“The Shot Heard 'round the World": The Coming of the American Revolution

Kent Masterson Brown: On the morning of April 19th, 1775, a British force of 800-900 Grenadiers and Light Infantry, after crossing the Back Bay from Boston, marched to Lexington, Massachusetts.

Their objective was to reach Concord and seize and destroy the arms and ammunitions that British General Thomas Gage had been informed were stored there by the colonists.

On Lexington Green, the British force was confronted by about 60 or 70 colonial militia who blocked the way to conquer.

[horse neighs] One of the commanders of the British force ordered the militia to disperse, but they refused.

In seconds, a shot was fired... [gunshot] from where no one ever knew.

Then the British troops opened fire, killing seven of the militiamen and seriously wounding 9 others.

Those were the opening shots of the American Revolution.

[patriotic music playing] Hello, I'm Kent Masterson Brown and welcome to The Shot Heard 'Round the World: The Coming of the American Revolution, Colonial America to 1775.

Why did the fighting erupt on Lexington Green in Massachusetts between a colonial militia force and the Grenadiers and Light Infantry of Great Britain on the morning of April 19, 1775?

And why was the event the beginning of a war between the American colonies and Great Britain?

Think about it, the colonies were all settled by Englishmen under the authority of their King.

Consider also, for example, that many of those holding positions of authority in the American colonies in 1775 were of English descent and grew up schooled in English literature, customs, laws, and governance.

Many were communicants of the Church of England.

It is true that as the colonies grew, many people arrived in the colonies who were not of English descent.

Some were Scots-Irish and others were Scottish, Irish, German, and French.

None of those were communicants of the Church of England.

Instead, they were Catholics from England and Europe, Huguenots or Presbyterians, Lutherans, Dunkards, Mennonites, Moravians, and Dutch Reformed.

Nevertheless, the American colonies resembled the mother country in many ways.

The architecture in the colonies reflected that scene in England, and the colonies even allied with Great Britain in its Seven Years' War against France.

That war resulted in France surrendering to Great Britain all its vast lands in America, including all of what is now known as Canada and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys in 1763.

So, with all this common history, common enemies and mostly common culture, why did the colonists confront the British on Lexington Green?

[music playing] There were 13 colonies in America by 1754.

The New England colonies consisted of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut Rhode Island and New Hampshire, all established between 1620 - 1640.

Four Middle colonies, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

All were settled between 1613 and 1681.

The Southern colonies consisted of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and were settled between 1607 and 1733.

Virginia settled in 1607 was the oldest colony in America.

Georgia was the newest colony, its settlement dating to 1733.

In all, a little more than 1.5 million people lived in the American colonies by 1754.

In large measure, the English had settled the colonies, some colonies were settled by English nobles who had been given royal charters to settle certain regions along the Atlantic Coast.

Other colonies were settled by proprietors of commercial enterprises, who or which were given a charter by the King, such as the Charter of King Charles II, shown here, given to eight proprietors appointed by the King to settle what is now North and South Carolina in 1663.

Some were royal colonies from the beginning, settled under direct orders from the King.

The Colony of New York authorized by a charter given by King Charles II to his brother, James the Duke of York, was as feudal as the English shires.

When James ascended to the throne as King James II, New York became a Royal colony.

All the colonies had governors, mostly appointed by the King.

Although in some colonies the governors were appointed by the proprietors, most of the colonies had councils with whom the governors consulted, whose members were appointed by the King and in some colonies by the proprietors.

Elected assemblies in many colonies began as advisory bodies.

They became more and more legislative in nature by the mid-18th century.

Some colonies began as a refuge for settlers who practiced a particular faith.

Massachusetts Bay Colony began as an English Puritan settlement.

Maryland Colony began as a refuge for those Englishmen who practiced the Roman Catholic faith and were led by Cecil Calvert, the Second Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of the colony.

Religious intolerance prevailed in some of the colonies early in their settlement, but by 1754 the sheer number of denominations practicing their faiths contributed to a lessening of religious intolerance.

One of the most interesting colonies was Georgia, the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be settled.

Founded along the Savannah River in 1732 by a soldier and member of parliament, James E. Oglethorpe, and his trustees as a refuge for the worthy poor.

Settlers were given limited land, 50 acres, as seen in this period illustration and instructed by the trustees as to what to plant and how much.

Land could not be sold, traded, divided or even inherited.

Clothing, weapons, cooking implements, utensils, and planting and harvesting implements were rationed.

The economic order more resembled a prison work farm than a colony of free men.

Georgia's planned economy was doomed from the start.

By 1750, large numbers of colonists abandoned Georgia for neighboring South Carolina.

Considerable unrest continued among those who remained.

So unstable and difficult had the situation become by 1752 that Oglethorpe and his trustees returned their charter to the King, ending the first successful revolt against British authority in North America.

In 1752, Georgia became a Royal Colony.

It may safely be said that by 1754, the American colonies had grown to become largely self-governing states, so far were they from the mother country and so long had they been separated from England.

Americans ever increasingly guarded their right to self-determination.

The economies of the American colonies were mostly dependent upon agriculture.

In the southern and middle colonies, large landowners using slave labor grew vast acres of tobacco, a commodity for which there were enormous markets in England as well as Western Europe.

As early as 1688, the colony shipped to England alone 28 million pounds of tobacco.

By 1754, colonial tobacco exports reached nearly 100 million pounds.

Hemp was a major crop of the colonies, from their earliest settlement.

Hemp fibers were used to make rope and sails for use in the British Navy.

Hemp was also valued for making clothing, carpets and bedding.

Likewise, vast stores of grain, wheat, rye, oats and corn were raised in the colonies, as were livestock, horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs.

Among the coastal regions of the South, planters raised rice, sugarcane and indigo.

In New England, farms were smaller subsistence operations.

The people there increasingly depended upon manufacturing and shipping to earn a living.

If an American colonist visited London, England, in 1754, he would have seen Georgian architecture, named for the reigning king, George II.

That was not unlike what he observed along State Street in Boston, the Governor's Palace at Williamsburg, Virginia, the Governor's Palace at Newbern, North Carolina, named for the Royal Governor William Tryon, and the houses and government buildings of New York.

But not all that he would have seen was pleasing to the eye, apart from London's glorious architecture, where the dome of the magnificent St. Paul's Cathedral dominated the cityscape, tremendous poverty and filth existed.

In stark contrast to the Englishman living in the horrid conditions in the cities, the English gentry owns sprawling estates with magnificent mansions filled with gorgeous furnishings and portraits of aristocratic family members painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and other well-known artists.

The estates of the privileged class who dominated British government were built with wealth obtained by controlling Britain's means of manufacturing and shipping.

The American colonist would have read books by English authors and likely shared with the Englishman he met a deep dislike of France and its allies.

As for nearly 100 years, England had been engaged in a struggle with France for control of the seas, trade, and the wealth distant lands offered.

The American colonist would have applauded the likes of William Pitt, as well as Edmund Burke, for their defense of the rights of English commoners, as well as the rights of the people in the American colonies.

He would have heard liberty and equality spoken in England as they were in the colonies.

The American colonist came to understand that what happened in Great Britain and on the European continent had serious ramifications for the American colonies over 2,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

Although the American colonies were hardly unified by 1754, some unifying elements prevailed.

Most colonists were of English descent.

The political and governmental institutions of the colonies, from royal governors to councils and representative assemblies, and to the courts and the law they applied, were based upon those in England.

If there was an official language spoken in all of the American colonies, it was English.

In most of the colonies, the established churches were those of the Church of England, and they were supported by taxation, yet there was no unifying government of the American colonies.

The unifying elements that did exist among the colonies, however, were slowly being eroded by the non-English peoples who had been coming ashore in the colonies since the 17th century.

By 1754, there were nearly 300,000 African American slaves living in the American colonies, mostly in the middle and southern colonies.

Many were brought to the shores of America from Africa and the West Indies by English slave-traders.

The most politically and socially significant people to settle in the American colonies were the Scots-Irish from Ulster in Northern Ireland.

The Scots-Irish were neither wholly Scottish, nor were they Irish.

They were mostly Scottish and English people who had once lived along the border of England and Scotland, but they descended from the Church of England, they were Presbyterians.

The Scots-Irish first settled in Ulster to escape famine and the seemingly endless wars along the Anglo-Scottish border.

After Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658, Parliament, like King Charles I in the 1630s, tried to force the Scots-Irish into the established Church by barring them from holding public office, whether in the military or in government.

Parliament forced them to pay taxes to the Church of England, and then discriminated against products the Scots-Irish raised or produced in Northern Ireland.

As a consequence of all the persecution over the years, waves of Scots-Irish left the British Isles and sailed for the American colonies.

Between 1710 and 1775, over 200,000 Scots-Irish settlers came to America.

The first Scots-Irish landed in New England and settled Western New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Finding they were not warmly welcome in Puritan New England, they found refuge in the middle colonies, particularly Pennsylvania.

Most of the Scots-Irish journeyed south to the back country settling in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and along the base of the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

At the same time, the Scots-Irish poured into the colonies, so did large numbers of Germans.

Whereas the Scots-Irish were Presbyterians, the Germans were Lutherans, Dunkards, Dutch Reformed, Moravians and Mennonites, all dissenters from the established Roman Catholic Church in the German States.

Some of them, like, the Moravians and Mennonites were pacifists.

William Penn, the founder of the Pennsylvania Colony and a Quaker, encouraged the persecuted Germans to settle in his colony.

By 1754, the Germans made up one third of the population of Pennsylvania.

Some Germans migrated into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and Western, North, and South Carolina.

Two large numbers of French Protestants known as Huguenots, who were mainly Calvinists had suffered persecution, even massacres, like the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre at the hands of Catherine de' Medici and her son, King Charles IX of France, where 70,000 Huguenots were killed.

Between 1680 and 1715, over 500,000 Huguenots fled to England, Holland, Prussia, and even Russia.

From there, many came to the colonies of New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Virginia.

The American colonists recognized tensions emerging between Great Britain and the American colonies by 1754.

All of the American colonies had been founded under the authority of the King.

Government authority in all of the colonies had always been exercised in the name of the King.

The American colonist felt the impact of the vast lands being far distant from England.

Many of his fellow colonists believed that England was futile and tyrannical.

Many colonists by 1754 were not of English descent, but rather were Scots-Irish, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch and French.

To Englishmen, however, the colonies were still considered to be dependencies and the American colonists were still the children of the mother country and subjects.

Many American colonists reacted strongly to the arrogance and snobbery of British officials who administered the layers of bureaucracy, making it difficult if not impossible for colonists to engage profitably in business.

Much of what was America in 1754, was controlled by Great Britain.

All the colonies along and near the Atlantic Coast were its possessions.

France claimed all of what is known today as Canada, as well as much of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, where it constructed a chain of forts for defense and trading.

French military forces and fortresses placed along the borders of the American colonies was unsettling to colonists living in the Thirteen Colonies, particularly the colonists in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

In July 1755, a British army led by General Edward Braddock marched from Alexandria, Virginia, to what is now Western Pennsylvania in an attempt to remove the French from the Forks of the Ohio.

Braddock's troops, however, were overwhelmed by a force of French and their Native American allies along the Monongahela River, not far from the Forks of the Ohio River.

Braddock was mortally wounded, and his army fled.

Less than a year after the defeat of Braddock's forces, Great Britain and its allies, including the Kingdoms of Prussia, Portugal and the Electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg, went to war in 1756 against the Kingdom of France and its allies.

The Austria-led Holy Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Swedish Empire.

Known as the Seven Years' War, it was fought across five continents, the world's first global war.

In America, it became known as the French and Indian War.

The year 1756, the first year of the war was particularly discouraging for Great Britain.

That year, King George II called upon William Pitt to oversee the prosecution of the war.

A flamboyant and brilliant statesman known as The Great Commoner because of his long-time refusal to accept a Royal title, Pitt was perfect for the assignment.

Forming a political alliance with Sir Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, Pitt chose to concentrate British military strength in America, while holding the French at bay on the seas and forcing them to concentrate their forces in Europe.

In 1758, Britain scored stunning victories over France in North America.

In a combined operation, the British forces under generals Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe took the French Fortress of Louisburg.

Then fell the French Fort Frontenac at the site of present-day Kingston, Ontario.

In September 1758, a British and colonial army under General John Forbes accompanied by then Colonel George Washington retraced Braddock's march to the Monongahela and attacked the French Fort Duquesne that had been erected at the Forks of the Ohio River, but they were repulsed.

When General Forbes's force returned in November, the Native American allies of the French deserted.

The French then blew up their magazines and set fire to the Fort as they recognized they were outnumbered.

The British took control of the Ohio Valley.

What was left of Fort Duquesne was rebuilt and renamed Fort Pitt in honor of William Pitt.

On the site of Fort Pitt today is the city of Pittsburgh.

A British and colonial army, commanded by General James Wolfe, then defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec in September 1759.

Wolfe though was mortally wounded in the engagement, as was the French commander, Marquis de Montcalm.

After the Battle of Quebec, British troops controlled Canada.

Similarly, French controlled in the West Indies, Africa, and even India, was broken and its power in those far-flung lands destroyed in that same year.

The British Navy even captured Manila and Havana from the French ally, Spain.

The year 1759 became known as the "Year of Miracles."

Church bells in London were rung every day as fresh victories were announced.

In 1760, 22-year-old George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain.

He was the grandson of King George II, who died that year at the age of 77.

George III was well educated, but he was considered to be naive by those who knew him.

He apparently lacked a mature understanding of human nature or any sophistication in the complexities of how to govern.

Although the British were initially intoxicated with their success over France and its allies, they soon felt overwhelmed with concern.

The defeated monarchs exhibited envy and anger toward England.

The young King wanted peace and to achieve that, he believed that William Pitt and his policies would have to be abandoned.

Pitt tendered his resignation in 1761. George Grenville, Pitt's brother-in-law, was named Northern Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty by Prime Minister Sir John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, in 1761.

He was given authority to bring the conflict to a negotiated end.

Ultimately, a treaty was signed in Paris, bringing the war to an official conclusion in 1763.

In that treaty, France formally gave to Britain all of its territory in North America.

In April 1763, Grenville was named Prime Minister after the Earl of Bute resigned.

Fighting a global war for seven years had been expensive, nearly depleting the British treasury.

Great Britain was in debt to the tune of nearly �130 million, a staggering sum in 1763.

Today, that would amount to well over �25 trillion.

To prevent France and its allies from attempting to retake what had been lost required Great Britain to maintain garrisons of regular troops in the territories it had conquered, as well as in its own colonies, an enormously expensive obligation.

In America, Great Britain maintained permanent garrisons totaling 10,000 British regulars.

Grenville believed that the American colonies benefited from the presence and protection of British troops and accordingly, the colonies would have to contribute to the cost of maintaining the garrison.

What Grenville and his fellow ministers failed to appreciate was that the American colonies contributed to the Seven Years' War by not only raising militias to fight alongside the British regulars, but also giving significant funds to the war effort.

New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia financed some of the notable campaigns.

The colonists believed that they had contributed their fair share.

Nevertheless, the decision was made in London to cut expenses and enact revenue raising measures upon the American colonists to help pay Great Britain's debts.

Grenville was aware that colonists had steadily expanded settlements into the Foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of the Carolinas, the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, and the Green Mountains of present day Vermont.

Ever increasingly, settlers in those foothills sought to settle lands beyond the Mountains.

Grenville and his ministers knew that settlement beyond the Mountains would likely lead to armed conflicts with the Native American tribes and Britain had no money to finance them.

Thus, King George III, by Royal Proclamation in 1763, barred any further settlements in the American colonies beyond a line drawn along the summits of the Green, Allegheny, Appalachian, and Great Smoky Mountains.

The proclamation line roughly approximated the Eastern Continental Divide, extending from Vermont and present-day New York, all the way to Georgia.

To placate the Native American tribes, the lands west of the proclamation line were considered an Indian Reserve.

The Proclamation of 1763 became unenforceable, settlers, like James Harrod, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, George Rogers Clark, and host of others, would defy it.

In the meantime, outrage spread among the colonists who believed the lands west of the Mountains properly belonged to the colonies and were subject only to local regulation.

Prime Minister Grenville then reviewed the voluminous Acts of trade and navigation, searching for strategies to raise revenue.

He convinced parliament in 1764 to require the colonies to purchase Madeira wine only through British shippers and British ports.

Heretofore, colonial shippers acquired Madeira from the Portuguese by bartering barrel staves and other goods for it, with the new Act, colonial shippers were required to pay so much that the trade became impossible to sustain.

Grenville then required other colonial exports to pass through British ports, one after another colonial merchants were bankrupted.

For years, colonial ships had taken vast shipments of dried fish, lumber, naval stores and horses to the French and Spanish West Indies and returned with black molasses which was processed into rum.

Massachusetts alone exported 2 million gallons of rum a year by 1750.

In 1764, Grenville decided to seize upon the rum trade as a means of raising money.

An extension of the 1733 Molasses Act known as the Sugar Act, Grenville's and Parliament's new requirements literally doubled the import duties on rum, seriously crippling trade.

To Grenville, the Sugar Act was an act with teeth, it contained heavy civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance.

Massachusetts Representative Thomas Cushing in a letter to Jasper Mauduit claimed that the Acts violated the exclusive right of the people of the colonies to tax themselves.

The Massachusetts legislature then appointed a committee to correspond with other colonies, particularly Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania, that were also devastated by the duties.

Sadly, more bankruptcies followed.

Grenville was hardly through getting parliament to enact revenue raising measures on the colonies.

Enacted on March 22nd, 1765, Parliament placed upon the colonies a direct tax on a variety of licenses, publications and legal papers.

Called the Stamp Act, the measure was the first direct tax made upon the American colonies by Parliament.

To comply with the Act, necessitated the purchase of special stamped paper.

The Act would become effective on November 1st, 1765.

A firestorm erupted in the colonies.

Unlike the response to the Sugar Act, which brought an outcry from only four of the colonies most affected, the Stamp Act brought about a unified outcry from all of the Thirteen Colonies.

The Stamp Act set forth a tax on each and every use of vellum or parchment, more than 50 itemized uses, and the tax would be paid by purchasing a stamp, like, the one shown here.

The South Carolina Assembly set forth the fundamental argument of the colonies succinctly.

Voiceover: "It is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people and to the undoubted rights of Englishmen that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent."

Kent Masterson Brown: To make matters worse, Parliament required that all violators of the Stamp Act be "tried at the discretion of the prosecutor in admiralty courts in any part of His Majesty's realm," thereby denying the accused of a trial before a jury of his peers.

In Virginia, the outcry against the Stamp Act became noteworthy.

At Williamsburg on May 29th, 30th, and 31st, 1765, members of the Virginia House of Burgesses known as the General Assembly considered seven resolutions against the Stamp Act introduced by the newly elected Patrick Henry of Louisa County, Henry was 29 years old.

Of the 116 members of the General Assembly only 39 were seated.

Henry's resolutions presented here in his own handwriting, embodied all of the objections the colonies would voice against Great Britain's attempt to levy taxes on them.

Wrote Patrick Henry... Voiceover: "Resolved, That the first Adventurers, Settlers of this his Majesty and Dominions of Virginia, brought with them and transmitted to their Posterity, and all other of his Majesty since inhabiting in this his Majesty all the Priviledges, Franchises and Immunities that have at any Time been held, enjoyed, and possessed by the People of Great Britain."

"Resolved, That by two Royal Charters, granted by King James I, the Colony aforesaid are declared and entitled to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of England."

"Resolved, That his Majesty of this his ancient Colony have enjoy of being thus govern by their own Assembly, in the Article of Taxes and internal Police; and the same have never been forfeited, or any other Way yielded up, but have been constantly recogniz by the King and People of Great Britain."

"Resolved, therefore, That the General Assembly of this Colony, together with his Majesty or his Substitutes, have, in their Representative Capacity, the only exclusive Right and Power to lay Taxes and Imposts upon the Inhabitants of this Colony: And that every Attempt to vest such Power in any other Person or Persons whatever, than the General Assembly aforesaid, is illegal, unconstitutional and unjust, and have a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Liberty."

Kent Masterson Brown: And then Henry went farther... Voiceover: "Resolved, That his Majesty liege People, the Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever, designed to impose any Taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the Laws or Ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid."

"Resolved, That any Person, who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain, that any Person or Persons, other than the General Assembly of this Colony, have any Right or Power to impose or levy Taxation on the People here, shall be deemed an Enemy to this his Majesty's Colony."

Of those 39 members of the General Assembly who heard Patrick Henry's resolutions, a majority voted to pass the first five of those resolves.

Although the last two of the resolves were not passed by the General Assembly, all seven of the resolves were printed in the Newport Mercury of June 24th, 1765, and the Annapolis, Maryland Gazette on July 4th, 1765, leading many to believe all the resolutions had been adopted in July 1765.

George Grenville was forced out of office 3.5 months before the Stamp Act was to take effect.

He had become personally unacceptable to the King.

In Grenville's place came Charles Watson-Wentworth, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, the First Lord of the Treasury.

Rockingham tried to get the Stamp Act repealed, calling upon the persuasive abilities of William Pitt to help him convince Parliament.

In the American colonies, there was considerable unrest and dissatisfaction.

Responding to a letter from the Massachusetts Assembly, nine colonies - Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina, sent delegates to meet in Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City in October 1765, "to consult together on the present circumstances of the colonies."

End quote.

Unfortunately, the plan to meet was complicated by a number of unforeseen events.

The delegates from Virginia and Georgia were prohibited to attend by their colonial governors.

Delegates of Maryland, New Hampshire, and North Carolina were prevented from attending due to a host of other problems, a smallpox outbreak, a financial crisis and even the proroguing of the Assembly by a royal governor.

The Stamp Act Congress, as it was called, nevertheless, became the first General Congress of the colonies convened without the authority of the King.

Consequently, the Stamp Act Congress was regarded by the King as a dangerous tendency in and of itself.

Indeed, although acknowledging, "That his Majesty's subjects in the colonies, owe the same allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, that is owing from his subjects within the realm, and all due subordination to that august body the Parliament of Great Britain."

The Stamp Act Congress, nevertheless, passed 13 resolutions directed to the King, the Lords and the Commons, shown here in the Providence Gazette of October 19, 1765, all rejecting any claim of Parliament to tax the people of the colonies and deny them trial by jury as the colonies had no representatives in that body.

Beyond the Stamp Act Congress, local organizations within each colony were formed to campaign against the government exceeding its authority whether by a little officer or a king, as seen in The Boston Gazette of November 18th, 1765.

Many of those local organizations refer to themselves as the "Sons of Liberty."

The Sons of Liberty denounced each Stamp as a badge of slavery.

The entire effort was directed to prevent the Stamp Act from taking effect.

Tax collectors were harassed and threatened, some were tarred and feathered.

Before long, many tax collectors refused to serve because of fear for their safety.

Effigies of tax collectors were hung on hastily constructed gallows.

In New York City, Royal Governor Cadwallader Colden's effigy was carried down the streets and burned along with his carriage.

British troops were brought to the city.

Many tax collectors and loyalists fled from the colonies.

It became impossible to enforce Parliament's Act.

Beginning with New York and Connecticut, the Sons of Liberty established communication networks and entered into certain reciprocal and mutual agreements with the Sons of Liberty and other colonies, as set forth in this February 5th, 1766, letter to John Adams from the Sons of Liberty.

Before the end of 1765, the lower houses of legislatures in eight other colonies approved resolutions condemning the Stamp Act and denying the right of Parliament to tax the American colonies.

The debate to repeal the Stamp Act in the House of Comment began in January 1766 and William Pitt reentered the fray arguing.

Voiceover: "Everything the Grenville Ministry did was wrong.

The Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies.

At the same time, I said the authority of this Kingdom over the Colonies to be sovereign and supreme.

The colonists shared the rights of all Englishmen were bound by England's laws, and were subject to all the protections of its constitution and the crucial one in this case was the right to be taxed by one's representatives."

Kent Masterson Brown: Pitt continued echoing the objections voiced by the colonies... Voiceover: "Who in England represented the Americans, the knights of the shire?

The representative of a borough?

A borough, which perhaps its own representative never saw?

Here is another absurdity, the most contemptible idea that ever entered the head of man."

William Pitt Kent Masterson Brown: Many members of Parliament were offended by Pitt's remarks.

Member Henry Conway moved to resolve that Parliament possessed the power to make laws binding on the colonies in all cases whatsoever.

The resolution became known as the Declaratory Act.

Sixty-year-old Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, then a spokesman for the colonies in London, was called before Parliament by the Rockingham Ministry in early 1766.

Franklin reassured Parliament of the colonies' loyalty to Great Britain but explained that they were harmed by the destructive taxes.

He then told Parliament that Grenville's policies had inspired a movement for economic independence in America.

Repeal of the Stamp Act, he said would cause the colonies to consume British manufactured goods again.

In response to Franklin's warnings and assurances, Parliament in March 1766, passed a bill repealing the Stamp Act, but that same day also approved the Declaratory Act over Pitt's vigorous objections.

In the late spring of 1766, ships sailing into colonial harbors brought news that the Stamp Act had been repealed.

The news raced through the colonies causing celebrations that turned into near riots.

In New York City, the celebration was particularly rowdy.

As colonial assemblies reconvened, a few sent resolutions of gratitude to the King.

Among the colonists, a sense of distrust grew against not only those in parliament who voted to enact the Stamp Act, but even those who had voted to repeal it.

The Declaratory Act gave the colonist a solid reason to have reservations.

George Mason of Virginia may have expressed the reservations of the colonist best when he publicly stated that Great Britain looked upon the colonies as that of a master to a schoolboy.

Voiceover: "We have, with infinite difficulty and fatigue got you excused this one time; pray be a good boy for the future; do what your Papa and Mama bid you...but, if you are a naughty boy... your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely..." George Mason In the wake of the repeal of the Stamp Act, the colonists found that individuals who supported Great Britain in the crisis were defeated for election or reelection to colonial assemblies by large margins, and those who supported organizations like the Sons of Liberty were elected.

Unintentionally, the passage and repeal of the Stamp Act had in large measure united the colonies amplifying and consolidating the colonists' positions on governance.

Finding him largely ineffective, the King dismissed Lord Rockingham in July 1766.

Not wanting Grenville to return, the King turned to William Pitt who had expressed an interest in forming a government.

Elevated to the peerage, Pitt became the Earl of Chatham.

Pitt focused on reform that would rid the government of its various factions fomented by courtiers and bureaucrats.

Meaningful reform proved to be nearly impossible.

In the midst of the turmoil, he created by his reform efforts, Pitt collapsed due to ill health and was taken to Bath in March 1767 to recover.

Among those Pitt had brought into his government was 41-year-old Charles Townshend who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Unfortunately, for Pitt Townshend proved to be erratic and unpredictable, causing Pitt, before he became ill, to try to force him out.

Taking advantage of Pitt's absence during his convalescence at Bath, Townshend presented to Parliament, an aggressive program to bring the American colonies to heel.

He demanded that the Quartering Act of 1765 be vigorously enforced.

That called for British troops to be quartered in the colonies, using buildings and necessities provided and paid for by the colonies.

Up to now the New York Assembly had outright refused to comply with the Quartering Act, and Townshend demanded that the meetings of the New York Assembly be suspended until it did comply.

Parliament enacted Townshend's demands in what was called the New York Restraining Act.

Having refused to acknowledge the lesson that should have been learned from the colonies' reaction to the Stamp Act, Townshend called for a Revenue Act that required that import duties be collected in the colonies on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea, and the money raised be used to pay the royal officials, the crown would have to employ, to live and work in the colonies in order to collect the revenues.

To enforce the Revenue Act, customs officials were empowered to use writs of assistance to search private property without notice and without probable cause of wrongdoing.

Finally, Townshend's enactment created an American Board of Customs Commissioners in the colonies, the new bureaucracy that he believed would be a significant force for the King in the colonies.

All of Townshend's proposals were eagerly enacted by Parliament in 1767.

As soon as the news of the enactments reached American ports, however, yet another firestorm erupted.

The Townshend enactments were what many colonists like George Mason had warned the people about after the repeal of the Stamp Act and the enactment of the Declaratory Act.

Lawyer John Dickinson is credited with being among those in the colonies who first wrote about the Townshend Acts being an encroachment upon the constitutional rights of the colonists in his "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania," published in 1767.

At 35 years of age, Dickinson was no Pennsylvania farmer, born in Maryland, he grew up in Dover, Delaware, and then studied law at the Middle Temple in London.

He practiced law in Philadelphia and eventually moved back to Delaware.

In 1760, he was elected to the Assembly in Delaware and two years later to the Pennsylvania Assembly.

Dickinson published his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in The Boston Chronicle, shown here, to argue that the Townshend duties were no different than the taxes raised by the Stamp Act.

Dickinson's letters were widely published, copies appeared in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Williamsburg, Virginia.

They were even published in London, Paris, and Dublin.

Dickinson vigorously asserted that the Townshend Duties were, in fact, taxes designed to raise money from the colonies.

Although Parliament possessed the right to regulate commerce, Dickinson argued it had no right to levy duties for revenue.

Wrote Dickinson... Voiceover: "This Enactment I call an innovation, and a most dangerous innovation.

What is the difference in substance and right whether the same sum is raised upon us by the rates mentioned in the Stamp Act, or the use of paper, or by these duties on the importation of it.

It is nothing but the addition of a former book, with a new title page."

Kent Masterson Brown: Regarding New York being punished by the Townshend Acts for its refusal to abide by the Quartering Act, Dickinson asserted... Voiceover: "For it is evident, that the method of compelling New York to obey the Quartering Act is totally indifferent, it is indeed probable, that the sight of red coats, and the beating of drums would have been most alarming, because people are generally more influenced by their eyes and ears than by their reason: But whoever seriously considers the matter, must perceive, that a dreadful stroke is aimed at the liberty of these colonies: For the cause of one is the cause of all."

Kent Masterson Brown: Many colonists reacted strongly to Dickinson's letters almost from the earliest publication of them.

Two assemblymen in Massachusetts were among the most notable, 43-year-old James Otis, Jr., had been involved with the resistance to the Stamp Act.

Even before then, Otis had become known for a nearly five-hour oration against the English writs of assistance that permitted British authorities to enter any home with no advance notice, no probable cause, and for no reason.

The 42-year-old son of a well-known lawyer, militia colonel, and political figure, from Barnstable, Massachusetts, Otis was a Harvard College graduate, lawyer, and a member of the provincial assembly.

He was the author of the 1764 treatise, "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved."

Otis called upon the Massachusetts Assembly in mid-1768 to send a letter to all the colonies, asking them to unite in opposition to the Townshend Acts.

Hearing how James Otis defended his writings, Dickinson sent him a poem supplied by Arthur Lee of Virginia that was published in The Boston Chronicle.

Voiveover: "Come join hands brave Americans all And 'rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty's call No tyrannous act shall suppress your just claim Or stain with dishonor America's name.

In Freedom we're born and in Freedom we'll live.

Our purses are ready Steady, Friends, steady.

Not as Slaves but as Freemen our money we'll give."

Kent Masterson Brown: Otis was joined by Samuel Adams, a 46-year-old native of Boston, whose father operated a malt house, a business that provided malt used to make beer.

Adams was graduated from Harvard College in 1740.

He had held some minor town offices.

A member of the Sons of Liberty, during the Stamp Act crisis, Adams took a leading role in the resistance to the Townshend Acts.

In February 1768, the Massachusetts Assembly approved a circular letter written and introduced by Otis and Adams calling upon the colonies to harmonize with each other.

In the circular letter, Otis and Adams rejected the idea that the colonies could ever be represented in Parliament.

Although it was the supreme legislative body of the British Empire, Parliament - they argued, derived its authority from the constitution that guaranteed all British subjects to be taxed only with their consent.

As for the American Board of Customs Commissioners, Otis and Adams claimed, it threatened colonial liberty as it had the power to increase its offices and officials and consequently its authority and costs.

The circular letter was sent to the speakers of all the colonial provincial assemblies in North America.

In March 1768, 47-year-old Peyton Randolph, the speaker of the Virginia General Assembly, led that body in Williamsburg to approve protests to the King and Parliament.

The Virginians claimed the Virginia General Assembly was equal to Parliament as the legislative body over the Colony of Virginia, although the Virginians did not seek independence from Great Britain.

By May 1768, the Virginia General Assembly reported a circular letter of its own urging the colonies to take collective measures against British actions that have "...an immediate tendency to enslave them."

In Boston, Otis and Adams enlisted Dr. Joseph Warren, a 27-year-old Boston physician, to join the resistance.

Warren wrote an article that appeared in The Boston Gazette that accused the Royal Governor Francis Bernard of surrendering to wickedness.

Warren even suggested that Bernard was related to the devil.

There were accusations that Warren libeled the Governor and there were threats of civil and even criminal actions against Warren and others.

In the midst of the heated exchanges between the Royal Governor and Dr. Joseph Warren, the customs commissioners instructed the Attorney General of Massachusetts to file criminal charges against one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston, John Hancock, after he had two minor customs officials removed from below deck of his ship, Lydia.

The Attorney General refused to file charges on account of the fact that Hancock had acted legally in removing the customs officials.

The customs commissioners nevertheless appealed the matter to the treasury board in England.

They based their appeal not on the fact that Hancock acted contrary to the law, but rather on the assertion that Hancock was one of the leaders of the disaffected in Boston, indeed he was.

The hated customs commissioners, then seized Hancock's ship, Liberty, based upon the false account of a minor customs official and had the ship moved out into the harbor by the crew of the British 50-gun man-o'-war, HMS Romney.

The Royal Governor Francis Bernard, in response to the violence and mayhem, then dissolved the Massachusetts Assembly.

The members reconvened in a nearby tavern.

Shocked by the Royal Governor's act dissolving the legislature and by the customs officials seizing Hancock's ships, The Boston Gazette ran a warning to the authorities, mostly penned by Samuel Adams, but bearing the name Determinatus as the author.

Voiceover: "I am no friend of riots, tumult, and unlawful assemblies, but when the people are oppressed, when their rights are infringed, when their property is invaded, when task masters are set over them, when unconstitutional acts are executed by a naval force before the eyes, and they are daily threatened with military troops, when their legislature is dissolved, and what government is left is secret as a Divan, when placemen and their underlings swarm about them, and troops begin to make an insolent appearance- in such circumstances, the people will be discontented, and they are not to be blamed..." Samuel Adams Kent Masterson Brown: The selectmen of Boston sent a circular letter to various towns in Massachusetts requesting that representatives be sent to a convention at Boston on September 22nd, 1768, to decide what measures should be adopted to obtain redress of grievances against Great Britain.

Governor Bernard received word that British troops had been dispatched from Halifax to Boston.

Word leaked out to the citizens of Boston that British troops were being sent to Boston and the people became alarmed.

It was no longer taxation without representation that was the problem, it was the outright subjugation of the people of the colonies by Great Britain.

A 'Convention of Towns' met in Boston on September 22nd, 1768.

The delegates demanded that the Royal Governor allow the Massachusetts Assembly to meet again, Governor Bernard refused.

The Convention of Towns ended on September 27th.

Three days later, October 1st, elements of the British 14th and 29th Regiments of Foot, 1,200 soldiers in all, disembarked from 14 naval vessels, some bearing 50 guns, and entered Boston by way of the 2,000-foot, Long Wharf, as seen in this rare engraving of the event by Paul Revere.

By mid-afternoon, two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot and an artillery detachment marched into Boston.

In November, two more British commands the 64th and the 65th Regiments of Foot arrived in the city, increasing the number of British troops there to well over 2,000, by then one man in three in Boston was a British soldier.

Soldiers swarmed the town.

Boston was an occupied city.

In her three volume "History of the American Revolution," published in 1805, Mercy Otis Warren, a close friend and relative of some of the principal leaders of Massachusetts, wrote that, "The American War may be dated from the hostile parade of October 1, 1768 when several regiments here landed and marched, sword in hand, through the principal streets of their city that was then in profound peace."

On August 1st, 1768, the Boston merchants agreed to stop all British imports beginning November 1st, it was the only leverage left to the colonies.

Then at the end of August, New York merchants in solidarity with the merchants of Boston agreed to stop British imports on November 1st.

Thereafter, Philadelphia stopped British imports in March 1769, the Connecticut Assembly after that resolved to support non-importation.

On the heels of the Connecticut Assembly's resolution, Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina, followed suit.

To convince Rhode Island, merchants in the colonies who agreed to non-importation, refused to do business with their counterparts in Rhode Island unless they agreed to do the same.

In the midst of the unrest, the Duke of Grafton, a staunch supporter of William Pitt, became Prime Minister.

He was only 33 years old and would prove to be ineffective.

The non-importation effort began to falter in January and February of 1770.

To discourage merchants from selling British goods, stores in Boston were vandalized by angry mobs.

The agitation against the Townshend Acts soon gained a martyr.

The Boston Gazette reported that an 11-year-old boy named Christopher Snider was killed when a customs informer, Ebenezer Richardson, fired into a crowd of demonstrators.

The Boston Gazette story dated February 26th, 1770.

Four days after the killing stated that more than 500 schoolboys, preceded Snider's casket to the grave, followed by a crowd of mourners numbering nearly 2,000.

Even before the unrest in 1770, the King recognized that Massachusetts needed a new Royal Governor.

Replacing Francis Bernard as Governor of Massachusetts in 1769, was the noted British sympathizer, Thomas Hutchinson.

He had an enormously complex and difficult problem to face as governor.

Across the sea, Frederick North, the 2nd Earl of Guilford, became Prime Minister of Great Britain in January 1770, replacing the Duke of Grafton, who resigned.

Known as Lord North, the new Prime Minister directed his attention to the unrest in the American colonies.

Clashes between angry civilians and British troops, became more common in Boston.

Then on March 5th, 1770, the same day Parliament rescinded the tax on four of the five commodities referenced in the Townshend Acts, a group of civilians harassed a sentry posted in front of the customs house on State Street in Boston, shown here.

The crowd began to grow, and a confrontation appeared inevitable.

British Captain Thomas Preston led seven soldiers from the 29th Regiment to reinforce the sentry.

In spite of Preston's efforts, the crowd would not disperse.

[gunfire] In the midst of all the noise and confusion, shots were fired.

The troops open fire, three civilians were killed, two were mortally wounded as seen in this engraving of the event created and marketed by Paul Revere.

One of those killed was the African American, Crispus Attucks, whose casket, initials, and name appear on a broadside produced by The Boston Gazette of March 12th, 1770.

Within hours, Captain Preston and his men were jailed.

All of them were charged with murder.

The Bostonians demanded the troops be removed before the Superior Court of Judicature, John Adams, Robert Auchmuty, Jr. and Josiah Quincy, Jr. defended the British soldiers.

The trials of the soldiers began on October 24th, 1770.

Ultimately, the jury found six of the soldiers not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and escaped the death penalty.

In the fall of 1772, the Bostonians heard rumors that Parliament was going to mandate that the judges of the Superior Court of Judicature would no longer be paid by the colony's General Court, but instead by funds collected by the hated American Board of Customs Commissioners.

The news brought about great fear among the colonists that Parliament was going to in their words, pervert the judgment of men, by this kind of interference with the courts.

Samuel Adams proposed the creation of a corresponding organization to measure the sentiments of other Massachusetts towns in response to the rumors about Parliament and the presence of British troops in Boston.

On November 2nd, 1772, the Boston selectmen voted to establish a 21-member committee of correspondence.

Soon other towns appointed their own committees of correspondence, just as Adams had suggested.

In the spring of 1773, the Virginia House of Burgesses resolved to form a committee of correspondence, composed of noted Virginians including Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee and others.

It was welcome news to Boston's Committee.

On May 10th, 1773, the committees of correspondence in Massachusetts saw their first opportunity to act when Parliament enacted the Tea Act fundamentally granting to the financially troubled East India Company, a monopoly on the sale of tea.

Many members of Parliament were investors in the East India Company.

Members of Parliament believed they had the power to impose such intolerable strictures upon the colonies and even gain personal benefit to themselves by doing so.

Although the Townshend duties had been rescinded on four of the five commodities taxed, the tax on tea remained in full force in effect.

On Sunday, November 28, 1773, the ship, Dartmouth, carrying 114 chests of tea arrived in Boston Harbor.

A meeting was called for all Bostonians to attend at Faneuil Hall.

The crowd became so large, the meeting was moved to the Old South Meeting House.

The Assembly demanded the tea carried by the Dartmouth be returned to England.

It then appointed 25 men to guard Griffin's Wharf to prevent the landing and unloading of the Dartmouth's cargo.

Strong reaction to the Tea Act, was not limited to Boston as threats from the citizens in Philadelphia and New York led to the resignations of consignees in three port towns by December 2nd.

On December 15th, 1773, two ships, the Eleanor and the Beaver, both filled with tea arrived at Griffin's Wharf in Boston.

A citizen's meeting at Old South Meeting Hall, the next day, demanded that Tea be returned to England.

Two, they resolved to prevent the East India tea from being unloaded, stored and/or consumed.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the crowd filed out onto the street.

There, they followed 30-60 men dressed like Mohawk Native Americans to the Griffin's Wharf where they proceeded to dump 342 chests of tea into the sea.

Not stopping with stripping the ships of the tea, they ransacked and destroyed tea shipments in a nearby warehouse for good measure.

In March and April 1774, the pretend Native Americans destroyed more shipments of teas.

To quell what he referred to as the commotions and insurrections in Boston, Lord North proposed, and Parliament enacted an Act to block up Boston Harbor on March 25th, 1774.

The act would become effective on June 1st, it would shut down Boston Harbor until the East India Company was compensated for its losses, some �9,659 or $1,700,000 in today's money.

And the Act further required that the Bostonians cease and desist from destroying East India Company property.

About six weeks later in May 1774, the colonist received the news of Parliament's closure of Boston Harbor.

At the same time, a new governor for the Massachusetts Colony arrived, General Thomas Gage.

Gage, at the time, was also commander-in-chief of British military forces in North America.

Not a man of significant learning, Gage, hailed from a Sussex family of Peerage.

His father was the first viscount of Sussex.

Gage entered the British army and rapidly rose in the ranks.

He was a constitutionalist or one of those who believed in the rule of law.

Naming General Gage as Governor of Massachusetts, however, was a direct message from the King and Lord North to the people of that colony that Great Britain would not hesitate to use force against them.

The Bostonians received more alarming news the day after the Act, closing Boston Harbor became effective.

They learned that Parliament had enacted what was called the Administration of Justice Act and the Massachusetts Government Act.

The Administration of Justice Act removed from colonial courts, the power to decide cases of murder or other capital offenses, if the charges were brought against an official, performing his duty, suppressing riots, enforcing revenue laws, or similar acts.

Instead those cases would be tried by a court in Great Britain or some other of His Majesty's colonies.

No more murder cases such as the ones brought against the British Officer Richardson for the murder of the Snider boy and against the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre would ever be permitted in colonial courts again.

To the colonists, the Administration of Justice Act became known as the Murder Act.

The Massachusetts Government Act mandated that all judges of colonial courts would be appointed by the governor alone.

Juries would be chosen by the sheriff and the sheriffs were named by the governor.

General Gage would now make all those decisions.

Together with the Act closing Boston Harbor, the three Acts became known as the Intolerable Acts.

They fundamentally repealed the colonial charter of Massachusetts Colony.

Parliament was hardly through enacting laws to punish the colonies and particularly Massachusetts.

In an Act designed to raise money to pay for the troops garrisoned in the colonies, principally in Massachusetts and the city of Boston, Parliament levied fees and duties upon marriages and births.

It even went so far as declaring that the killing of a child or children was not deemed murder and would not be punished.

Apparently directed at illegitimate children or children orphaned in the colonies, so Britain would not have to pay for their care.

The Act was an astonishing example of how cold and brutal the British government had become.

Also enacted was yet another Quartering Act.

Now, the colonies were forced to billet and quarter the officers and soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies.

If the barracks were unavailable, the colonial officials were required to secure public houses such as inns and taverns.

If those were not available, the colonial officials were required to obtain so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings, as shall be necessary.

The colonial officials were also to provide the troops with candles, vinegar, beer or cider and other stores.

All these acts became known as the Coercive Acts.

The response to Parliament's actions, was swift and angry.

A Boston committee of correspondents circulated a letter on June 8th, 1774, calling upon the colonists to resist.

The letter stated... Voiceover: "Gentlemen, the evils which we have long foreseen are now come upon this town and province."

Kent Masterson Brown: The letter claimed that the Act closing Boston Harbor was replete with injustice and cruelty.

Indeed, it was, the letter claimed... Voiceover: "Britain is acting to bring the whole American continent into the most humiliating bondage."

Kent Masterson Brown: The letter ended... Voiceover: "To these, and even the least of these shameful impositions, we trust in God, our countrymen never will submit."

Kent Masterson Brown: In September 1774, 56 delegates from 12 of the colonies, met in Philadelphia to consider a unified response.

Among the actions taken by local committees in the colonies were the resolves from Suffolk County, Massachusetts of October 14th, 1774.

The Suffolk Resolves were taken to Philadelphia by none other than Boston silversmithand engraver, Paul Revere.

Penned by Dr. Joseph Warren, the Suffolk Resolves read... Voiceover: "That until our rights are fully restored to us, we will to the utmost of our Power and recommend the same to other Counties withhold all commercial Intercourse with Great-Britain, Ireland and the West Indies, and abstain from the Consumption of British Merchandise and Manufacturers, and especially East India Teas and Piece Goods, with such Additions, Alterations and Exceptions only as the Grand Congress of the Colonies may agree to."

Kent Masterson Brown: The suffering in Boston and its surrounding towns became acute.

Food, clothes and materials to make clothes and shoes were denied the people there by the closing of the Harbor.

Soon other colonies began sending shipments of necessities overland to Boston.

Still, few articles reached the people of Boston.

Women and children especially suffered lack of clothing, food and other necessities.

In all the turmoil, women began to add their voices to the calls for liberty in the face of such injustice.

No woman was more influential than Mercy Otis Warren, the sister of Massachusetts Assemblyman James Otis, Jr. Mercy was well-educated and well-placed to advocate powerfully for natural rights.

Tutored alongside her brother in his preparation for Harvard, Mercy, married her brother's friend, James Warren, the President of the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly.

She and her husband hosted the Sons of Liberty in their home and supported the boycotts of British goods, as well as the Boston Tea Party.

Mercy was a capable writer, writing mostly anonymously, she authored satirical plays, criticizing British colonial leaders, and revealing them to be enemies of liberty.

She was also a keen observer and writer about why there must be limitations on government power.

Among Mercy's many notable sayings about government are these... Voiceover: "The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments because no republic ever yet stood on a stable foundation without satisfying the common people.

The origin of all power is in the people, and they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation."

Mercy Otis Warren Kent Masterson Brown: British troops had all but taken over Boston, a town of only four miles in circumference.

Quartered mostly on Boston Common in Faneuil Hall and in the warehouses at the wharf, British troops were seen everywhere.

Crimes committed by soldiers such as theft and assault abounded.

In some instances, the crimes were serious.

The townspeopl were even subjected to witnessing a soldier executed by a firing squad for desertion.

King George III notified parliament that it must take a tough stand against "The most daring spirit of resistance and disobedience to the law," that was repeated by Lord North.

General Gage knowing the wishes of his King and Prime Minister exerted his authority over every aspect of public life in Boston, and throughout Massachusetts.

Every meeting hall and courthouse was shut down to public gatherings.

After all of Great Britain's punitive actions against the colonies and particularly against Boston and Massachusetts, the other 12 colonies reassured the people of the Bay State of their support and solidarity.

The most interesting message of support, however, came from the frontier of all places.

After a victory by Virginia riflemen over principally the Shawnee Tribe at Point Pleasant, now West Virginia, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha rivers in October 1774, the only battle of what became known as Lord Dunmore's War, the Virginians concluded the conflict when the Shawnee chief signed the treaty of Camp Charlotte near present day Chillicothe, Ohio.

The Virginians erected a fortified station at the confluence of the Ohio and Hocking rivers in present day Ohio called Fort Gower.

There in early November 1774, they received word of the Intolerable Acts, the Coercive Acts, and the Resolves of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, that had met the month before.

The Virginians determined to produce resolves of their own.

On November 5th, 1774, the Virginians introduced their resolves by noting that they had lived about three months in the woods without hearing any intelligence from Boston or from the delegates of Philadelphia.

What they did learn about Boston and the Congress in Philadelphia was alarming.

In what they call the Fort Gower Resolves, the Virginians wrote... Voiceover: "We will bear the most faithful Allegiance to his Majesty King George III, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free People; that we will, at the Expense of Life, and every Thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in Support of the Honour of his Crown and the Dignity of the British empire.

But as the Love of Liberty, and Attachment to the real Interests and just Rights of America outweigh every other Consideration, we resolve that we will exert every Power within us for the Defence of American Liberty, and for the Support of her just Rights and Privileges."

Kent Masterson Brown: Among those who signed the Resolves were George Rogers Clark and Andrew Lewis, the commander of the Virginians at the Battle of Point Pleasant.

A little more than two months later on January 20th, 1775, a committee of 15 delegates in Fincastle County, Virginia, in the Upper Shenandoah Valley, adopted resolutions of their own.

Most of the delegates, like, Colonels William Preston, and William Campbell, were of Scots-Irish descent.

They too expressed their allegiance to their lawful sovereign, but then resolved.

They have some spillers about the -- well I trade this on the Voiceover: "But if no public measures shall be proposed or adopted by Great Britain, and our enemies will attempt to dragoon us out of those inestimable privileges, which we are entitled to as subjects, and to reduce us to a state of slavery, we declare that we are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender them to any power on earth, but at the expense of our lives."

What the King and his ministers and the members of parliament clearly did not comprehend, was how much the colonists were willing to sacrifice for their liberties, and moreover how widespread was that resolution.

Even backwoods gatherings of frontiersmen, masterfully articulated their sentiments about liberty and their willingness to give up their lives and property, if need be, to defend their liberty.

The King and his ministers and Parliament were waking up a sleeping giant.

One person who recognized the reality facing Great Britain by the actions of Parliament toward the colonies was William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham.

As a member of the House of Lords, he proposed a formula for conciliation with the colonies, meeting some of their demands but maintaining parliamentary authority.

Here on the table in front of Pitt is a map of North America and a resolution too among other things, "Withdraw of British troops from Boston and restore the fundamental liberties of no taxation without consent, independent judges and trial by jury."

Sadly, Pitt was ignored by his peers.

Instead, the British government under Lord North only escalated its punitive measures.

General Gage not only prohibited public gatherings in Massachusetts, a move that restricted speech and imposed humiliation, but he now decided to seize the military arsenals in New England, effectively disarming the colonists.

As early as September 1st, 1774, General Gage sent 260 British soldiers from the 4th Regiment of Foot to Charlestown across the Back Bay from Boston to seize 250 barrels of gunpowder and two artillery pieces from the town's magazine.

In response to what was called the Powder Alarm, the colonists in Massachusetts, acting through a Provincial Congress established an elaborate netwok of alarm riders and militia companies that could quickly respond to emergencies.

They were not going to allow the British to disarm them.

Gage, in turn, dispatched spies to Middlesex, Suffolk, and Worcester counties.

In Middlesex County, the spies discovered stores of weapons and supplies in Concord.

Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of State for the American Colonies, had urged General Gage when he assumed the Office of Governor to arrest the Whig leaders, confiscate the rebels' weapons, and invoke martial law.

To satisfy Lord Dartmouth, Gage decided to seize the weapons at Concord.

It is believed that someone within General Gage's circle, possibly his wife, Margaret Kemble Gage, well connected to many of the great families of New York and a native of New Jersey, informed Dr. Joseph Warren of her husband's orders for troops to march to conquer.

Gage's transmitted orders to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith of the 10th Regiment read as follows... Voiceover: "Sir, having received intelligence, that a quantity of Ammunition and Provision, together with Artillery, Tents and small arms, have been collected at Concord, for the Avowed Purpose of asserting a Rebellion against His Majesty's Government, you will March with the Corps of Grenadiers and Light Infantry, put under your command, with the utmost expedition and Secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all the artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military Stores you can find.

But you will take care that the Soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants, or hurt private property."

General Thomas Gage Kent Masterson Brown: On the night of April 18th, 1775, eight companies of British grenadiers and eight companies of the light infantry from the 4th, 10th, 18th, 38th, 43rd, 52nd and 59th Regiments of Foot, 800-900 soldiers in all, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Smith gathered along Boston's Back Bay.

Commanding the 5th Regiment and assigned to command a brigade consisting of the 23rd and 47th Regiments of Foot and 10 companies of Royal Marines that would depart Boston later in the morning, was 33-year-old Lord Hugh Percy, the eldest son of the Duke of Northumberland.

Beginning at midnight, Smith's troops were ferried across the Back Bay to Cambridge.

The colonists' own scouts brought back news of the movement of British troops.

Late at night, on April 18th, two men, Robert Newman and John Pulling, after conferring with none other than Paul Revere, climbed up the 54 steps of the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston.

There they hung two lanterns out of the steeple window, a signal to the alarm riders, waiting to alert the militias and townspeople.

Selected to be one of the principal alarm riders by Dr. Joseph Warren was 40-year-old Paul Revere.

Revere instructed Newman and Pulling that night, that 'two lanterns' hung in the steeple of Old North Church would signal that the British Force was heading by sea or across the Back Bay to reach Cambridge.

"One lantern" would indicate that the British force was marching by land to Cambridge.

Once Revere received word of the course, the British force was taking, he was under instructions, to not only notify officers of the local militia organizations and village and county leaders, and even clergymen along the way, but to get to Lexington.

There, he was to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock who were staying at the parsonage of the Town Minister Jonas Clarke, where about 30 men of the colonial militia guarded them, with Hancock was his fianc, Dorothy Quincy.

Beyond Revere though a vast network of express riders and couriers were riding across the countryside on other routes, warning militia officers, community leaders, and clergy, in over 40 towns, south, west and north of Boston in like manner.

Once the British force reassembled at Cambridge after crossing the Bay, they began to March to Lexington and Concord at two o'clock in the morning.

They could hear gunshots, church bells and drumbeats, sounding the call to arms, alerting the militia to gather in villages along and around the route of their march through the early hours of the morning.

While Paul Revere was riding through the countryside, warning the militias on his way to Lexington, another rider, William Dawes was approaching Lexington by another route.

A full moon gave them enough light to see their way as recorded by Revere here in his own handwriting.

A Charlestown man, Richard Devens, warned Revere that British troops were patrolling the route to Lexington and Concord.

Revere never got to Concord.

He was captured by a British patrol after leaving Lexington, but surprisingly, they released him after he warned the officers that overwhelming numbers of militia were marching toward Lexington.

The British forces arrived in Lexington around 4: 30 in the morning of April 19th.

The sun was just beginning to rise as they passed the Buckman Tavern where the local militiamen had gathered only hours before.

The advanced companies of the British troops marched on to the village Green, in front of the meeting house in Bedford.

A company of the local armed militia, only about 60 or 70 men blocked the way of the British troops to Bedford and to Concord.

Captain John Parker, a local farmer and mechanic, walked among his militiamen telling them to be steady.

Parker did not wished to start a fight, but he would not run away from one either.

"The first man who offers to run will be shot down," Parker said.

"Stand your ground," he barked over and over, "Don't fire unless fired upon."

Parker then said... "But if they mean to have a war, then let it begin here.

Kent Masterson Brown: From the ranks of the British Light Infantry of the advanced guard, six companies from the 10th Regiment, Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, rode ahead of his troops and halted only about 20 yards in front of the militia.

He had just warned his own troops not to fire and to keep your ranks.

Pitcairn then yelled at the militiamen... John Pitcairn: "Throw down your arms and disperse, you damn rebels!"

Kent Masterson Brown: There was no response.

Pitcairn rode back to his men.

A shot was fired.

[gunshot] No one ever knew a certainty from where the shot emanated.

It could have come from a spectator.

John Robbins, a Lexington militiaman, claimed one of the British officers ordered his men to open fire.

British soldiers recalled the shot coming from a Lexington militiaman, that first shot would become known as the "shot heard 'round the world."

Suddenly, the British front file formed by the 10th Regiment opened fire.

The second file then opened fire.

One eyewitness described it as a continual roar of musketry.

In a moment, seven militiamen were killed, nine were wounded, some severely, including Captain Parker's kinsman Jonas Parker, who was not only shot down but minutes later bayoneted.

The militia dissolved as the British troops after reassembling to the beat of drums moved forward with bayonets fixed to their muskets.

Marching past the dead and wounded militiamen, the British troops headed to Concord, their ultimate destination.

Arriving around 7: 00 in the morning as portrayed in Amos Doolittle's illustration of the event.

All along the way, they heard church bells and drum rolls as militias across the countryside were responding to the emergency.

When the British troops reached the North Bridge over the Concord River, they were met by an overwhelming force of militiamen blocking their way.

Like at Lexington, neither of the commanders of the British force, nor the militia, wanted to start a fight, but they also would not stand down.

British Captain Walter Laurie in command of companies from the 4th, 10th and his own 43rd Regiments of Foot realized he did not have enough men to force a crossing of the narrow bridge with such an enormous force of armed militia on the other side.

Then against Captain Laurie's orders, some of his own men opened fire killing two militiamen and wounding several others, according to Colonel James Barrett of the colonial militia.

The militia forces fired back to a chorus of "Fire!

Fire!

Fire!"

Nine British soldiers fell, Laurie's force was trapped, his ranks quickly fell apart, and the men ran back toward Concord.

Then beginning at a place called Meriam's Corner, a mile east of Concord, and nearly all the way back to Charlestown, militiamen swarmed along the side of the road, firing from behind trees and stone fences, inflicting heavy casualties within the British ranks.

Although Lord Percy's reserve brigade finally appeared to offer some help, the heavy gunfire from the colonial militiamen was too much.

As seen in this engraving of the event by Amos Doolittle, it was a blood bath.

As heavy rain began to fall, the British force was ferried across the Back Bay to Boston by vessels of the Royal Navy.

It had been a bloody shocking day.

Nearly 3,800 Americans were engaged by day's end.

Of that number, 49 were killed, 41 were wounded, and 5 were missing.

Out of the 1,800 British officers and men, 19 officers and 250 men were killed and wounded.

In the wake of the fighting on April 19th, the colonists printed broadsides with the skull and bones, and the names of the dead and wounded, condemning the British troops for killing the colonists and referring to their actions as "Bloody Butchery."

Among the wounded in Lexington was the African American Prince Estabrook.

The whole affair became a humiliating military and public relations defeat for General Gage.

He, like his government, had underestimated the will and resolve of the colonists and their belief in the cause of liberty.

The defeat of General Gage's British troops and the vilifying broadsides were not enough to satisfy the colonists' resistance to further British rule.

Within days, nearly 20,000 militiamen from all over Massachusetts took up positions along the heights, north, south, and west of Boston laying siege to the city and General Gage's British forces.

The news of the tragic events of April 19th spread through the colonies, and local militia companies gathered in countless villages and towns ready to join their fellow colonists in Boston.

The King, Lord North, the King's ministers, and Parliament had a war on their hands.

It would be a war they could ill afford to fight.

Withdrawing British troops from American colonies was not an option.

Great Britain had to confront the United Colonies even though it did not have the financial resources or even the manpower to do so.

Arrogance and a determination to impose laws upon the colonies, not because they were beneficial to the colonists, but only because the lawmakers believed they had the power to enact them, created the crisis.

The war would last almost eight years.

Britain's hated foe, France, would seize the opportunity to enter the war as an ally of the colonies.

After tremendous loss of lives and property, and the expenditure of vast sums of money, Great Britain would lose all the American colonies.

Those colonies would become The United States of America.

Thank you very much.

Voiceover: Major funding for this program was provided by Steve and Kathy Evans.

Additional funding provided by nearly 80 individuals and organizations.

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