%121.  Colonial Legislatures dissolved.%[1]—­The letter of Massachusetts to the colonial legislatures having given great offense to the King, the governors were ordered to see to it that the legislatures did not approve it.  But the order came too late.  Many had already done so, and as a punishment the assemblies of Maryland and Georgia were dismissed and the members sent home.  To dissolve assemblies became of frequent occurrence.  The legislature of Massachusetts was dissolved because it refused to recall the letter.  That of New York was repeatedly dissolved for refusing to provide the royal troops with provisions.  That of Virginia was dismissed for complaining of the treatment of New York.

[Footnote 1:  One of the charges against the King in the Declaration of Independence.]

%122.  Boston Riot of 1770.%—­And now the troops intended for the defense of the colonies began to arrive.  But Massachusetts, North Carolina, and South Carolina followed the example of New York, and refused to find them quarters.  For this the legislature of North Carolina was dissolved.  Everywhere the presence of the soldiers gave great offense; but in Boston the people were less patient than elsewhere.  They accused the soldiers of corrupting the morals of the town; of desecrating the Sabbath with fife and drum; of striking citizens who insulted them; and of using language violent, threatening, and profane.  In this state of feeling, an alarm of fire called the people into the streets on the night of March 5, 1770.  The alarm was false, and a crowd of men and boys, having nothing to do, amused themselves by annoying a sentinel on guard at one of the public buildings.  He called for help, and a corporal and six men were soon on the scene.  But the crowd would not give way.  Forty or fifty men came armed with sticks and pressed around the soldiers, shouting, “Rascals!  Lobsters!  Bloody-backs!” throwing snowballs and occasionally a stone, till in the excitement of the moment a soldier fired his gun.  The rest followed his example, and when the reports died away, five of the rioters lay on the ground dead or dying, and six more dangerously wounded.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The soldiers were tried for murder and were defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy.  Two were found guilty of manslaughter.  The rest were acquitted.  On the massacre read Frothingham’s Life of Warren, Chaps. 6, 7; Kidder’s The Boston Massacre; Joseph Warren’s Oration on March 6, 1775, in Library of American Literature, Vol.  III., p. 256.]

This riot, this “Boston Massacre,” or, as the colonists delighted to call it, “the bloody massacre,” excited and aroused the whole land, forced the government to remove the soldiers from Boston to an island in the bay, and did more than anything else which had yet happened, to help on the Revolution.