“The Gathering Storm” in Acton, 2 Apr.

On the evening of Tuesday, 2 April, I’ll speak in Acton at the invitation of the Acton 250 Committee.

We’re calling this talk “The Gathering Storm,” and here’s the description:

As 1774 began, Massachusetts politicians worried about the royal government response to the Boston Tea Party. The force of that reaction became clear in the return of troops to Boston, the Coercive Acts, and the Massachusetts Government Act. In late summer the province’s people rebelled by shutting down government functions in rural counties, seizing weapons in ports, and electing their own legislature.

The engine of that resistance was a little-understood institution: the colonial militia. By fall, it was clear that the new royal governor had no leverage outside Boston. This talk traces the end of British power in most of Massachusetts even before the war began.

I’ll draw on the stories in The Road to Concord and elsewhere, discussing how rural Massachusetts shifted in 1774 from lukewarm support for Boston’s fight against tariffs to militant opposition to the Crown.

This will be part of a series of talks by different authors tracing the events that led to war in 1775. Eventually the people of Acton were so committed to the Patriot cause that their militia company marched at the front of the Middlesex County column confronting the British regulars at the North Bridge in Concord.

This talk will take place in Room 204 of the Acton Town Hall on Main Street starting at 7:00 P.M. It is free, but the Acton 250 Committee asks people to register so that they can be contacted about future events. The talk will also be shown live on Acton TV and Zoom.