Existing comment:
The People Revolt
"What we meant in going for those Redcoats was this, we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should!"
-- Capt. Levi Preston, Patriot leader, in Reminiscences of the War
In the year 1750, few Bostonians even considered the idea of breaking away from their British mother country. Between the years 1761 and 1775, however, differing views of the rights of the colonies under British rule led to a series of actions, reactions and tumultuous encounters between Britain and her Boston colonists that snowballed toward war. Certain British laws and acts – like the Sugar, Stamp and Townshend Acts, the military occupation of Boston, and the Boston Massacre – increasingly incensed the liberty-loving colonists. Assembling in town meetings and swayed by the oratory of emerging leaders like James Otis, Sam Adams and Joseph Warren, Boston men and women began to take collective action, countering with boycotts, protests, and the famous Tea Party.
Curiously, Boston Common was a center for both side of the impending conflict, patriots assembled and protested here, while British regulars camped and drilled here during the pre-war years of military occupation. |