Restore The Republic

Restore The Republic: "Boston lies under a foot of snow this Monday March evening in 1770, so icy and cold that anyone who can huddle at home on the hearth should. Instead, much of the town is abroad and abuzz like an angry hive. Bostonians are infuriated at something their descendants will take for granted, indeed, will prize so highly they’ll pay for it: police are patrolling their city.

And have been for many months. In September 1768 a thousand British Redcoats disembarked at the town’s wharves. From there they “marched sword in hand through the principal streets of [Boston], then in profound peace.”1 Their purpose was not to protect the 15,000 inhabitants but to keep them in line, much as police presently do. And, again like modern officers, they will collect money for the government, though rather than writing traffic tickets, they will enforce customs duties.

The colonists do not share their descendants’ idealism that the police “protect and serve,” nor do they mistake the Redcoats for “Boston’s Finest.” They see the soldiers stalking among them as the government’s bullyboys, and they despise them for it. Tonight, that antagonism will explode, becoming famous as a Massacre for killing five civilians and wounding others.

Historians offer a bevy of explanations and excuses for that calamitous confrontation: Americans resented the British as an occupying force; off-duty soldiers worked at odd jobs for low pay, stealing opportunities from Boston’s day laborers and provoking more resentment; the Redcoats were naturally arrogant, the colonists naturally touchy. But behind it all lies the simple fact that the soldiers were policing Boston. They marched through the city searching for contraband, infractions of the government’s rules, and anyone the administration deemed suspicious.