Boston Tea Party

1. Boston Tea Party Bell work question: The Townshend Acts only placed taxes on items that were ________. “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” -Patrick Henry Review Learning Goal Scale sheet and open notebooks to review.

2. Boston Massacre review • Boston Massacre – March 5, 1770 • Was a result of the heated tension between the redcoats and Bostonians • What occurred? • Fight broke out between soldiers and a mob of townspeople. • Mob started throwing stones and snowballs at soldiers located at customhouse. • Five colonists were killed including Crispus Attucks, an African American dockworker.

3. Results of the Boston Massacre • British soldiers who fired on colonists were eventually put on trial. • Colonial leaders used the massacre as propaganda (information designed to influence opinion) against the British • Samuel Adams made posters that described the Boston Massacre as a slaughter of innocent Americans by bloodthirsty redcoats. • Paul Revere created a famous engraving that depicts the massacre as being started by the British.

4. Led colonists to call for stronger boycotts of British goods • Led Parliament to repeal all of the Townshend Acts except the tax on tea. • Committees of Correspondence (set up by Sam Adams) were formed to spread political ideas throughout the colonies.

5. Tea Act (1773) • Passed by Parliament to save the British East India Company • Allowed the company to create a monopoly by: • Colonists’ Reaction • Boycott • Act was just another attempt to crush their liberty according to the colonists. • Tea shipped to the colonies was forced back to Britain by the colonists in all ports except Boston.

7. Boston Tea Party – December 16, 1773 • Occurred in retaliation to Mass. royal governor’s order to unload tea in the Boston Harbor • The Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks boarded the ships and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. (90,000 pounds of tea worth thousands of dollars)

8. Intolerable Acts • Passed by Parliament in retaliation to the Tea Party; named “intolerable” by the colonists • Coercive Acts (1774) • Closed Boston Harbor until the Mass. colonists paid for the ruined tea • Banned town meetings in Mass. • Forced Bostonians to shelter soldiers in their homes • Colonists’ reaction  acts violated their rights as English citizens

9. Quebec Act (1774) • Set up a permanent gov’tfor Quebec • Gave Quebec the area west of the Appalachian Mtns. and north of the Ohio River • Land was originally part of the American colonies • Act ignored colonists’ claims to the land

10. 1st Continental Congress • a group of 55 prominent colonial leaders from 12 of the 13 colonies (excluding Georgia) who met in Philadelphia in Sept. 1774 to establish a political group that would fight for American interests and challenge British rule. • What did they do? • Drafted a statement of grievances that called for the repeal of all acts Parliament passed that violated the colonists’ rights • Voted to boycott all British goods and trade • Endorsed the Suffolk Reserves  resolutions that called upon the citizens of Suffolk County, Mass., to arm themselves and form militias. These militias were known as minutemen b/c they were supposed to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

11. Britain’s Reaction • King George III  felt that war was inevitable • Britain had 3,000 soldiers in and around Boston under the leadership of General Sir Thomas Gage • Gage’s orders were to take away weapons and arrest the militia leaders. King George III General Thomas Gage

12. Battles of Lexington and Concord • – April 18 & 19, 1775 • Battles that began the Revolutionary War • April 18 • Gage sent 700 troops to Concord to seize and destroy all weapons and ammunition. • Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott rode from Boston to Lexington, a town near Concord, to warned Samuel Adams and John Hancock, another leader of the Sons of Liberty, that the British were coming.

13. April 19 • The redcoats arrived in Lexington in the early morning where they found local minutemen waiting. Shots broke out and 8 minutemen were killed. • When the redcoats got to Concord, they found that the gunpowder was removed but they destroyed the remaining supplies. • On their way back to Boston, the redcoats were ambushed by minutemen. More than 150 British were wounded, and 73 were dead. • According to famous American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Americans at Lexington and Concord had fired the “shot heard ‘round the world”.

14. Fort Ticonderoga • After Lexington & Concord, the British and the Americans began to prepare for war • Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen, and the Green Mountain Boys, who were soldiers from Vermont, surprised and captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain on May 10, 1775. • Gave colonists supplies and access to Hudson River • The colonial militia grew to about 20,000 after committees of correspondence enlisted more volunteers.

15. Battle of Bunker Hill • Battle of Bunker Hill – June 16, 1775 • Most of the fighting actually occurred on Breed’s Hill • Although the British won the battle, they suffered heavy losses and learned that defeating the Americans would not be easy. • Two Types of American Colonists • Loyalists  colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain also called Tories • Patriots  colonists who wanted their independence from Great Britain

16. After beating the American colonists at Bunker Hill, the British returned to Boston. Washington arrived and the American troops soon surrounded the city. He lined the hill tops with cannons taken at Fort Ticonderoga. The British knew they could not stay in Boston and left. This opened the important Boston Harbor for supplies.