Page 96 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

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such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Early colonists believed that Boston was a community with a special covenant with God, founded on the Puritan values of hard work, moral uprightness, and education.
Boston people were at the forefront in the protests against the Stamp Act of 1765. The view grew that there should be no taxation without representation, that is if the people of the colonies were to pay high taxes they should at least have representatives in parliament to put their case. So Boston’s merchants did not pay the customs duties. The governor, Thomas Pownall, tried to find a way to smooth things over, but he was replaced by a hard-liner, Francis Bernard, who would not see both sides of the argument.
It was his attempts to stamp out protests by some hot- heads such as John Rowe, James Otis, and Samuel Adams of Boston that eventually persuaded many more moderate people they had no choice but to revolt. The ‘Boston Massacre’ on March 5, 1770, occurred when a crowd of protestors pushed towards a small contingent of British soldiers. Fearful for their safety (probably unnecessarily) they fired into the unarmed demonstrators outside the British custom house, resulting in the deaths of five civilians. This dramatically increased tension.
On December 16, 1773, some local Sons of Liberty, disguised as Indians, dumped 342 chests of tea in the