We all know about the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre. Here are some other, mostly inciting events that contributed to the American Revolution.
The Greenwich Tea Party
The whole “destroying tea to protest import tariffs” wasn’t just a colonial Boston thing. In December 1774, the Greenwich Tea Party transpired. About 40 irate colonists upset about unfair taxation, fought their way on board a British merchant ship docked in Greenwich, in southern New Jersey, and absconded with its entire payload of tea. Then they burned it all in the town square.
The Salem Alarm
One qualm anti-British colonists had with the ruling Britons was how they were prevented from building and holding armed militias, in part to defend themselves against perceived British abuse. In February 1775, a battalion of troops under General Thomas Gage sailed to Salem, Massachusetts, to confiscate cannons from a militia declared illegal. Locals were alerted ahead of time, and had the drawbridge raised by the time the British arrived, preventing their entry. Hostilities ensued until the British were allowed to inspect the colonial foundry… where no cannons were discovered.
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The Mecklenburg Resolves
Sick and tired of British rule and snuffing out rebellions, the citizens of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina simply decided to stop following the laws imposed upon them by an overseas government. Through a set of resolutions in May 1775, the colonial government deemed all British laws not in effect and created its own provisional government. Historians call this something of a dry run for the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War that followed.
The HMS Asia Incident
Before August 1775, the population of New York City was primarily neutral and against the idea of breaking away from the British government. Public sentiment veered strongly the other way after the HMS Asia Incident. That’s the name of a British warship that was ominously left in port in New York Harbor in New York City. Captain John Lamb’s local colonial militia tried to steal British artillery from Fort George, prompting an order for the HMS Asia to open fire. Nobody was killed, but it was seen as an assault on civilians.
