BOSTON MASSACRE 852 



the most important town in the colonies. The 

 Stamp Act, the Intolerable Acts, the Boston 

 Massacre and Boston's part in the Revolu- 

 tionary War are discussed elsewhere. 



During the first half-century of independence 

 Boston was the home port of hundreds of ships 

 which traded as far as Rio de Janeiro and Cal- 

 cutta. This period was also noteworthy for the 

 spread of Unitarianism. Then came an era 

 of anti-slavery agitation, and then after the 

 great fire of 1872, which destroyed $75,000,000 

 worth of property, an era of reconstruction and 

 development which has left its mark in the 

 splendid buildings and other public works of 

 the city. The construction of the subway, from 

 1895 to 1898, its enlargement a little more than 

 a decade later, and the construction of the 

 great dam across the mouth of the Charles 

 River are the most important of these newer 

 improvements. W.F.Z. 



Consult Sullivan's Boston, New and Old; 

 Howe's Boston Common Scenes from Four 

 Centuries. 



BOSTON MASSACRE, mas' a her, a fight 

 between a mob of Boston citizens and a squad 

 of British soldiers, on March 5, 1770. It was 

 one of the earliest and most serious disturb- 

 ances of the critical period before the Revolu- 

 tionary War. The opposition of the colonists 

 to the various acts of oppression on the part 

 of Parliament and the king had led to the 

 quartering of two regiments of soldiers upon 

 the people of Boston, and this the latter bitterly 

 resented as an unwarranted invasion of their 

 rights as British subjects. A squad of soldiers 

 stationed on King, now State, Street, angered 

 by the taunts and stone-throwing of a mob of 

 men and boys, fired into the throng, killing 

 three and wounding seven, two of whom died 

 later. The officers and men responsible for the 

 firing were tried for murder, and were acquitted 

 of this charge after being defended by John 

 Adams and Josiah Quincy, who later were to 

 become famous among American Revolution- 

 ists. Two soldiers found guilty of manslaughter 

 were branded on the hand, and the entire garri- 

 son was removed to Castle Island, out in the 

 harbor. The colonists regarded the affair as a 

 triumph for their principles. A monument in 

 memory of the victims of the Boston Massacre 

 was erected in Boston in 1888. 



BOSTON PORT BILL, a bill passed by the 

 Parliament of England and signed by King 

 George III, on March 31, 1774, which was 

 occasioned by te wholesale destruction of tea 

 in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 (see 



BOSWELL 



BOSTON TEA PARTY). This bill was to go into 

 effect on June 1, 1774, and was virtually to close 

 the port of Boston to trade. Salem was to be 

 the seat of government and Marblehead the 

 port of entry until such time as the people of 

 Boston should pay for the property destroyed 

 and meet other imposed conditions. Such an 

 attack upon the liberties of the colonists 

 aroused a deep feeling of indignation, and the 

 people were given strong assurances of support 

 by the legislatures of other colonies. The 

 Boston Port Bill was one of five laws passed 

 by Parliament to punish the people of Massa- 

 chusetts for their defiant attitude (see INTOL- 

 ERABLE ACTS, FIVE). As these acts aroused the 

 colonists to further resistance, they helped to 

 bring on the Revolutionary War (which see). 



BOSTON TEA PARTY, in American history, 

 the name applied to a famous raid on a number 

 of English tea ships anchored in Boston Harbor. 

 This occurred on the night of December 16, 

 1773, when American indignation over the tax 

 imposed on imports of teas was at its height. 

 When ships laden with tea, sent out by the 

 English East India Company, arrived at Bos- 

 ton, the people assembled in a town meeting 

 and passed resolutions urging Governor Hutch- 

 inson to demand the immediate return of the 

 vessels. His message of refusal was conveyed 

 to a mass-meeting held in the Old South Meet- 

 ing-House, and was followed immediately by 

 the famous "Tea Party." A band of citizens 

 disguised as Indians and armed with hatchets 

 hurried to the wharf, boarded one of the vessels 

 and broke open 342 chests of tea, throwing their 

 contents into the harbor. In this forceful and 

 picturesque fashion the citizens of Boston an- 

 nounced their conviction that "Taxation with- 

 out representation is tyranny." 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY, established in Bos- 

 ton, Mass., in 1869, by the Methodist Episcopal 

 Church. The university is open to both men 

 and women on equal terms. It includes col- 

 lege and graduate departments, has schools of 

 theology, law, medicine and science, and pro- 

 vides post-graduate work in science, language, 

 history and philosophy. The agricultural col- 

 lege is allied with the Massachusetts Agricul- 

 tural College at Amherst. 'There are about 170 

 members of the faculty, and the institution has 

 over 1,800 students. 



BOSWELL, boz'wel, JAMES (1740-1795), a 

 Scottish writer whose masterpiece, The Life of 

 Samuel Johnson, is one of the greatest biogra- 

 phies in English literature. He was born at 

 Edinburgh, and educated there and in Glas- 



