Revolutionary War Newspaper Analysis

Words: 1472
Pages: 6

The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first fights between the British and Colonists starting the Revolutionary War. During this period, newspapers were the only source for news available to everyone. Newspapers have the power to make or break the public’s opinion with just a slight over exaggeration on any topic. Even the in today’s news you can read two different papers on the exact same topic and get a totally different version of the story. When reading the newspaper articles during the Revolutionary War you see how powerful a writer’s words can be. The different newspapers were all very selective with the information that they put into their papers. Through the eyes of the different citizens writing letters to different newspapers, …show more content…
The article provided details describing more information from battles from Lexington and Concord. The Norwich Packet was a colonist supportive newspaper based out of Connecticut. The article discusses how the British soldiers burnt down more buildings until they were forced to retreat back towards Lexington depicting the colonist as heroes rather than soldiers by showing how they are fighting off the British soldiers. The article also discusses how the British soldiers came into Lexington killing inhabitants and destroying more barrels of flour. The giving more information that provides more evidence to the readers that the British soldiers are in fact evil and the Colonist are righteous.
Another article from the Norwich Packet displays a letter from Samuel Parsons titled “Important Advices” discussing the actions of the British soldiers. The letter discusses how the British soldiers are barbaric and savage and how their savagery was worse than any savage nation because their soldiers were killing women and children. The letter urged for its readers to provide more recourses and reinforcements. The ways the British soldiers are depicted in the Colonist’s newspapers were always in an extremely negative
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The article highlights affidavits from British soldiers who were there. The article claims that the Colonists attacked first. “…when we got near the Bridge they fired on our men first…” The article states that the affidavits were sworn before giving their statement. Some of the testimonies came from Militia men who stated that the British soldiers were the first to fire contradicting the earlier