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The Stamp Act Riots
The Sons of Liberty create the first act of open rebellion.On August 14, 1765, outrage boiled over in the city. Protesters organized as the “Sons of Liberty” took to the streets in a very defiant act against British rule.The Bostonians were irate about a series of laws that forced colonists to pay taxes without representation in British parliament. -
The Boston Masacre
British soldiers killed five Bostonians in self defense. The troops, constantly tormented by irresponsible gangs, finally on Mar. 5, 1770, fired into a rioting crowd and killed five men: three on the spot, two of wounds later. The funeral of the victims was the occasion for a great patriot demonstration. The British captain, Thomas Preston, and his men were tried for murder, with Robert Treat Paine as prosecutor, John Adams and Josiah Quincy as lawyers for the defense. -
The Gaspee Affair
Sons of Liberty members attacked, looted, boarded, and torched a British customs ship named Gaspee.The Gaspee Affair of 1772. The First Blow for Freedom. Shortly before midnight on June 9, 1772, approximately sixty armed men from Providence, Rhode Island set out in eight longboats for Namquid Point where His Majesty's Ship Gaspee had run aground. -
Tea Act
This lowers taxes on tea, lowering the price of tea.The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the col -
The Boston Tea Party
Members of the Sons of Liberty raid British tea ships in protest of the Tea Act and B.E.I.C. monopoly on tea sales. On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war.
