Tag: March 24 1775

  • March 24, 1775: The Massachusetts Provincial Congress Steps Up

    Cover art for March 24, 1775: John Hancock, oil on canvas by John Singleton Copley, 1765; in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

    We’ve spent a lot of time talking about events in Virginia lately, but that doesn’t mean that the folks in Massachusetts weren’t getting things done. It just means that they weren’t making a big deal about it.

    For the past several weeks, they’d been working on the down-low to make plans in case the British took any action that they might find too intrusive, from simple confiscations to an all-out shooting offense. (Of course that was still on the table; nobody had forgotten the Boston Massacre.)

    It wasn’t until this day in history that they made their resolution publicly known. And in the wake of Patrick Henry’s very recent proclamation, nobody would be surprised if things escalated sooner rather than later.