The Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre was and is still a debatable Massacre. The event occurred on March 5, 1776. It involved the rope workers of the colonial Boston and two British regiments, the twenty-ninth and the fourteenth regiments. Eleven people were shot in the incident; five people were killed and the other six were merely wounded. The soldiers and the captain, Thomas Preston, were all put on trial. All were acquitted of charges of murder, however the two soldiers who fired first, Private Mathew Killroy, and Private William Montgomery, the two soldiers were guilty of manslaughter. The causes were numerous for this event. There had been a nation wide long-term dislike towards the British, and a growing hatred towards them by the people of Boston. Even before the two regiments were sent in to monitor Boston there was a growing feud before the two sides. The population of Boston in 1765 was over twenty thousand people, and it was the second largest city in the country. The city was split up into two political factions, the loyalists, also known as the "Tories" were loyal to the British nation and respected and followed their policies. The other group was the Patriots, they too pledged alliance with the British, but they also believed strongly in their colonial rights, and more often then not went against parliamentary decisions. America still had not declared independence from England in 1765, and was expected to follow the rules of the parliament and the King. The government like all other states was structured differently, but the people elected their representatives. Unlike the British who let the people vote, but they are "indirectly represented" by Parliament. The stamp act was one of the first things Britain did to upset the colonies. John Adams who was a prospering young lawyer at the time, called the Stamp Act "That enormous engine, fabricated by the British Parliament, for battering down all the rights and liberties of America." The stamp act put a tax on legal

Bibliography: Lukes, Bonnie L. 2000. The Boston Massacre. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books. Freedman, Russell. 2000. Give Me Liberty. Library in congress cataloging-in-publication data. Hull, Mary E. 1999. The Boston Tea Party. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers. Stout, Neil R. 1976. The Perfect Crisis. New York, NY: New York University Press. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761579296 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0808436.html http://earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/massacre.html