The events in Massachusetts that led to wider tension between the colonies and Britain after 1765 included: the Stamp Act(1765), the Boston Massacre(1770), and the Boston Tea Party(1773). The Stamp Act was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed-paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. The money collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains. What made the Stamp Act so offensive to the colonists was not so much its immediate cost, but the standard it seemed to set. In the past, taxes and duties on colonial trade had always been viewed as measures to regulate commerce, not to raise money. The Stamp Act, however, was viewed as a direct attempt by England to raise money in the colonies without the approval of the colonial legislatures. If this new tax were allowed to pass without resistance, the colonists reasoned, the door would be open for far more troublesome taxation in the future. The Boston Massacre was a written document by Paul Revere called "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street." Twenty-one days before-- on the night of March 5, 1770-- British soldiers had shot five men to death in Boston town. Precipitating the event known as the Boston Massacre that was a mob of men and boys taunting a sentry standing guard at the city's customs house. When other British soldiers came to the sentry's support, a free-for-all ensued and shots were fired into the crowd. .
When Paul Revere's document came out, it showed only the British shooting the colonists, making it so that the colonists have another reason to hate on the British. This document made the colonists believe that the British attacked their own people signifying that this was the cause of the British.
