Boston Massacre: 3/5/1770

Colonists were forced to house British soldiers. On MARCH 5, 1770, a crowd protested and in the confusion British soldiers fired, killing five, one being Crispus Attucks, the most famous African-American who participated in the Revolution.

Paul Revere's popular engraving of the Boston Massacre fanned flames of anti-British sentiment. Joseph Warren, the President of the Massachusetts Congress who sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride, stated on the 2nd anniversary of the Massacre, 1772: "If you perform your part, you must have the strongest confidence that the same Almighty Being who protected your pious and venerable forefathers...will still be mindful of you...May our land be a land of liberty...until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the world in one common undistinguishable ruin!"

John Hancock, first to sign the Declaration of Independence, stated on the 4th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, 1774: "Let us play the man for our GOD, and for the cities of our GOD...By a faithful discharge of our duty to our country, let us joyfully leave her important concerns in the hands of HIM who raiseth up and putteth down empires and kingdoms of the world as HE pleases."

American Minute with Bill Federer

Articles of Confederation: 3/1/1781

What was the government in the United States before the U.S. Constitution was written? It was the Articles of Confederation, ratified by the States MARCH 1, 1781. Signed by such statesmen as John Hancock and Samuel Adams, it was an attempt to loosely knit the thirteen States together.

The Articles of Confederation declared: "Whereas the delegates of the United States of America in Congress assembled did on the fifteenth day of November in the Year of Our Lord 1777, and in the second year of the independence of America agree on certain Articles of Confederation and perpetual union between the States...The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force...or attacks made upon them...on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense." The Articles end with the line: "It has pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the Legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation."

American Minute with Bill Federer