Boston Massacre:
- The British troops had been billeted in Boston in October 1768 after repeated requests from British customs officials, who had been harassed and intimidated because of their efforts to enforce the Townshend Acts.
- The soldiers were being taunted and intimated by the colonists.
- The massacre happened on March 5, 1770 when a group of British soldiers opened fire on the colonist.
- The result was five dead colonists.
- One of the victims was Crispus Attucks, a man of black or Indian parentage.
- The killings of March 5, promptly termed a "massacre" by Patriot leaders.
- The incident forced Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to withdraw the troops to an island in the harbor.
- Two Patriot leaders, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, volunteered to defend Captain Preston and his men after the incident.
- The prosecution produced little evidence, and Preston and six of the soldiers were acquitted; two others were found guilty of manslaughter, branded on the hand, and released.
- Many Patriots criticized the verdicts of the trial.
- Nevertheless, Governor Hutchinson reluctant removal of troops from Boston under threat of insurrection dramatized the impotence of imperial power as it was then constituted when faced with organized local resistance.