several others, helped to inflame the antagonism between the
provincials and the military, and Governor Hutchinson, at the demand of
Samuel Adams, speaking in behalf of three thousand resolute citizens,
removed the troops to an island in the harbor. In April, 1770, Parliament
again yielded to the Americans in so far as to take off all the Townshend
duties except the duty on tea, which the king insisted upon retaining as
a vindication of England's right to impose the duty.

The colonists continued as determined as ever not to submit to British
taxation, or to the domineering course of the king's officers, which in
some of the provinces had led to harsh and even bloody strife between the
people and their oppressors. An armed schooner in the British revenue
service called the Gaspee, gave offence to American navigators on
Narragansett Bay by requiring that their flag should be lowered in token
of respect whenever they passed the king's vessel. The Gaspee ran aground
while chasing a Providence sloop. Word of the mishap was carried up to
Providence and, on the same night (June 9, 1772) sixty-four armed men
went down in boats, attacked and captured the Gaspee, and burned the
vessel. Abraham Whipple, afterward a commodore in the Continental Navy,
and one of the founders of the State of Ohio, led the expedition. The
royal authorities were greatly exasperated on hearing of the daring
achievement, and Joseph Wanton, Governor of Rhode Island, afterward
deposed from office for his loyalty to King George, issued a proclamation
ordering diligent search for the perpetrators of the act. The British
government offered a reward of $5000 for the leader, but although the
people of Providence well knew who had taken part in the exploit, neither
Whipple nor his associates were betrayed. In North Carolina insurgents
calling themselves "Regulators" fought a sanguinary battle with Governor
Tryon's troops, and were defeated, and six of them hanged for treason. In
South Carolina the people also divided on the issue between England and
the colonists, but for the time stopped short of violence.

The famous "Boston Tea Party" occurred in December, 1773. This was not a
riotous, or, from the colonial standpoint, a lawless act, for the
colonists were already administering their own affairs to a certain
extent independently of royal authority, with the view to the
preservation and defence of their liberties. The English East India
Company had been anxi