Despite the fact that it proved to be mostly a false alarm, the “Powder Alarm” of Sept 1-2, 1774 showed the colonists that the British were serious - and willing to use gun control efforts to subjugate them.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The event showed that the American Revolutionaries meant business, too. In response, thousands of people armed up and started streaming towards Boston to fight off the aggressors in what became a precursor to Lexington and Concord just a few months later.
Of course, they don’t really teach this in the government-run propaganda centers/schools.
PLAN TO DISARM
In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament passed the “Coercive Acts.” Among other moves, the British closed the port of Boston and revoked Massachusetts’ charter, bringing the colony under the total control of the British government.
These actions further inflamed tensions between the British and the American colonists. Many colonists saw this as a further attempt to strip them of their right to self-rule and force them into submission.
As noted by American History Central, “The people of Massachusetts began to plan for the worst.
Many of the towns throughout the colony were in the habit of storing weapons and ammunition in storehouses throughout the colony, including the Provincial Powder House on Quarry Hill in Charlestown. Slowly, and quietly, the towns started removing their weapons and ammunition from the storehouses.”
General Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, felt the best way to deal with this and keep the peace would be to disarm the colonists as much as possible.
Yes, that’s just what empires have always done.
On Aug 27, William Brattle, the leader of the provincial militia, snitched in a letter to Gage to let him know the colonists were taking their powder, and that only “the King’s supply” remained. Gage, of course, determined that the remaining powder had to be taken and brought to Boston for “safekeeping.”
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