One can readily see that Boston and Bostonians played a pivotal role in the breach with England, from being assaulted by British troop in the Boston Massacre to openly defying the Crown during the Boston Tea Party. It would not be long thereafter that Paul Revere would make his famous ride from Lexington to Concorde, declaring the British were coming. However, we see that many ideas, traditions and ideologies were also the foundation for radicalism adopted by men like Sam Adams. Perhaps the words of Benjamin Franklin most sum up the mood and beliefs of Bostonians and other colonists prior to the breach with England, ôBritish subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth, commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not thereby lose their native rights,ö (Becker, 2005, p. 1). It is such rights that fomented Revolution and paved the way for a new Republic that would exhibit more egalitarianism than any government in Europe. The net result of ParliamentÆs action would have been less expensive tea for the colonials, but many colonists viewed the new measure as an attempt to make them accept ParliamentÆs right to tax them, since the less-expensive tea would still have been taxed under the Townshend Acts. Others Bostonians viewed the Tea Act as the first step in the establishment of an East India Company monopoly on colonial trade. Residents of four cities, including Boston, due to receive the tea shipment prepared to respond to what they ôperceived as a new threat to their freedom,ö (Norton, 1990, p. 126). Foner, E. (1998). The Story of American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton. If that is the case, it was the radicals in Boston like Sam Adams, the professionals like Boston Physician William Douglass, and the wealthy like Thomas Hancock who helped evolve such a transformation by risking a final breach with Great Britain. Nevert |
