Yeah, with Freedom comes Responsibility. Think on.
Well the freedom walk is worth going on indeed. It takes you through old Boston which includes mainly Irish Catholic areas, but also a street of Italian shops. The people still speak Italian and the food is all pasta and ice cream. The first Catholic church built in America is here.The most interesting thing though is the monument itself, erected at the site of the battle of Breed's Hill, and mistakenly but popularly known as 'Bunker Hill'. Here the story is told about the battle, why it happened, who the 'victors' were, and what the consequences were. You also discover that the Boston Tea Party was not so much a protest against British rule, or even about paying British taxes, but the principle of paying taxes without representation. Fair point I think. If interested read on
'The Boston Massacre, called The Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men. British troops had been stationed in Boston, capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to protect and support crown-appointed colonial officials attempting to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. Amid ongoing tense relations between the population and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry, who was subjected to verbal abuse and harassment. He was eventually supported by eight additional soldiers, who were subjected to verbal threats and thrown objects. They fired into the crowd, without orders, instantly killing three people and wounding others. Two more people died later of wounds sustained in the incident.
The crowd eventually dispersed after Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson promised an inquiry, but reformed the next day, prompting the withdrawal of the troops to Castle Island. Eight soldiers, one officer, and four civilians were arrested and charged with murder. Defended by Patriot lawyer John Adams, six of the soldiers were acquitted, while the other two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences. The sentence that the men guilty of manslaughter received was a branding on their hand. Depictions, reports, and propaganda about the event, notably the colored engraving produced by Paul Revere, further heightened tensions throughout the Thirteen Colonies. The event is widely viewed as foreshadowing the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later.'
'The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.
The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.
The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.
The Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775, mostly on and around Breed's Hill, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after the adjacent Bunker Hill, which was peripherally involved in the battle and was the original objective of both colonial and British troops, and is occasionally referred to as the "Battle of Breed's Hill."
On June 13, 1775, the leaders of the colonial forces besieging Boston learned that the British generals were planning to send troops out from the city to occupy the unoccupied hills surrounding the city. In response to this intelligence, 1,200 colonial troops under the command of William Prescott stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, constructed an earthen redoubt on Breed's Hill, and built lightly fortified lines across most of the Charlestown Peninsula.When the British were alerted to the presence of the new position the next day, they mounted an attack against them. After two assaults on the colonial lines were repulsed with significant British casualties, the British finally captured the positions on the third assault, after the defenders in the redoubt ran out of ammunition. The colonial forces retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, suffering their most significant losses on Bunker Hill.
While the result was a victory for the British, they suffered heavy losses: over 800 wounded and 226 killed, including many officers. The battle was indeed a Pyrrhic victory, and showed the determination of the relatively inexperienced colonial forces were willing and able to stand up to regular army troops in a pitched battle.'
“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams American Patriot & Politician, 1722 - 1803
Samuel Adams was a leader of the fight against British colonial rule, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Adams was a cousin of John Adams who became the second President of the United States of America.
Paul Revere, was another folk hero of the American Revolution whose dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775 warning Boston-area residents that the British were coming, was immortalized in a ballad by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Revere was mainly distinguished in the colonial era as a master silversmith -- a craft he learned from his father, Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot refugee who changed his name to Revere in the New World. To support his large family, the versatile and energetic craftsman also made surgical instruments, sold spectacles, replaced missing teeth, and engraved copper plates, the most famous of which portrayed his version of the Boston Massacre.
