It is nearly night when you arrive at your destination: Boston, Mass., 1775. Citizens have closed and shuttered their windows, and you notice a tenseness in the air. One rowdy fellow emerges from a nearby tavern, talking angrily about the British and Boston Harbor.
"Wait," you think, "didn't Paul Revere have something to do with that?" Then it comes back to you -- the poem you learned in grade school about a favorite American hero.
Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-- One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm."
While you consider the history about to take place, you hear a group of men arguing as they walk down the road. Their talk is of redcoats and taxation without representation. One knowledgeable gentlemen points to a small bool he is carrying. You can just barely make out the title: Common Sense, by Thomas Paine. You recognize the name, of course, because Paine's famous pamphlet explains the colonists' views on the historical Boston Tea Party.
The American colonists felt that they were not being treated fairly by the British, because they had imposed several new taxes on the Yanks without allowing them a voice in the government. To demonstrate their unhappiness with the tea tax, several colonial men dressed up like indeans and threw boxes of tea off a ship in Boston. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party.
