Sons of Liberty
Committees of Correspondence
Committees of correspondence were emergency provisional governments set up in the 13 American colonies in response to British policies leading up to the Revolutionary War (also known as the American Revolution). The exchange of ideas, information and debate between different ...read more
Samuel Adams
Founding Father Samuel Adams was a thorn in the side of the British in the years before the American Revolution. As a political activist and state legislator, he spoke out against British efforts to tax the colonists, and pressured merchants to boycott British products. He also ...read more
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was a colonial Boston silversmith, industrialist, propagandist and patriot immortalized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem describing Revere’s midnight ride to warn the colonists about a British attack. He gave the local militia a key advantage during the Battles ...read more
Who Were the Sons of Liberty?
The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience—threats, and in some cases actual violence—to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to ...read more
The Stamp Act Riots
Andrew Oliver could have been excused if he didn’t feel very welcome in his hometown of Boston. After awaking on August 14, 1765, the wealthy 59-year-old merchant and provincial official learned that his effigy was hanging from a century-old elm tree in front of Deacon Elliot’s ...read more
Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” Speech
Revolution was in the air in early 1775. Only a few months earlier, delegates from the American colonies had held the first Continental Congress and sent Britain’s King George III a petition for redress of grievances, among them the repeal of the so-called “Intolerable Acts.” A ...read more
6 Unsung Heroes of the American Revolution
1. Henry Knox From Henry Knox’s days as a teenaged street brawler in Boston, fighting was in his blood. Although the co-founder of the Boston Grenadier Corps lacked a military education, he knew where to find it—on the shelves of his shop, the London Book-Store. The plump, ...read more
10 Things You May Not Know About John Adams
1. Adams defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. Although Adams joined with the Sons of Liberty in objecting to what he believed was unfair taxation by the British government, the principled attorney believed in the primacy of the rule of law. After the killing of ...read more
Time Capsule Buried by Paul Revere and Sam Adams Discovered in Boston
Workers fixing a leak at the Massachusetts State House in Boston in December 2014 unearthed a time capsule placed in the building’s cornerstone more than two centuries ago. According to historical accounts, Samuel Adams (who by then had become governor of Massachusetts), Paul ...read more
10 Things You May Not Know About the Boston Tea Party
1. The 'tea partiers' were not protesting a tax hike, but a corporate tax break. The protestors who caffeinated Boston Harbor were railing against the Tea Act, which the British government enacted in the spring of 1773. Rather than inflicting new levies, however, the legislation ...read more
Patrick Henry voices American opposition to British policy
During a speech before the second Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry responds to the increasingly oppressive British rule over the American colonies by declaring, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Following the signing of ...read more
The Boston Massacre
On the cold, snowy night of March 5, 1770, a mob of American colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building. The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British ...read more
British parliament passes unpopular Tea Act
On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because ...read more
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night ...read more
The Boston Tea Party
In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor. The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a ...read more
Stamp Act imposed on American colonies
In an effort to raise funds to pay off debts and defend the vast new American territories won from the French in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the British government passes the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765. The legislation levied a direct tax on all materials printed for ...read more
Thomas Paine publishes “The American Crisis”
"These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have ...read more
Thomas Paine publishes "Common Sense"
On January 9, 1776, writer Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth his arguments in favor of American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries. Originally ...read more
The Siege of Boston
In advance of the Continental Army’s occupation of Dorchester Heights, Massachusetts, General George Washington orders American artillery forces to begin bombarding Boston from their positions at Lechmere Point, northwest of the city center, on this day in 1776. After two ...read more
Revere and Dawes warn of British attack
On April 18, 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes ...read more
Parliament passes the Boston Port Act
On March 25, 1774, British Parliament passes the Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston and demanding that the city’s residents pay for the nearly $1 million worth (in today’s money) of tea dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. The ...read more
Parliament passes the Quartering Act
On March 24, 1765, Parliament passes the Quartering Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British soldiers are to find room and board in the American colonies. The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the ...read more
Parliament completes the Coercive Acts with the Quartering Act
On June 2, 1774, the British Parliament renews the Quartering Act. The Quartering Act, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act and the Boston Port Act, were known as the Coercive Acts. READ MORE: 7 Events That Enraged Colonists and ...read more
John Hancock becomes president of Congress
On May 24, 1775, John Hancock is elected president of the Second Continental Congress. John Hancock is best known for his large signature on the Declaration of Independence, which he jested the British could read without spectacles. He was serving as president of Congress upon ...read more