Folklore of The United States - History

History

• Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it. The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution.

• Paul Revere's Ride alerted Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

• Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is often described as the war's turning point.

Other historical events that form a part of American folklore include: the Salem witch trials, the Boston Massacre, the Siege of Yorktown, California Gold Rush, Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and The Wreck Of The SS Edmund Fitzgerald