary War, Hewes participated in both the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party. During the Revolutionary War, Hewes served as a Privateer and a member of the militia for...
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...Causes of the American Revolution? Archive #1: Political cartoon on the stamp act Summarize: After the victory of the French and Indian War (1754-1763) the British took control over much of North America. The war ended up costing the British a lot of money they didn’t have. Parliament came up with multiple acts that would tax the colonist on some of their everyday needs to help raise money. The British government came up with the stamp act of 1765 which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies. This made colonist furious. They began rebelling saying the tax was unconstitutional. The colonist brought down the act and this picture represents the “funeral of the stamp act” according to the aftermath of the rebellion. 1. If you were in parliament at the time would you have been for or against the act and why? (I would have been for it because they needed money for the damage to help their country and there people. The parliament gained more land for their people and the people don’t even want to give them 1 cent.) Who crafted it and why? This political cartoon was one of two created by Benjamin Wilson. Prime Minister Marques of Rockingham was the one who advised Benjamin to drawl the cartoon in hopes of convincing parliament to repeal the act. Who or what was the intended audience? This cartoon was projected towards the colonist and their success in getting rid of the act. The illustration shows parliament why they should repeal the act. What does the document...
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