Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading Virginians. If any merchant still went on importing and selling any of these things, he was apt to find a notice like this posted up on his

for in so doing they will bring Disgrace upon themselves, and their Posterity, for ever and ever, AMEN.127

The Boston Massacre. The king now began to send troops over to Boston town until it seemed full of redcoats; and in 1770 the troops fired on the citizens. In a Boston handbill of the time we read:

AMERICANS! BEAR IN REMEMBRANCE The HORRID MASSACRE! Perpetrated in King-Street, Boston, New England, On the Evening

of March the Fifth, 1770, when FIVE of your fellow countrymen, Lay wallowing in their Gore! being basely, and most inhumanly MURDERED! and SIX others badly wOUNDED! by a Party of the XXIXth Regiment, Under the command of Capt. Tho. Preston.... Let THESE things be told to Posterity! And handed down from Generation to Generation, till Time shall be no more! Forever may AMERICA be preserved, from weak and wicked monarchs, Tyrannical Ministers, Abandoned Governors, their Underlings and Hirelings! 128

The Boston Tea Party. After the Boston Massacre the feeling against England grew stronger. Samuel Adams in Massachusetts, Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Virginia, proposed that the colonies should combine their strength to resist England, and many were ready to fight if it should come to that. The trouble was now growing so serious that King George III. and his ministers decided to repeal all the taxes except that on tea; for, said his Majesty, "I am clear there must always be one tax to keep up the right, and as such I approve of the tea-duty; " 129 and ships full of tea were sent over to Charleston, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. But the Philadelphians, at a meeting in the state-house, voted that they would not allow the tea to land; and the men of Boston voted the same. When the ships arrived in Philadelphia, the people sent them back; so they did in New York; in Baltimore and Rhode Island, they burned the tea; "in Charleston," wrote General Gage," they are as mad. . . as in the northern Boston.” In Boston, the ships came in on a Sunday; Monday morning the following placard appeared:

FRIENDS! BRETHREN! COUNTRYMEN !

That worst of plagues, the detested TEA, shipped for this port hy the East India Company, is now arrived in this harbor. The hour

of destruction or manly opposition to... tyranny stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and posterity, is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall at nine o'clock

THIS DAY (at which time the bells will ring), to make a united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure.

130

The following extract from the journal of one of the men on board the tea-ship will tell what happened next:

Monday, Nov. 29.... The Captain went on shore,

OLD SOUTH CHURCH.

(From sketch made for this book.)

there being a great disturbance about the Tea. A town-meeting

[the largest ever known in Boston] was held, which came to a resolution the Tea should never be landed. . . .

Tuesday, Nov. 30.... A watch of 25 men on board this night, to see that the Tea is not landed Thursday, Dec. 2.... A guard of 25 men every night.

Thursday, Dec. 16. ... Townmeeting this day [in the Old

South Church, addressed by Josiah Quincy, Joseph Warren and Sam uel Adams]. Between six and seven o'clock this evening came down to the wharf a body of about one thousand people;

- among them were a number dressed and whooping like Indians. They came on board the ship, and after warning myself and the Custom-House officer to get out of the way, they . . . went down the hold, where was eighty whole and thirty-four half chests of Tea, which they hoisted upon deck, and cut the chests to pieces, and hove the Tea all overboard, where it was damaged and lost.130

...

FIRST STUDY ON 4.

1. What was a non-importation agreement? 2. How could such an agreement hurt England? 3. What people in England would it hurt? 4. How did the colonists punish any merchant that still went on importing? 5. What do we name this sort of punishment nowadays? 6. How does it hurt anybody? 7. Why should the colonists be angry on account of the troops in Boston? 8. What did the king mean by saying, There must always be one tax to keep up the right? 9. Why should the colonists care so much about this one little tax? 10. What did they want different about the taxes? 11. What did they do to have it different?

SECOND STUDY ON 4.

1. How did the troubles with England make the colonies feel toward each other? 2. How did they show that feeling? 3. Which colonies took the lead against the king and his measures? 4. What men were the leaders in each colony, as they appear in this and the earlier lessons? 5. What do you know of each of these men from your previous study? 6. Who passed the votes about the non-importation agreements and the tea? 7. What do you understand by a town-meeting? 8. What does this mean? — Taxation without representation is tyranny.

5. THE UNITED COLONIES.

The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.

— PATRICK HENRY, in Speech before First Continental Congress. 131

The Boston Port Bill. In the early part of 1774, George III. and his ministers had new laws passed that bore very hard on New England; the worst of them was the Boston Port Bill, which declared that no ship should enter or leave Boston harbor. The people of Massachusetts held town-meetings, and ordered the following letter written by Samuel Adams to be sent out to the other colonies: