Mr. Householder
APUSH Period 5
12 May 2015
The Prelude to the Revolution
Blood had been shed for the first time. The damage done by their own kind. Soon to become nations of their own. The amplified event, trial, and article of the Boston Massacre have unquestionably been some of the most influential causes of American Revolution due to it being the first bloody contact between the British and the Colonists along with explicitness of the trials and the propaganda based articles. There were many instantaneous tensions that arose between the colonies and Britain due to the bloody incident. Nearly 165 years since the first establishment of Jamestown, Virginia, the colonists had been living relatively peacefully under the jurisdiction …show more content…
The tensions after the seven years war had slowly led up to this. As the revolution started to approach, patriots With 5 civilians dead by the end of the incident, the question that arose was; how did we get here? Although the massacre affected multiple lives, it was certainly over exaggerated and immorally taught to the rest of the world. The reality was that direct effect of the massacre was minor, but the long-term impact would stay imprinted in the history of the United States for centuries to come. This eventually caused an ever-longing mistrust between the colonists and Britain. It came as no surprise that the massacre began a time of revolt, and uncertainty of loyalty towards the …show more content…
The idea that the colonists no longer needed Britain to guide them under their jurisdiction specifically immerged after the publication of Common Sense by Thomas Paine in 1776, six years after the Boston Massacre. Paine believed that it was certainly logical to break away from the English government and that “a democracy government could take root in the North American continent because of the virtuousness of the American people.” He argued for an accessible style for a nation in which the people were sovereign. Along with Paine’s pamphlet came the creation of anti-British sentiment. This was a large spread of the hatred for the British, uniting the colonies together in order to fight against the jurisdiction of England. When the opportunity for revolution came years later, the fathers of the nation would rely on this sentiment to build their base of support and recruit new troops. In particular, the Sons of Liberty used the Massacre as a centerpiece of their anti-British propaganda, not only in Boston but throughout the colonies. The use of standing armies, they argued, demonstrated the British intention to subjugate the colonies rather than embrace them as