Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)
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The size of the funeral procession was so large that authorities were worried
about further repercussions, and they withdrew soldiers from the Custom House
to Castle Island in Boston Harbor. They had arrested Preston at 3:00 a.m. on
March 5, the morning after the shooting, and the eight soldiers involved turned
themselves in later that morning. On March 27, Preston and four of the men who
were thought to have been involved in the shooting were formally charged with
murder. By this time, the incident had become well known throughout the city
and further afield. Some anonymous pamphlets circulated, and H enry Pelham, a
local artist and the half-brother of John Singleton Copley, the famous local portrait
painter ( who al so painted many of the Bostonian political figures of the period
involved in the subsequent trials), produced a picture of the incident, and Paul
Revere, a Bostonian silversmith an d engraver than produced his famous carton
of the “Boston Massacre” as it had become called. Revere’s drawing became
famous, and Christian Remick, a local painter, hand-colored some pictures, some
of which show Attucks as an African American. They also have Preston standing
behind his soldiers and ordering them to open fire. The bright blue sky was also
an artistic license as it was dusk at the time. Revere also added a sniper sho oting
from out of the Custom House (which was labeled in the engraving as “Butcher’s
Hall”). However, the most inaccurate part of the drawing was that the soldiers fired
at intervals, possibly reloading, and they never fired a volley at the crowd, which
would probably have resulted in much higher casualties.
At the Suffolk County Court, Captain Preston and the soldiers were put on trial.
The government wanted the trial to be fair so that moderates woul d conti nue to
support them, and to show that justice would be upheld. However, there were not
many local attorneys who would represent the soldiers. Eventually John Adams,
a leading patriot, agreed to defend them to ensure fairness, and he was assisted
by Josiah Quincy II and Robert Auchmuty. The prosecution was led by the solici-
tor general for Massachusetts, Samuel Quincy, and Robert Treat Paine, an attorney
hired by the town of Boston. All the jurors were drawn from outside Boston, and
the trial itself was not held until later in the year.
The first trial was that of Thomas Preston, who, some claimed, gave the order to
shoot. While in custody, Preston had written a number of letters, some of which
were published in the local press. Preston’s trial lasted from October 24 to Octo-
ber 30, 1770. Fifteen people testified at the trial, and there were depositions from
another 91 people. Some included information of what they actually saw, or
believed they had seen, with others citing hearsay and other evidence that was
clearly inadmissible. Garrick was the first to give evidence, and Thomas Marshal,
a tailor who served in the militia, was the second to speak for the prosecution. It
was a witness called William Wyat, who claimed that he had actually heard Pres-
ton give the order—but had said that Preston was wearing a neutral-colored
154 Boston Massacre (1770)
overcoat, later conceding that the man wearing the overcoat was not Preston. The
jury acquitted Preston because they clearly did not believe that he had ordered the
soldiers to open fire. The most convincing evidence was that Preston was standing
in front of the soldiers, and hence any call by him to open fire would have endan-
gered himself.
The t rial of the eight soldiers started a month later, on November 27. Their
defense, argued by John Adams, was that the soldiers were acting to defend them-
selves from possible harm. Even if they were provoked, Adams stated that there
was no aim to shoot anybody, and they could only be found guilty of manslaughter.
A plan of the area of the Boston Massacre, attributed to Paul Revere, is held at the
Boston Public Library, and it has been claimed that t he diagram was used in the
court, although there are some doub ts. The claim of self-defense was sustained
by the jury in the case of six of the soldiers. However, two of the soldiers—Kilroy
and Montgomery—were found guilty of murder a s there were statements from
many people that they h ad shot into the crowd. Some of the jurymen were later
quoted a s saying that they felt that the solders should have held their fire for
longer. However, for the two convicted of manslaughter, A dams managed to get
the crime reduced to manslaughter by using a part of the British Common Law
whereby they could read from the Bible to prove that they could read and therefore
had “prayed clergy” protesting their innocence and holding out their right thumbs.
This meant that the two privates were punished by being branded on their thumbs
by Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf.
The Boston Massacre was one of the events that were to engender great anger in
the American public against the British authorities. Much of this came from
Paul Revere’s engraving which is still used in many school textbooks, although
now the problematic nature of the image is highlighted. There remain some
disputes—based on the conflicting evidence given at the trials—over whether
some of the soldiers reloaded t heir guns before firing again. The site where the
Boston Massacre took pla ce is now marked by a cobblestone circle in the square
around what is now the Old State House—and indeed it was from a balcony of
the same building that the Declaration of Independence was read to crowds on
July 18, 1776.
—Justin Corfield
See also all entries under Stamp Act Protests (1765); Boston Tea Party (1773).
Further Reading
Bourne, Russell. Cradle of Violence: How Boston’s Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American
Revolution. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Boston Massacre (1770) 155
Burgan, Michael. Boston Massacre. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2005.
Langguth, A. J. Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Phelan, Mary Kay. The Story of the Boston M assacre. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1976.
Reid, John Phillip. “A Lawyer Acquitted: John Adams and the Boston Massacre.” American
Journal of Legal History 18, no. 3 (1974): 189–207.
Zobel, Hiller B. The Bo ston Massacre. New York: W. W. Nor ton & Company, 1970.
156 Boston Massacre (1770)
Adams, John (1735–1826)
Already a leading patriot in Boston, Massachusetts, John Adams, later the second
president of the United States, was a prominent lawyer involved in defending Cap-
tain Thomas Preston, who was being charged with ordering soldiers to open fire on
civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, and also some of the soldiers
charged with opening fire.
Adams was born on October 30, 1735, at Braintree, Massachusetts, his father,
John Adams, being descended from a Welsh m igrant, Ap Adam, who migrated
to the Americas in 1636. He was educated at Harvard College, and his father, a
Puritan deacon, wanted him to become a minister. However, he taught for a while
and then decided to study law. With the emergence of the Patriot movement,
Samuel Adams, a second cousin of John, became a leading activist. The two were
prominent opponents of the Stamp Act of 1765, and John Adams himself
wrotecriticismsthatappearedintheBoston Gazette and were then republished
in the London Chronicle.
A well-known attorney in Boston by the time of the Boston Massacre, John
Adams was hired to present a defense for Captain Preston and the eight soldie rs.
Initially, all the Briti sh soldiers were unable to fi nd a lawyer, and Preston asked
Adams to help. Adams was concer ned that d efending them might lose friends
locally, and he would certainly not be well remunerated for his efforts. As it was,
defending Preston earned him 18 guineas (£18, 18 shillings), for w hat Adams
was to describe as “the most exhausting and fatiguing” case he had worked on.
However, Adams was keen that the soldiers should have a fair trial, and his work
on their behalf certainly showed him a fair person anxious that the legal proce ss
should triumph over mob rule of any sort.
During th e trial, Adams ably defended Preston. Assiste d by Josiah Quincy II
and Robert Auchmuty, he was able to find discrepancies in some of the arguments
raised by the witnesses. Preston’s case was relatively easy as it was quickly proven
that he did not give the order to open fire, and as he did not personally fire
into the crowd, Adams was able to persuade the jury to acquit him. For the
soldiers, the trial was harder as they did fire into the c rowd. Two of the eight
soldiers—Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery—were found guilty of the
lesser charge of manslaughter (the others being entirely acquitted), and Adams
was able to make a plea for them by which they had their right thumbs branded.
John Adams went on to be a leading political activist, taking part in the Decla-
ration of Independenc e, and becoming the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands
from 1782 to 1788, and to Great Britain from 1785 to 1788. He was the first vice
president of the United States, serving under George Washington, from 1789 until
157
1797, and was president of the United States from March 4, 1797, until March 4,
1801. He died on July 4, 1826. His son John Quincy Adams became the sixth
president of the United States in 1825.
—Justin Corfield
Further Reading
Ferling, John. John Adams: A Life. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Smith, Page. John Adams. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962.
Attucks, Crispus (c. 1723–1770)
Crispus A ttucks was the first person killed in what became known as the Bo ston
Massacre. Born of an African father and Native American mother, Attucks was a
slave for one William Brown of Framingham, Massachusetts, until he escaped in
1750. Although little is known about Attucks’s life, a runaway advertisement in
the Boston Gazette (October 2, 1750) described him as “a mulatto Fellow, about
27 years of age ...6 feet 2 inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees near together
than common.” The ad vertisement offered a reward of “1 0 pounds” and “cau-
tioned against” seamen who would help him escape. The caution was not heeded.
For the next 20 years, Attucks labored on a whaling ship out of Boston Harbor. At
other times, he served as a rope maker on Boston’s North End. It was here where
Attucks led a mob against British soldiers.
On the North End, Attucks and others like him clashed with British soldiers, who
were stationed in Boston after the French and Indian War. As a sailor, Attucks felt
especially vulnerable to British impressment, which was a standard practice in the
18th century. As a common laborer, he came to resent the competition from British
troops who worked during their off hours to supplement their meager wages in the
military. On Friday, March 2, 1770, tensions heated up when Attucks and a group
of rope makers fought with a British soldier, after which a rope maker insulted a Red-
coat. Tensions culminated on the evening of Monday, March 5, 1770, when a group
of 30 angry seamen, whom John Adams described as “a motely rabble of saucy boys,
negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues, and jack tarrs,” pelted a British guard at the cus-
toms house with snowballs and sticks. Seven soldiers came to his aid, immediately
opening fire on the angry crowd. Attucks was struck first. Two balls tore through
his chest, puncturing his chest and liver. Four others were also killed.
158 Boston Massacre (1770)
Newspapers on that fateful day noted that the five men were “barbarously mur-
dered” (New Hampshire Gazette, March 13, 1772), but the tr ial did not bare that
out. The soldiers were acquitted when John Adams, one of the finest legal minds
in Boston, won an acquittal for the soldiers, setting off a public uproar throughout
the city. Pamphleteers and propagandists called the affair the “Boston Massacre,”
and the victims, Attucks included, became immediate heroes.
Attucks was buried at Granary Burying Ground in Boston, the same yard that
bears the remains of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other notable patriots of
the American Revolution. Today he is remembered as a martyr and a symbol o f
American freedom. In 1998, the U.S. Treasury honored him by putting his image
on a silver dollar.
—Matthew L. Harris
Further Reading
Allison, Robert J. The Boston Massacre. Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions,
2006.
Zobel, Hiller B. The Boston Massacre. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970; reissued, 1996.
Broadsides
One-sheet documents printed on one side only, broadsides date back to the 15th
century as a popular format for q uick d istribution of official public announce-
ments, commercial advertisements, news, and commentary. Broadsides generally
fall in the category of ephemera, since most were considered disposable and
tended to address issues of immediate but short-lived relevance. However, histori-
ans value broadsides for insights they offer into popula r discourse—literally, the
views on the street—as opposed to more formal written histories.
Broadsides competed for attention in pub lic spaces using graphics, distinctive
typography, and provocative languag e. Broadside ballads, poems intended to be
sung to a familiar tune, further helped communicate a message memorably. Often
sold at low cost o r distributed for free, broadsides have a long history as tools of
revolutionary action. In Boston, articles, verse, and cartoons rallying anti-British
sentiments were post ed on the Liberty Tree, from which an effigy of stamp-
master Andrew Oliver was hanged in November 1765. Boston’s literate middle
class, including merchants and craftsmen, was a prime audience for propaganda
decrying burdensome taxes and encroachments on liberty.
Boston Massacre (1770) 159
Printers of dissenting materials, such as Isaiah Thomas and Alexander McDou-
gall, risked a charge of seditious libel, imprisonment, and destruction of their
presses if publications were traced back to them. Authors often signed their work
with pseudonyms if at a ll. But Stamp Act duties on newspapers a nd advertise-
ments severely antagonized colonial publishers, motivating disobedience.
In Boston, where Sons of Liberty activities could be violent and vindictive,
printers complying with British laws ran risks as well. A broadside published under
the banner “No Stamped Paper to Be Had” described Stamp Act protests noting,
“We have certain information from Boston that printers there intend to continue
their papers, and to risk the penalties ...and that if any of them were to stop on
account of the stamp act, their offices would be in danger from the enraged people.”
In the 18th century, graphic elements were typically printed from woodblocks,
often generic designs that could be reused. In the Revolutionary era, a boot motif
frequently appeared in reference to John Stuart, Lord Bute, First Lord of the
Treasury and a favorite counselor of George III, and the devil denoted misdeeds
and malign influence of various public figures.
The Boston Massacre became the subject of numerous broadsides in the months
following the shooting of several belligerent colonists in a confrontation with British
soldiers. “In Memory of the (Never to be Forgotten) Fifth of March, 1770” featured
coffins and death’s-head graphics common to funeral announcements, as well as an
elegiac poem appealing to divine justice for vengeance. A large broadside published
by the Boston Gazette included Paul Revere’s famed copperplate print “The Bloody
Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th
Reg’t.” Revere’s depiction of the fatal incident as a want on act of violence perpe-
trated a gainst in nocent c olonists was copied by several printe rs. Thomas , who
printed a woodblock version in 1771, particularly helped keep the Boston Massacre
fresh in the public mind, printing annual memorials to the men killed.
—Tess Mann
Further Reading
Barker, Hannah, and Simon Burrows, eds. Press Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe
and North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Brigham, Clarence S. Paul Revere’s Engravings. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
Lowance, Mason I., and Georgia B. Bumgardner, eds. Massachusetts Broadsides of the
American Revolution. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976.
“No Stamped Paper to Be Had.” Philadelphia: Printed by Hall & Franklin, 1765. Libra ry
of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection; Portfolio 346, Folder 45.
Plakas, Rosemary Fry. “Introduction to Printed Ephemera Collection.” American
Memory: American Time Capsule, Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed
Ephemera, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. August 3,
160 Boston Massacre (1770)
2008: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rbpehtml/pessay.html (accessed August 28,
2008).
“A Poem, In Memory of t he (Never to be Forgotten) Fifth of March, 1770.” Boston:
Printed and sold next to the Writing-School, in Queen-Street, 1770. Massachusetts
Historical Society.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. “The Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act.” New England
Quarterly (March 1935): 63–83.
Preston, Thomas (1722–1798)
Captain Thomas Preston was the Officer of the Day from the 29th Regiment of
Foot in the British army, and was responsible for ordering the soldiers to open fire
leading to the Boston Massacre of 1770. Little is known of his origins. There have
been some suggestions that he might have been from Ireland, although there seems
to be no real evidence for this except for records of a number of men called
Thomas Preston living there, and the 29th Regiment having been based at
Kilkenny, Ireland, before it moved to North America.
It was in 1768 that the 29th Regiment was sent to Boston, Massachusetts, along
with the 14th Regiment. On the night of March 5, 1770, he ordered the British sol-
diers to form a semicircle to keep back the crowd that was gathering, and told them
not to fire, although a soldier, Private Hugh Montgomery, did shout out “fire.”
After the Boston Massacre, Preston was arrested at about midnight and taken to
the Town Hall, where he was charged before two justices with the shooting. At
3:00 a.m., he was taken to t he jail and was held there for seven months until he
was put on trial for the shootings, which had lead to the deaths of five people, three
at the site, and two afterwards.
While in jail, Preston wrote a number of letters that appeared in the Boston
Gazette in which he thanked the local peo ple . However, he also wrote letters t o
people elsewhere, and one of his letters sent to London was published in Boston,
in which he complained about Bostonians. Preston hired a local lawyer, John
Adams, later U.S. president, as his attorney. In the trial that took place on Octo-
ber 24–30, Preston stated that he felt that some of the crowd were intent on looting
the Customs House. After his acquittal, he wrote to General Thomas Gage, “I take
the liberty of wishing you joy at the complete victory obtained over the knaves and
foolish villains of Boston.”
Preston waited until the trial of the soldiers ended and he then left America
on the HMS Glasgow. He retired from the army and moved to England, where
he received a pension o f £200, and he i s said to have either settled in London or
Boston Massacre (1770) 161
in Ireland, although John Adams did report that he saw him in London in the
1780s.
A number of stories have em erged around Thomas Presto n who appears in the
Revere print of the Boston Massacre. It has variously been stated that Preston was
aged 40, or elsewhere that he was born in the same year as Adams, making him
48. A history of the massacre by Michael Burgan states that Preston died in 1798.
—Justin Corfield
Further Reading
Bourne, Russell. Cradle of Violence: How Boston’s Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American
Revolution. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Zobel, Hiller B. The Bo ston Massacre. New York: W. W. Nor ton & Company, 1970.
Revere, Paul (1734–1818)
Boston artisan, printmaker, businessman, and patriot mythologized in Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow’s romantic poem Paul Revere’s Ride, whose print of the
Boston Massacre depicted the confrontation between colonists and soldiers as an
act of unwarranted aggression.
162 Boston Massacre (1770)
Paul Revere was a silversmith who
became a folk hero of the American
Revolution, though his real importance
was in publicizing the cause in the years
leading up to independence. (Library of
Congress)
A silversmith by profession, Revere learned his craft from his father, French-
born Apollos De Revoire (1702–175 4). Taking over his fa ther’s s ilver shop in
1757, Revere struggled to compete in a limited market for fine silverwork. He sup-
plement ed his income making and mending common items like buckles and but-
tons and took up copperplate engraving, printing advertisements, trade cards, and
bookplates. Seeing his business further threatened by the 1765 Stamp Act, Revere
became increasingly engaged in revolutionary politics. In addition to his involve-
ment with the North End Caucus and the Sons of Liberty, and later service as a
courier for the Continental Congress, Revere printed patriotic cartoons.
In March 1770, after seven British soldiers fired on an angry mob leaving five
dead and six wounded, Revere produced a print titled “The Bloody Massacre per-
petrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Reg’t.”
Below an illustration of the incident liberally skewing the facts, Revere included
the names of the dead and a poem claiming the soldiers, “Like fierce barbarians
grinnin g o’er their prey, Approve the carnage and enjoy the day.” Fir st published
and sold individually, the picture also appeared on a broadside with a Boston
Gazette article describing “the Consequences of Quartering Troops in a populous
well-regulated town.”
A talented silversmit h but an awkward draftsman, Revere generally based his
cartoons on pictures by other artists, not an unusual practice in a time before copy-
right law. For “The Bloody Massa cre,” he closely copied a print by artist Henry
Pelham, prompting a letter from Pelham protesting Revere’s failure to share credit
and profit s. The swiftness with which Revere copied and circulated the pictur e
suggests he recognized a potent appeal to moral outrage for the shooting specifi-
cally and the state of affairs between Britain and America generally.
As in Pelham’s original, Revere depicts a line of eight smiling soldiers in red
coats firing into a group of distressed colonists chiefly in blue. Both versions
indentify a building behind the soldiers as the Custom House and feature a small
dog (a symbol of loyalty) facing the soldiers but siding with the colonists. Unlike
Pelham, Revere chose not to show any colonists fleeing and changed the direction
of the moo n in the corner above the colonists so that it waxes rather than wanes.
He also added a building called “Butcher’s Hall” (a pun reading as “Butchers
All”) and a gun firing from one of its windows.
Though “The Bloody Massacre” was extensively distributed in 1770 and copied
in turn by other artists, it did not necessarily inflame the hearts of a ll colonial
Americans, particularly those beyond Boston, or those withinBostonwhotired
of civil unrest. However, through frequent reproduction over ensuing centuries
and association with Revere’s folk hero status, the print became the iconic image
of the Boston massacre for later generations.
—Tess Mann
Boston Massacre (1770) 163