Summary
As a consequence of continued violence in Massachusetts, 1700 British troops
landed in Boston during the six weeks following October 1, 1768. Relations
between the soldiers and civilians were not friendly, but 1769 passed without
excessive conflict. However, passions were stirred when on February 22, 1770 a
customs informer fired birdshot at a group of children pelting his house with
stones, killing an eleven year-old German boy. Although the troops were not
involved in the death, they were the natural target for aggression directed
toward British authority, and were increasingly harassed.
One week after the German boy's funeral, on March 5, 1770, violence erupted
outside the Boston
customs office. A crowd led by sailor Crispus Attucks formed to demonstrate
against the customs agents, and when a British officer tried to disperse the
crowd, his men were bombarded with rocks and dared to shoot by the unruly mob.
After being knocked to the ground one soldier finally did shoot, and others
followed. In the end, five colonists died, including Attucks, who is often
considered the first casualty of the Revolutionary
War. The event quickly came to be known as the
Boston Massacre, and marked the peak of colonial opposition to the
Townshend duties, which were soon repealed. In trial, John Adams, a
colonial leader and defender of colonial self-government, volunteered to defend
the soldiers, and all but two of them were acquitted. Those convicted merely
received brandings on their thumbs.
From 1770 to 1772, the British basically ignored the colonies, choosing to
pursue less controversial policy initiatives in other areas. Tensions, which
had reached a peak after the Boston Massacre, had cooled. However, the hiatus
ended on June 9, 1772 when the customs schooner Gaspee ran aground near
Providence, Rhode Island. The Gaspee was known to have been very much
involved in customs racketeering, and the crew was known for its thievery and
condescension toward the colonists. That night, helpless in the mud, the
Gaspee was burnt to the water line by a crowd of over a hundred disguised
men. This signaled the reopening of conflict between the colonists and British
government.
In the fall of 1772, Lord North was preparing to begin paying royal governors
out of customs revenue. In response to this threat, Samuel Adams convinced
Boston's town meeting to request that every Massachusetts community appoint a
group of individuals responsible for coordinating colony-wide measures to
protect colonial rights. Within the year, Massachusetts had approximately 250
of these committees of correspondence, and the idea spread throughout New
England.
In July 1773, Adams published letters of Massachusetts governor Thomas
Hutchinson that had been obtained by Benjamin
Franklin. In these letters, Hutchinson
advocated "an abridgement of what are called British liberties," and "a great
restraint of natural liberty" in the colonies. The publication of these letters
convinced Americans of a British plot to destroy their political freedom.
Meanwhile, in March 1773, Patrick Henry, Thomas
Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee had proposed
that Virginia establish a committee of correspondence for the entire colony. By
late 1773, nearly every colony had followed suit, and the political leaders of
every colony were linked in resistance to the British. It was this situation
that allowed the colonies to mobilize fully for rebellion over the coming years.
Bostonians regarded the troops stationed there as a standing army, and a clear
violation of their rights as British subjects. Their presence was further
resented by Bostonians because many of the soldiers were Irish Catholics, and a
number were black. Most of the enlisted men were free to seek employment during
the day after their duties were performed in the morning muster. They often
agreed to work for much less than local laborers, and in so doing provoked
outrage in a city with consistently high unemployment. As anti-British
sentiment grew, the troops, as the physical manifestation of British authority,
became more than ever a symbol of oppression. When the Boston Massacre
occurred, many Bostonians, and other colonists, took it as proof that the troops
had been sent to the colonies to suppress political opposition by force.
