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Preston's Trial In Boston

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On the evening of March,5 1770, a small group of boys taunted a British sentry in front of the Bost Custom House. After enough torment the soldiers struck one of them with a musket and immediately after, a group of 60 people gathered around prompting the soldier to get help. Captain Thomas Preston and seven soldiers hurried to protect the sentry. Efforts to calm the crowd failed and when the crowd surrounded the crew retreat was impossible. One of the crew fired and the rest followed on what seemed to be a direct order from Preston leaving five dead and six injured.
The town of Boston had been uneasy even before the “Massacre”. Tension had been building up since the early 1760s because the town was affected by the forces of migration and change. With the new slate of taxes known as the Townshend Duties, people like Samuel Adams encouraged the townspeople to increase their remonstrates. In …show more content…

Results from the trial lead many to believe justice wasn’t served. Defensive attorney John Adams used tactics to create confusion in the minds of the jurors so they could not be certain what actually took place. This proved to be very effective. Adam noted the crowd had been harassing the soldiers and also attacked them. There was no reliable evidence to back this up and it was generally believed, even if Preston was found guilty, he would be pardoned anyway.
A member of the Boston 's Sons of Liberty and a silversmith, Paul Revere, helped stir exasperation against the British army by producing an inaccurate print of the Boston Massacre depicting British soldiers firing into an unarmed crowd. Revere’s reason for this was believed because of the government in London decided to impose a new set of tax laws. As a result, caused Revere’s items in his silver shop to be taxed. The image became one of the most influential pieces of the revolutionary

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