I was about twelve years old then and soon began my hand at writing poems of my own. When I was in my teens this country was still a colony of England. However, change was in the air. During the first part of 1765 the British passed a law requiring printed material, like newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents and so forth, to have stamps on them. The British agents sold the stamps and collected the fees.

All of the colonialists resented this law. That summer a group of men who called themselves "The Sons of Liberty" started marching up and down the streets of Boston protesting this Stamp Act.

By 1770 things started to heat up. During a shouting match, a British sympathizer shot an eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Snider. I was so touched by the incident that I wrote a poem about it.