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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
This book contains Kidder's analysis, The Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, Its Causes and Its Results, originally published as part of History of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770 .
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Seitenzahl: 59
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Chapter 1
The Boston Massacre,March 5, 1770, Its Causes and Its Results
The passage by parliament of the law known as the stamp act, and the attempt to carry it into effect, had raised a feeling throughout the colonies that was found to be so injurious to the trade of England as to cause its repeal in March, 1766. The news of this yielding to the popular clamor was received with joy throughout the colonies, but many of the far-seeing men, among the patriots, saw no cause for rejoicing, as the act of repeal contained a clause which to them was portentous of evil to our liberties. It claimed the absolute right of parliament to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. It was soon seen that the British government had determined to follow out this declaration by a practical show of force which should overawe the people; for during this autumn the garrison at the castle was reinforced, and in the following June additional forces arrived. In July, the British cabinet resolved upon new restrictions on American commerce. It was determined to raise an additional revenue by impost which would prove onerous and oppressive. The officers of the customs were to be multiplied, and the governor, judges and the revenue officers were to be paid by the crown, so as to make them entirely independent of colonial legislation and complete instruments of arbitrary power. The military forces were to be largely increased so as to completely overawe and subjugate the people, particularly in and around Boston. The knowledge of these new forms of oppression reached the prominent patriots by letters from their friends in England, with intimations that the government intended to seize some of the popular leaders here as also the writers of articles in the public papers and transport them to England for trial and punishment under the sedition act. It was not in the nature of a people who had for generations enjoyed and understood freedom of thought and expression to be cowed and frightened by these warnings of tyranny and power, and their leaders stood boldly to their former declarations, and by their speeches and writings soon rekindled the flames which the repeal of the stamp act had in a great measure allayed. The public prints were filled with articles written in the highest fervor of patriotism, of which the following by Josiah Quincy, Jr., may be taken as sounding the key note of the acts that followed.
“Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intimidate. For under God, we are determined that whatsoever, whensoever, or howsoever, we shall be called to make our exit, we will die freemen.
“Well do we know that all the regalia of this world cannot dignify the death of a villain, nor diminish the ignominy, with which a slave shall quit his existence. Neither can it taint the unblemished honor of a son of freedom, though he should make his departure on the already prepared gibbet, or be dragged to the newly erected scaffold for execution. With the plaudits of his conscience he will go off the stage. A crown of joy and immortality shall be his reward. The history of his life his children shall venerate. The virtues of their sire shall excite their admiration”.
This is a sample of many of the articles which were published in the patriot papers of that period; the effect was to excite and stimulate the quiet and thinking people, while it roused and excited the lower classes to action. In October, 1767, the new revenue acts went into operation. This was looked upon as another step towards oppression, and was met by measures to make it inoperative by a general system of non-importations of these articles. The following year was one of excitement in Boston, of which the attempts to carry out these arbitrary revenue laws and the arrival in the harbor of men of war from Halifax were the immediate cause.
In October, 1768, a fleet of British men of war, with two regiments on board, were moored in Boston harbor. The troops were soon landed and marched to the common. These were soon reinforced by two additional regiments direct from Ireland.
This attempt of the British government to overawe the people of Boston and of all New England seemed to be the culminating point, and tested the fidelity of the leaders and the people to the great cause of liberty to the utmost, and from this movement of the British government, came as a sequence the Boston massacre.
From the landing of the troops there seems to have been a constant feeling of irritation kept up between them and the people, but it would take pages to give even the leading facts. This naturally culminated at last in their wantonly firing upon the citizens on the night of March 5th, 1770, the details and particulars of which will be found in this volume.
Of the results, immediate and remote, which followed the massacre, great difference of opinion has and will exist. Many have considered it as a principal cause of the revolution, while others claim that the feeling which it had caused had, in the course of the following three years, nearly died out, and other causes had come in to supplant it.
Without undertaking to decide this question it will perhaps be better to add what some of the prominent actors thought of its effects when the excitement and feeling it then caused had passed away. Long afterwards John Adams wrote of the event: “On that night the formation of American Independence was laid”. “Not the battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis were more important events in American history than the battle of King street on the 5th of March, 1770. The death of four or five persons, the most obscure and inconsiderable that could have been found upon the continent, has never yet been forgiven by any part of America”.
Mr. Webster speaking of the event remarked: “From that moment we may date the severance of the British empire”.
Without wishing to give to this event any more importance than it deserves, it will be safe to say that its effect on the people of Massachusetts, New England, and all the colonies was an immediate and lasting feeling of indignation against the king, the parliament and the ruling powers of Great Britain, and a hope and trust in the future of an independent American government.
It had been the intention of the compiler to make a summary of the facts as developed in the evidence, and to have undertaken to reconcile some of the discordant statements as detailed in the course of the trial; but it was found to be a matter full of difficulty, and as Mr. Frothingham in his Life of General Warren seems to have elucidated all these things more fully and clearly than any other writer, we copy with his permission the following account of the event from his interesting work:
