John Hancock

The Assembly of Massachusetts Bay in February 1768 issues a circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance.

The governor dissolves the assembly when it refuses to rescind the letter.

Meanwhile, a riot breaks out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hancock, for alleged smuggling.

Customs officials are forced to flee, prompting the British to deploy troops to Boston.

A Boston town meeting declares that no obedience is due to parliamentary laws and calls for the convening of a convention.

A convention assembles but only issues a mild protest before dissolving itself.

The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 had angered colonists regarding British decisions on taxing the colonies despite a lack of representation in the Westminster Parliament.

One of the protesters is John Hancock, a wealthy Bostonian.

Hancock's ship Liberty had been seized in 1768 by customs officials, and he had been charged with smuggling.

He had been defended by John Adams, and the charges were eventually dropped.

However, Hancock has subsequently faced several hundred more indictments.

Hancock has organized a boycott of tea from China sold by the British East India Company, whose sales in the colonies had then fallen from three hundred and twenty thousand pounds (one hundred and forty-five thousand kilograms) to five hundred and twenty pounds (two hundred and forty kilograms).

By 1773, the company has large debts, huge stocks of tea in its warehouses and no prospect of selling it because smugglers, such as Hancock, are importing tea from the Netherlands without paying import taxes.

In response to this, the British government on May 10 passes the Tea Act, which allows the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in Britain, instead paying the much lower American duty.

Many American colonists, particularly the wealthy smugglers, resent the British government’s favored treatment of a major company (the British East India Company), which employs lobbyists and wields great influence in Parliament.

Many colonists oppose the Tea Act, not so much because it rescues the East India Company, but more because it seems to validate the Townshend Tax on tea.

Merchants who have been acting as the middlemen in legally importing tea stand to lose their business, as do those whose illegal Dutch trade will be undercut by the Company's lowered prices.

These interests combine forces, citing the taxes and the Company's monopoly status as reasons to oppose the Act.

Gage sends seven hundred of his troops to Concord, twenty miles distant, in April of 1775 to find and destroy a stockpile of munitions collected by the Patriots.

Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Joseph Warren ride from Boston to Concord on April 18, 1775, in an attempt to warn John Hancock and Sam Adams that the British armies are coming to seize their weapons and ammunition.

Hostility between Britain and its American colonies explodes into bloodshed at the Battles of Concord and ...

...Lexington on the 19th of April, which ignites the American Revolutionary War.

Members of the militia oppose the British in Lexington along the way, and heavy sniper fire in Concord sends them back to Boston in disarray, covered by British reinforcements sent to aid their return.

On their retreat, the British commit a number of atrocities on their way back, burning houses that fire upon them and killing all the inhabitants irrespective of age or sex.

Warren had slipped out of Boston early on April 19, and during the day's Battle of Lexington and Concord, coordinates and leads militia into the fight alongside William Heath as the British Army returns to Boston.

When the enemy are returning from Concord, he is among the foremost in hanging upon their rear and assailing their flanks.

During this fighting, Warren is nearly killed, a musket ball striking part of his wig.

When his mother sees him after the battle and hears of his escape, she entreats him with tears again not to risk life so precious.

He then turns to recruiting and organizing soldiers for the Siege of Boston, promulgating the Patriots' version of events, and negotiating with General Gage in his role as head of the Provincial Congress.

Immediately after the battles of April 19, the Massachusetts militia, under the loose leadership of William Heath, who is superseded by General Artemas Ward late on the 20th, forms a siege line extending from Chelsea, around the peninsulas of Boston and Charlestown, to Roxbury, effectively surrounding Boston on three sides.

They particularly block the Charlestown Neck (the only land access to Charlestown), and the Boston Neck (the only land access to Boston, which is at this time a peninsula), leaving only the harbor and sea access under British control. In the days immediately following the creation of the siege line, the size of the colonial forces grows, as militias from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut arrive on the scene.

General Gage writes of his surprise of the number of rebels surrounding the city: "The rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be....In all their wars against the French they never showed such conduct, attention, and perseverance as they do now."

The British at first greatly restrict movement in and out of the city, fearing infiltration of weapons.

Besieged and besiegers eventually reach an informal agreement allowing traffic on the Boston Neck, provided no firearms are carried.

Residents of Boston turn in almost two thousand muskets, and most of the Patriot residents leave the city.

Many Loyalists who live outside the city of Boston leave their homes and flee into the city.

Most of them feel that it is not safe to live outside of the city, because the Patriots are now in control of the countryside.

Some of the men, after arriving in Boston, join Loyalist regiments attached to the British army.

The Second Continental Congress, convened on May 10, 1775, elects John Hancock president, and creates its own committee of correspondence to communicate the American interpretation of events to foreign nations.

The First Continental Congress had sent entreaties to King George III to stop the Coercive Acts; they had also created the Continental Association to establish a coordinated protest of those acts, putting a boycott on British goods.

The Second Continental Congress meets to plan further responses if the British government had not repealed or modified the acts; however, the American Revolutionary War has already started by this time with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Congress is called upon to take charge of the war effort.

Delegates from the thirteen colonies vote unanimously to support New England in barring the Redcoats from the countryside; the Congress bans trade with Canada on May 17.

Continental forces, partly in response to the Grape Island incident, work to clear the harbor islands of livestock and supplies useful to the British.

On May 27, in the Battle of Chelsea Creek, the British Marines attempt to stop removal of livestock from some of the islands.

The Americans resist, and, in the course of the action, the British schooner Diana runs aground and is destroyed, but not before the Continentals recover its weaponry.

Gage, in an attempt to help quell the rebellion, issues a proclamation on June 12 offering to pardon all of those who will lay down their arms, with the exception of John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

Instead of quelling the rebellion, it ignites anger among the Patriots, and more people begin to take up arms.