British troops marched from Boston to Lexington and Concord in April of 1775 to seize gunpowder and supplies that the colonists had stored there in preparation for an uprising. The British were also looking to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two prominent Patriot leaders who were believed to be in the area. The march was a response to the colonists' actions at the Boston Tea Party the previous December, in which a group of colonists dumped a shipment of British tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of British taxes. The British wanted to show the colonists that they were not going to tolerate such acts of defiance, and the march to Lexington and Concord was meant to be a display of force. However, the march resulted in the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, as the colonists resisted the British troops and began fighting back.