It would be difficult to find a better illustration than this of the subject under consideration. The “Boston Massacre” was at best nothing more than a street brawl, in which five unarmed spectators were shot down without the slightest resistance having been made on their part; an affair with which at the time the people at large of Boston had nothing whatever to do. It was simply a brutal and dastardly act on the part of the soldiers, in retaliation for the annoyance offered by one or two irresponsible boys who had been throwing snow balls. Yet this affair has been magnified to such a degree of importance that if the Battle of Bunker Hill had not been fought in the same neighborhood, this occurrence would doubtless have been placed in history as the most important event in the Revolution. On the other hand, the conflict in New York, which lasted for over two days, was the first stand, and a successful one, made by the people against the British soldiers. It was an event of very great importance indeed, for not only was blood first shed but in it was life first lost for the Cause. Yet how little importance has any New England writer in the past ever attached to it! It has certainly never been pointed out that the “Battle of Golden Hill,” in contra-distinction to the “Boston Massacre,” was the beginning of the struggle. In _Parker’s New York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy_ for Monday, February 5th, 1770, a full and detailed account of the Battle of Golden Hill can be found. The file of this paper is now in the Lenox Library and this special issue has been reproduced in fac-simile for the author; but it is so voluminous that it can not be given here as an illustration.[1] If the quartering of troops in one section of the Colonies, rather than in another, may be accepted as evidence of disaffection among the people and of organized resistance to the acts of the British Government, then again full justice has not been done to New York. According to Bancroft British troops had already been quartered in this city as early as December, 1766, and were not sent to Boston until at least two years later. COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE It would not be difficult to prove that the initiative step in the final struggle was first taken by the Carolinas and by Virginia and that the people of Boston and of other cities in New England moved rather in response to pressure from without than at their own suggestion. The men who became the leaders in the general movement afterwards were beyond question both sincere and patriotic from the beginning, but the people of New England were not, at that time, so near a unit in sentiment as were those of Virginia and of North and South Carolina.