On this day in 1770, The Boston Massacre took place on a cold, snowy night with the Patriots and the British soldiers.

British Captain Thomas Preston, the commanding officer at the Customs House, ordered his men to get their bayonets and join the guard outside the building. The colonists responded by throwing snowballs with rocks in them and Private Hugh Montgomery was hit, provoking him to use his rifle on the crowd. The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists were on the ground dead—Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and James Caldwell—and three more were injured. Although it is unclear whether Crispus Attucks, an African American, was the first to fall (as is commonly believed), the deaths of the five men are regarded by some historians as the first fatalities in the American Revolutionary War.

The British soldiers were put on trial, and patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the soldiers to show their support for the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded with an “M” for murder as a punishment.

The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, publicized the “Boston Massacre” as a battle for American liberty and cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized representation of the colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.

In April 1775, the American Revolution began when British troops from Boston fought with American militiamen at the battles of Lexington and Concord. The British troops were under orders to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington and to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord. The missions were not accomplished because of Paul Revere and William Dawes, who rode ahead of the British, warning Adams and Hancock and rousing the Patriots.

Eleven months later, British forces had to evacuate Boston following American General George Washington’s successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights. This bloodless liberation of Boston brought an end to the hated eight-year British occupation of the city. For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress. It would be more than five years before the Revolutionary War came to an end with British General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender to Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.