In this task, you will write an editorial from the perspective of a Loyalist or a Patriot. Your editorial will refer to one of the primary sources you reviewed in this activity. Imagine you are living in Boston in 1770. Write a brief letter to the editor of the newspaper about how the Boston Massacre affected you. Write from the point of view of either a Loyalist or a Patriot. The editorial should express concern over the seriousness of the Boston Massacre. Use the information from the primary sources you reviewed in this activity and the information you learned in this unit to help you write the editorial.

Use the following questions to help you write your editorial:

What was happening at that time in history?
What main idea do you want to express?
What is the best way for you to express your message?
Who is your audience?
Why are you writing the letter?
What feeling, tone, or mood do you think would help you convince your audience?

Explanation:

Even before the event that went down in history as the Boston Massacre, Boston, Massachusetts was a center of radical revolutionary ideas and sentiment. The colonists had endured years of conflict with British officials, and the number of people living in poverty and/or unemployed was growing in the city. With so many idle young men competing for work, there was bound to be trouble as British rule became more onerous.

After the Seven Years’ War had drained Britain’s coffers, the royal government imposed tighter controls over its North American colonies in order to raise revenues. When customs officials complained about the difficulties of collecting from disobedient colonists, Britain sent troops to impose order. The arrival of British soldiers in October 1768 heightened tensions in a city already on the edge of an uprising.

Over the next two years, Boston existed in a state of virtual British military occupation—one out of three men in the city was a Redcoat, a common nickname for British soldiers due to the color of their uniforms.^1  

1

start superscript, 1, end superscript Radical townspeople and idle young men harassed the soldiers, leading to numerous skirmishes and scuffles.

polticians and sentates thought to annoucne the fialre of articles of confedartion by making a centralized nation as a hole

this scroll was the first major biblical manuscript of great antiquity ever to be recovered. the qumran isaiah scroll predated the oldest hebrew text preserved in the masoretic hebrew bible by a millennium.