Lindsey Graham

In response, the soldiers fired into the melee, killing five Americans.

The first to die was a runaway slave of mixed black and Native descent named Crispus Attucks, who was at the front of the crowd.

In the days and weeks that followed, Samuel Adams labeled the clash the Boston Massacre and explosive essays in the Boston Gazette.

And he made martyrs of addicts and the other victims by organizing a public funeral attended by 10,000 people, the largest funeral North America had ever seen.

Recognizing that the violence had gotten out of hand, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson jailed the soldiers responsible and sent the rest of the troops away from the city center to a fort in Boston Harbor.

With soldiers no longer prowling the streets, tensions began to subside, and soon after, the colonists learned that Parliament had repealed four out of the five duties imposed by the Townshend Acts, leaving only the tax on tea in place.

These concessions eased tensions for more than two years.

But the fragile calm came to an abrupt end in 1773, when Parliament once again interfered in the tea trade by passing the Tea Act, a sort of government bailout designed to boost sales for the struggling British East India Company.

Already, the colonists resented the lingering tax on tea imports, but this new law gave the British company a monopoly on the tea trade, and many feared that it would drive American tea merchants out of business.

And then, in late November 1773, the first of three ships arrived in Boston Harbor carrying British East India tea.

The next day, broadsides appeared throughout town declaring, "'That worst of plagues, the detestable tea, has arrived in the harbor.

The hour of destruction or manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny stares you in the face.'"

Residents began holding daily mass meetings to come up with a plan of action.

They urged Governor Hutchinson to send the tea back to Britain, but Hutchinson refused.

And as the weeks wore on, both sides dug in their heels.

Customs officials refused to let the ships leave, but the Sons of Liberty refused to let anyone unload the tea.

To break the stalemate, the Sons of Liberty took matters into their own hands.

On the night of December 16, 1773, 100 men donned Mohawk Indian costumes before setting out for Boston Harbor.

In what became known as the Boston Tea Party, they boarded the three ships, hacked open 342 chests of tea, and dumped them overboard.

This blatant destruction of private property, worth more than $1.7 million in today's money, marked a major step in the march to outright rebellion.