One fateful March night in Boston, Massachusetts 1770 five men were killed and six more were wounded. Dubbed The Boston Massacre by the Sons of Liberty, this event was built up to be much more than it really was. The soldiers were not guilty, but simply victims of tragic circumstance. A common primary source looked at when referring to The Boston Massacre is Paul Revere’s The Bloody Massacre. The silver engraving appears to show the British soldiers standing in a line being commanded to shoot at the colonists who are running away in fear.
These issues seem to be important to the author and he addresses them appropriately. His book tells a good, analytical story that approaches many different aspects of the war in a colony that played a major role in the Revolution. Critical to gaining insight into the reaction of the townspeople to British reforms, Gross leads his book with a detailed account of the social structure and government in Concord. Until 1774, the townspeople were more worried about local concerns than colonial issues. This split the town into three different aspects: political, social and religious.
Nash offers the reader the opportunity to better appreciate a more complete historical picture of the near-forgotten events, documents, and passions, which place historical events in a more complete and accurate context. The many side-lined events, would-be second tier individuals, and varied political agendas that motivated insurrection against the British Crown in Colonial America are critical to appreciate what drove these people to a common cause. In Revolutionary America, Kierner published An Account of a Stamp Act Riot (1765). This primary source document was a letter written by New York Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden, as a personal account of the actions he witnessed during a riot by Colonialists in opposition to the British Stamp Act, enacted on November 1, 1765. As an eye witness to the event, the Governor documented not only the vile
The battle at Lexington and Concord was similar to the Boston Massacre. A brigade of English soldiers opened fire on group of armed minutemen. At that moment an intense battle broke out and the revolutionary war began at that spot. The English expressed their iron grip on the colonies in several violent ways such as the attempted hostile takeover of the Middle and Southern Colonies. A more famous act of violence against the British was the Boston Tea Party in which several disguised Sons of Liberty members went aboard several British trade boats and tossed over 45 tons of tea into the Boston Harbor at an estimated value of 1.87 million dollars worth in damages.
Document I also talks about colonists displeasure towards the British parliament. They claim that they do not have the same rights and privileges as their fellow subjects in Britain and that it is unconstitutional. In 1770 the Boston Massacre took place. An angry mob of colonists threw sticks, stones, and snowballs at British soldiers provoking them to open fire on the innocent colonists, killing many of them. Document B is quoted as saying “The propaganda impact throughout the colonies was profound”.
The first true militia of Whigs shown in the book was the Regulators who started in North Carolina just before the start of the Revolutionary War. They were not as radical or as large as the Liberty Boys and got their point across by sending petitions to Parliament. Unfortunately many of the leaders of the Regulators wanted to take the group in a more radical direction which caught the attention of British officials who promptly decided to arrest the members and hang the leaders after a meeting of the group at Alamance Creek. The battle of Alamance ended the Regulator rebellion. In class we have discussed many rebellions of various origins and this is a good example of one.
In the Eyes of the Beholder: Causes for the Civil War Many historians have come across the infamous event of the Civil War from our American history. Although there might be many people who try and collect as many resources that can help uncover the truth of our nation’s past, there will always be many variations as to what the truth is. Therefore, it is safe to say that what is taught in our classrooms today is simply the most commonly accepted theory amongst our population. Historian C’s theory as to why the Civil War happened is based upon the several factors of: fraudulent leadership, bad judgment, emotion, misunderstanding, misrepresentation of each side, and bias. The effect of these factors ultimately led to the Civil War because both the Northern and Southern sections were blinded by their emotions.
The American Revolution is one of the most important and talked about events in American history. Sometimes, all people really know is that there was a war in which the new Americans fought against the British in order to gain independence, and the fact that the Americans won. Some details, however, are left out, such as feelings of those involved with the struggle and how the British government viewed the conflict. These details, ideas, and issues are vital to American History and should be told so that American citizens today know how the United States were formed. Many individuals involved with the struggle had different feelings and ideas.
Coupled with these casualty figures were stories that eventually came out about atrocities committed by US troops against the very people they were meant to be defending and supporting. The most infamous was the My Lai massacre. This event actually highlighted to the US public the enormous strain frontline troops were experiencing on a daily basis against a supposedly inferior enemy. 1968 seems to be the key year for protests. To some, especially the young, America was not only sacrificing her male youth but the government was also sanctioning the death of children not only in South Vietnam but also in the North with the blanket bombing raids that were occurring on almost a daily
Student protestors burned down the campus ROTC building. This led the governor to call in the National Guard. During the ongoing protest “one platoon opened fire with their rifles on the students, killing four and wounding nine” (Bateman, 2007, p. 75). The reaction to this was overwhelming “some four hundred and fifty schools, from colleges and universities down to high schools closed almost immediately” (Bateman, 2007, p. 76). This was the first and only nationwide strike of American students and was estimated to include over four million students and over nine hundred schools (Bateman, 2007).