TABLE OF CONTENTS The First Shots A Ride of Warning Spreading Ideas and Information Fighting for Freedom Taking Action A Helping Hand Timeline Glossary Source Notes Index 4 6 8 14 20 24 28 30 30 31
4 An THE FIRST SHOTS In the eighteenth century the people who lived in Great Britain's thirteen colonies in North America were frustrated They had grown tired of British rule and taxes BUTCHERS HALL illustration showing British soldiers right and colonists left during the Boston Massacre
1783 Everything changed during the Boston Massacre in Massachusetts on March 5 1770. That day angry colonists confronted a British soldier on the streets The colonists yelled and threw snowballs at him After more British soldiers were called in to handle the colonists reports claimed that someone yelled fire Shots rang out and five colonists were killed Local sailor Crispus Attucks a Black and Indigenous man was the first of those colonists making him the first casualty of the American Revolution The Boston Massacre and other events led to the Revolutionary War 1775 Loyalists or Tories were colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain They fought alongside the redcoats or the British soldiers Patriots formed the Continental army and fought for American independence from Great Britain Attucks became a martyr for the patriots and a symbol for abolitionists There were many heroes soldiers spies and supporters during the Revolutionary War But many of their stories slipped through the cracks when history was retold 5 Crispus Attucks Crispus Attucks
