On May 25, 1775 – as gulls squawked, circling overhead – the British frigate HMS Cerberas dropped anchor in Boston harbor. Onboard, generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne prepared to disembark after a lengthy trans-Atlantic passage. It would not take them long, however, to discover that his majesty’s forces and his colonial subjects were now locked in a virtual state of war around Boston, and that the colonists had seized control of all land access to and from the city.
Unbeknownst to the three generals, they had just dropped anchor in Chapter One of the American Revolution.
Relations between the Province of Massachusetts Bay and Great Britain had been spiraling downhill for quite some time. In response to a series of taxes and import duties placed on the colonies, in December of 1773 members of the Sons of Liberty boarded British merchant ships in Boston harbor, and dumped tons of tea into the water.
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