The Trial Of Captain Preston: Key Evidence Confederation

1298 Words6 Pages

The Trial of Captain Preston: Key Evidence Documentation
Introduction
The primary source that was used was a complied list of the personal accounts and eyewitness accounts.It was put together by Becker and Wheeler from the book called “The American Past” (1990). Why did the group of people gather outside? They gathered because of the absurd amounts of taxes that were brought about by the British parliament. Why were the taxes brought to just the colonies rather than people in England? The taxes were made because the British thought that If they have to fight a war for their people, they should have to pay for the soldiers. No information has been given on why they have the colonies and not the rest of the world pay. Why was the crowd outside …show more content…

was the person that was responsible for giving the command to open fire in the famous, Boston Massacre. The massacre took place outside the old Massachusetts state house. It was an event that would change Boston forever. The incident was on March 5th, 1770. There was something important related to the wave of British parliamentary taxes. A small crowd formed outside the state house. The guards outside the house were telling them to leave. The crowd kept growing, and growing. Eventually there were hundreds of angry protesting people outside the state house. There was screaming and shouting and furious words being exchanged. Then a couple people got overly rowdy and got struck by the guns.The guards started to back up towards the building as the crowd went insane. There are multiple stories on this incident. Some people say the British just fired away, some people say that the people started throwing things at the guards. Some people said that the shots were justified and some say the shots were not. For one thing, the guards should have been disciplined more during training. Going by a majority of the accounts the guards fired after a rock was thrown. A man from the crowd threw a rock and struck captain Preston on the side of the head. When Preston was on the ground, he shouted “FIRE, DAMN YOU!” and a cloud of smoke and gunshots filled the air. After a couple minutes the smoke cleared and 11 people were wounded, 5 of them fatally injured. The trial was held a couple weeks after the massacre. He was acquitted of the charges by the

Open Document