British Land In Boston

For Boston in 1768, smuggling was rife, the Massachusetts Assembly was behaving and ruling in the style of a Sovereign Nation, and the Sons of Liberty were making life unbearable for customs officials. Finally, their repeated threats to the houses and persons of the customs commissioners, the Sons of Liberty had overplayed their hand. Fed up, the goaded Governor of Massachusetts, Francis Bernard, asked England for two regiments of troops to keep order.

On September 30, 1768, a British fleet anchored in Boston Harbor "as for a regular siege," the purpose of which was to protect Royal officials in the execution of their duties. The next day, October 1st, soldiers drawn chiefly from the 14th and 29th Infantry Regiments, and numbering about 700 men, landed at Boston without opposition. Six weeks later the 64th and 65th Regiments, of about 500 men each, began to arrive from Irleand and debarked at Long Wharf.

Reassured by the presence of the troops sent for their protection, the Commissioners of Customs who fled after the Boston riot of June 1768, now returned to town.

In one of the most famous and elaborate of Paul Revere's engravings (below), it shows the arrival of the red-coated British troops.� Revere wrote that the troops "formed and marched with insolent parade, drums beating, fifes playing, and colours flying, up King Street.� Each soldier having received 16 rounds of powder and ball." �Troops of the 29th, unable to secure lodgings in town, pitched tents on the common. The stench from their latrines wafted through the little city on every breeze.

British Troops Land At Long Wharf, Boston Harbor - 1768

When Bostonians refused to house the soldiers, British officers commandeered public and private billets. Frequently, the ill-fed, ill-paid men hired themselves out for menial jobs at low wages, incurring the bitter wrath of Boston's unemployed. Street fights flared, mobs and children taunted the troops with cries of "bloodybacks," and "lobsterbacks," all the while Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty maneuvered in the background, fanning the flames of revolt.

Even under normal circumstances the presence of General Thomas Gage's troops (nearly one for every four inhabitants) would have led to trouble. Now, the imposition of an occupation force on a city already torn with strife, made bloodshed a foregone conclusion.

(See Bibliography Below)

| Back to Timeline | or click on your browser's "back to previous page" button

��

��

Author: Ronald W. McGranahan.
Picture Credit: The National Maritime Museum (top); The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (bottom).
Bibliography: Ketchum, Richard M., The American Heritage History of The American Revolution; Fleming, Thomas, Liberty! The American Revolution; Knollenberg, Bernhard, Growth of the American Revolution 1766-1775.

�