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Links of Interest:Boston Massacre TrialSource: Barbier, Brooke. Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire. Charleston: The History Press, 2017. April - The Townshend Duties were partially repealed by British Parliament on April 12, 1770 because of the colonial protests and boycotts." August - John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr. defended the British officer and soldiers who fired into the unruly crowd on March 5, 1769. Officer Preston was found not guilty because he never ordered the soldiers to fire. "Hugh Montgomery was known to have killed Attucks, and Matthew Killroy was believed to have killed Gray. Because it wasn't known who of the other six soldiers had fired the shots that killed the three other victims, they could not be convicted." The trial lasted a week. There were no Bostonians in the jury. "Montgomery and Killroy were both found guilty of manslaughter, not murder. Their punishment was to have their thumbs branded... Yet many Bostonians shockingly accepted the outcome of the trial. With the troops gone and most taxes off the books - the Townshend Duties had been repealed, except for the tax on tea - Bostonians seemed to retire their hatred of the British Empire. And for the next few years, Boston went into a lull, as there wasn't much to complain about (Barbier, 76-79)." |
