Boston+Massacre

On March 5, 1770, the Boston Massacre occurred between the colonists and British soldiers in Boston. It happened on King Street (15 State Street today). Some historians think of the Boston Massacre as the first battle of the American Revolution.

The were as many causes of the Boston Massacre as there were reasons for the independence of America from Britain. To sum up all of them, the Bostonians felt that the British troops (who had moved into the city to preserve peace and order after the riots that occurred because of the Stamp and Townshend Acts) were a threat to the colonists' jobs, families and lifestyles. Violence ensued from this tension between the two groups. Many skirmishes had occurred before the Boston Massacre, but only leaving bruised bodies and broken bones.

Then the Boston Massacre happened and it changed everything. There are two variations on how the Boston Massacre started. Both took place in the early evening and with the same people, but have slight differences.


 * The first version was as follows: After a British officer, Captain John Goldfinch, left the shop, the barber's apprentice, Sam Maverick, followed the captain into the square and accused him of not paying. Maverick's claim was false. The captain ordered Maverick to return to his shop. However, Maverick would not go into his shop, so he called over Private Hugh White, a soldier on duty nearby. The private had been pelted with snow and ice earlier in the day and was impatient and very angry. When the boy was still resisting, White hit him twice with the butt of his musket.


 * The second version was as follows: A British soldier, Hugh White, was a guard of the Customs House and was being harrassed by a local boy. White, hit the boy with the butt of his rifle and sent him away, bleeding and calling for help.

These two versions may be different, but there is one part of the Boston Massacre that is the same in every history book. From there he ran to a nearby pub that, that unfortunately for White, had some local gang members and some that were intoxicated. The men in the pub were outraged to see the bloodied boy and came out of the pub looking for the British soldier who had hit him. The angered men, then, rung an emergency bell, calling more men to the square. The crowd eventually grew to approximately 400 people. The leader of the crowd was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave. The crowd started throwing things and shouting insults at the British. Nervous about the angry mob, Goldfinch (or, in the other version, White) called for reinforcements.The reinforcements were seven soldiers, six men and their commanding officer, Captain Thomas Preston.This large, angry mob continued to taunt, yell and throw things at the soldiers. In an attempt to scare off the Bostonians, Preston ordered his men to load their muskets. Alas, this did nothing to stop the colonists, it added to their anger. At this point, the mob started using weapons to harass the soldiers, as well as, dared them to shoot. Then, Attucks pushed Private John Montgomery, a soldier that was part of the seven-man reinforcement. When Montgomery got back up, he pointed his musket at Attucks and yelled, "Damn you, fire!" The other British soldiers thought this was an order from Preston, and fired on the mob. This killed five men and wounded eleven. Attucks was the first man to die, and "the first American to die for independence".

The soldiers were quickly arrested and tried. They were defended by John Adams (who later became the second president of the United States) and Josiah Quincy. The trials lasted for two months. The British soldiers were acquitted,except for two, who were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded on the hand.

The Boston Massacre was used as propaganda to sway the colonists into joining the rebellion against Britain. This propaganda was exaggerated and embellished to make the British look evil. The Sons of Liberty, the group that was leading the fight against the British at the time, called the Boston Massacre, "the bloody massacre" and used it to inform anyone that had not been in Boston at the time about the "atrocities" committed by the British. The Sons of Liberty portrayed the British as firing on a peaceful group of protesters and the massacre was totally unprovoked. Paul Revere drew paintings and drawings of the incident, depicting the British as villainous and shooting on innocent people. The Sons of Liberty also held ceremonies in memory of the Boston Massacre to keep the colonists from forgetting what happened that day. John Hancock gave a speech in commemoration of the Boston Massacre in 1774 saying, "... the anniversary of that ill-fated night is kept a jubilee in the grim court of pandemonium, let all America join in one common prayer to heaven, that the inhuman, unprovoked murders of the 5th of March, 1770, planned by Hillsborough and a knot of treacherous knaves in Boston, and executed by the cruel hand of Preston and his sanguinary coadjutors, may ever stand on history without a parallel." The widely publicized event made the colonist extremely angry at the British. The revolution would have never happened if the colonists were never outraged about the Boston Massacre or, at least, the revolutionaries would not have the had the same amount of supporters. And today we could still be under British rule without the Boston Massacre occurring.



** __Resources__ **

Gilje, Paul A. "Boston Massacre." In Gilje, Paul A., and Gary B. Nash, eds. //Encyclopedia of American History: Revolution and New Nation, 1761 to 1812//, Revised Edition (Volume III). New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2010. //American History Online//. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp? ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHIII046&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 13, 2012).

Encyclopedia of American History: Revolution and New Nation, 1761 to 1812, Revised Edition (Volume III). New York: Facts On File Inc., 2010

Frame, Arthur T. "Boston Massacre." In Tucker, Spencer C., gen. ed. //Encyclopedia of American Military History//. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2003. //American History Online//. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp? ItemID=WE52&iPin=EMHI0101&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 13, 2012). "The Boston Massacre." //ushistory.org//. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. <http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/r

"British Redcoats - Deadliest Fiction Wiki - Write your own fictional battles you have always dreamed of."//Deadliest Fiction Wiki - Write your own fictional battles you have always dreamed of//. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. .