The citizens generally participated in the solemnities.
If the outrages against the American colonists had not been so flagrant, and so well imbedded as indisputable records of our history; if the action of the military authorities had not been so arbitrary, the uprising of Attucks and his followers might be looked upon as a common, reprehensible riot and the participants as a band of misguided incendiaries.

Subsequent reverence for the occasion, disproves any such view.

Judge Dawes, a prominent jurist of the time, as well as a brilliant exponent of the people, alluding in 1775 to the event, said: "The provocation of that night must be numbered among the master-springs which gave the first motion to a vast machinery--a noble and comprehensive system of national independence." Ramsey's History of the American Revolution, says: "The anniversary of the 5th of March was observed with great solemnity; eloquent orators were successively employed to preserve the remembrance of it fresh in the mind.

On these occasions the blessings of liberty, the horrors of slavery, and the danger of a standing army, were presented to the public view.

These annual orations administered fuel to the fire of liberty and kept it burning with an irresistible flame." The 5th of March continued to be celebrated for the above reasons until the anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence was substituted in its place; and its orators were expected to honor the feelings and principles of the former as having given birth to the latter.