1763
Treaty of Paris, ends Seven Years' War.
1772
Committee of Correspondence meets.
1775
Americans win the Battle at Bunker Hill.
"THIS IS OUR COUNTRY TOO..." African Americans respond to the call of freedom.
WOMEN:
The second colonial army.
Weather
Partly cloudy skies today with night and morning low clouds and fog.
Virtues
Frugality: Make
no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Also in this issue:
GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
Following the fall of Montreal in 1670, the North American colonists were very optimistic about their status as British subjects. Benjamin Franklin and others speculated about America's future as the center of the British world. For one thing, the colonists had no clear American identity.
Outside New England the loyalties of the colonists were confined primarily to their own colonies and then to the other country. Although 60 percent of the colonists were of English descent, they had different governors, different laws, different interests and some of them different religious persuasions and manners. were few bonds between them. And yet they were drawn together by common institutions derived from Britain, most notably the monarchy, Parliament, common law, language and British culture.
The
British constitutional polity seemed well calculated to protect colonial
liberties. Most of the colonists subscribed to the belief that England
had the freest constitution in the world. The
idea that the colonies
would shortly
secede from the empire and become independent
republics seemed, in 1760, ludicrous. Such pride
was strengthened
by the process of anglicization and the recent victory of the British
over the French.
Yet thirteen years, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the colonists,
denouncing King George III as a "Royal Brute" for not recognizing
their rights as Englishmen, proclaimed their independence.
American Antiquarian
Society
The
Boston Massacre*
by GWC., Gazette War Correspondent
On March 5, 1770 this reporter witnessed the violent clash between British soldiers and Boston workers. This clashed came on the heels of the arrival of two regiments of British troops in Boston. A riot erupted on the evening of March 5th, when workers taunted a redcoat and a mob near the State House abused a detachment of guards under Captain Thomas Preston. In the Confusion troops fired a musket volley into the crowd. Five civilians, including the African American Cripus Attucks, were killed.
In the subsequent murder trial, Preston and six soldiers were represented by patriot lawyers John Adams and Josiah Quincy, who disapproved the mob's action. Preston and four soldiers were acquitted and two soldier were convicted of manslaughter. All were allowed to escape with minor punishment.
Nevertheless, the radicals were able to take advantage of the tragedy, and Samuel Adames was able to persuade Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to remove the troops from the city.
*(Engraving, by Peter Pelham,was subsequently copied, embellished, and immortalized by Paul Revere, who recognized its propaganda value)
By
INFORMED COLONIST
GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
George Grenville
"The Gentle Shepard"
George Grenville alienated the colonists by adopting measures that seemed to fulfill accusations of Parliment's tyranny and abuse of power. Anxious to relieve the burdened English tax payerk Genville decided that the Americans should pay the cost of the quartering of British troops sent to the colonies to defend them.
He issued the Proclamation of 1763 cutting the colonists off from westward expansion; he ordered British naval vessels to be stationed in American waters during peacetime in order to seize vessels suspected of smuggling; and he authorized the establishment of frontier forts manned by a peacetime army to protect the settlers against Indian uprisings such as that led by Pontiac.
In March of 1764 he introduced the Sugar Act, which reduced the duties on West Indian products imported to America and in 1765 he proposed the Stamp Act.
He defended his policies against the colonial opposition and voted against repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765.