Could the King Be Checked By the People?

Heather Cox Richardson· Host0:00

[on-hold music] April 19th, 2026. On the evening of April 18th, 1775, the people who lived in the British colony of Massachusetts had gone to bed with the sun as usual. By the evening of April 19th, everything had changed. In the past twenty-four hours, soldiers from their own government had opened fire on them, killing their own people, and Massachusetts men had fired back. It was hard to understand how things had gotten so bad. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Bostonians had looked forward to a happy future in the British Empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies' trade with other countries. But that euphoria faded fast. Almost as soon as the war was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just passed, the king's ministers