Online lecture by Ray Raphael, Founding Era historian

Livestream link

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament not only shut down the port of Boston but also revoked the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which guaranteed the people considerable say in their government. Their sacred rights withdrawn, the people rose up as a body and rebelled. They forced all crown-appointed officers to resign. Everywhere except Boston, where British troops were stationed, they shut down county courts, which administered British authority, executive as well as judicial, on the local level. To fill the vacuum, they formed a Provincial Congress that levied taxes, gathered arms, and raised an army. When British soldiers marched on Lexington and Concord the following spring, they were trying to take back a province they had just lost. That’s when other colonies joined in, broadening the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 into the American Revolution of 1775.

Raphael has authored ten books on the Founding Era, including best-sellers A People’s History of the American Revolution and Founding Myths: Stories that Hide our Patriotic Past. Two books, First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord and Spirit of ’74: How the American Revolution Began, detail the unsung revolution in Massachusetts. Other books include:

Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation
Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of a Nation (co-edited with Alfred F. Young and Gary B. Nash)
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Founding Fathers and Birth of Our Nation
Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Create a Chief Executive
Hamilton: Founding Father
Constitutional Myths
U.S. Constitution: Explained—Clause-by-Clause–For Every American Today.

This is an online lecture, presented as a part of the 2024 Lowell Lecture Series. This year’s series focuses on the lesser-known express assignments Paul Revere completed. Speakers will share the importance of his courier work not only as an individual act of patriotism but also as part of a communications system that involved complex overlapping networks of leaders of all stations. The series will also explore the very practical aspects of long-distance horse journeys and the local colonial politics in key communities Revere interacted with.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Milton Historical Society/Suffolk Resolves House (Milton, MA), Carpenters’ Hall (Philadelphia, PA), Fraunces Tavern Museum (New York, NY), and the Portsmouth Athenaeum (Portsmouth, NH), with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org. All lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture will be livestreamed by on the GBH forum network on YouTube.