The Boston Massacre
An Accounting on the 255th Anniversary
250 years ago, on March 6th, Dr. Joseph Warren gave the fifth annual address commemorating the events of 5 March 1770 in Boston. This was the second time Dr. Warren had been chosen as the orator, the first time being in 1772. “… you will permit me to say that with sincerity, […] I mourn over my bleeding country: with them I weep at her distress, and with them deeply resent the many injuries she has received from the hands of cruel and unreasonable men.”1 This would be the last time Dr. Warren would give this oration before he was killed at Bunker Hill just a short few months later. The March 5th Orations would continue right up until 1783, when the War for American Independence ended.
One of the many museums that I have spent time working for is located across from the site of the Boston Massacre. It is where I learned a lot more about the Boston Massacre in order to give tours about it and answer questions about it. I helped teach school programs about the Boston Massacre. So, when I realized that my next posting date was March 5th this year, I could not let it just slip by.
The French and Indian War had ended in 1763, and Britain was in need of funds to cover the debts they had managed to accrue fighting a war overseas protecting their colonies. Add to that the fact that they now had more land that they had acquired from the French, and well… They needed to make a fair amount of revenue.
Deciding that because they were fighting on behalf of the colonies, that the colonies should have to pay “their fair share”, they instated new taxes on the colonists. At first it was the Stamp Act. That failed. Then the Townshend Acts.
At every turn there were protests of the new taxes. To the point where the British government decided that troops were needed in Boston to help maintain calm and stop the shenanigans.
The soldiers were brought into Boston in such a way that while they were supposed to be there to help, they looked like they were occupying Boston. “Skyrockets exploded over Boston Harbor on the evening of September 29 [1768]. Witnesses on passing boats ‘observed great rejoicing’ and heard mocking straings of ‘Yankee Doodle’ eminating from the British fleet anchored off Castle William. Flashes of light from the fireworks, which the British set off themselves, revealed the fourteen vessels with their cargo of twelve hundred soldiers and officers poised to invade the town. The dreaded intrusion had become reality. Boston was to be occupied.”2 They took over a few important buildings within Boston for housing, since quartering in people’s homes didn’t go over particularly well. To make matters worse, the soldiers were not paid very well, and many of them took to wandering around Boston looking for work, something that the locals did not look kindly on as there were barely enough jobs for the people who lived there. Often soldiers would work for less money than the locals as well.
Then, in 1770, a couple of things happened in quick succession that would raise tension within the city.
On February 22, a mob throwing rocks would frighten Ebenezer Richardson, who was defending his friend, Theophilus Lillie, into firing out the window. Instead of warning the mob off, he accidentally killed an eleven year old boy.
“[Christopher] Seider, the eleven-year-old son of a poor family who had been placed with a Madam Apthorp, was more severely wounded. Hearing noises as he left school with other boys, he hurried to see the spectacle and was almost immediately struck by birdshot. One of the eleven pea-sized shots that punctured his chest and abdomen pierced a lung. He died that evening.”3
Christopher Seider’s funeral was paid for by Samuel Adams and turned into more of a rally.
Then, on March 2, a separate incident on the ropewalks would raise tensions even higher. A soldier from the 29th Regiment was looking for work when he decided to ask at the rope walks. A worker there told him he could “clean his s***house”. The ensuing scuffles lead to anger between the soldiers and the ropeworkers, both sides vowing to do even more damage.
Boston was still locked in winter, and on that Monday, March 5, there was a foot of snow on the ground, covering the oyster shells that paved the streets. Frigid temperatures produced ice so think as to hinder compaction, crusting the snow. Walking could be perilous, yet even those conditions probably seemed preferable to the slush of spring, still weeks away.4
Private Hugh White was on duty at the Customs House on March 5th when a 13-year-old wigmaker’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, walking around town with his friends, began taunting him. Garrick is insisting that White owes the wigmaker a debt. This was not true, but Garrick won’t give it up. Then White makes the mistake of hitting Garrick with the butt of his gun. Edward Garrick runs off - but his screams, shouting that White is trying to kill him, gather a lot of attention. A crowd begins to gather around Private White at the Customs House.
Then, around 9:15 pm, the bells of Old Brick, Brattle Street, and Old South Churches all begin ringing. Since church bells ringing in such a fashion typically meant that there was a fire or other peril, people start pouring out into the streets, many armed with buckets. The crowd continues to grow.
Captain Thomas Preston, gathers 7 men to help him rescue Private White. The original plan was to extract White, but Preston and his men end up surrounded and unable to escape themselves. Preston does his best to keep his men calm, but the crowd has progressed on to throwing clubs, ice, and rocks at the men. It is in all of this confusion that one of the men, Edward Montgomery, is hit by a club. It is unknown if Montgomery fired intentionally or accidentally, but his gun goes off - hitting and killing Crispus Attucks.
Preston starts yelling at Montgomery for firing his weapon, but in the chaos, all the other soldiers hear is the order to fire. By the time the smoke clears, two more men have died in the street, and two others are mortally wounded. One would die later that night, the other would die almost two weeks later.
“Later [Gov. Thomas] Hutchinson learned how close Boston had come to the bloodbath. The night of March 5, ‘expresses had gone out to the neighboring towns and the inhabitants were called out of their beds, many of whom armed themselves but were stopped from coming into town by advice that there was no further danger that night.’”5
Fundamentally, it came down to the fact that British soldiers had fired upon British subjects. The citizens of Boston wanted to see justice done. The soldiers would go to trial. And John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr. would represent them. But the people of Boston did not fully get what they thought they deserved. Almost all of the soldiers would get off, with the exception of two: Edward Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy. They were both branded with the M for Manslaughter.
“The real inciter of bloodshed was a fundamental legal misconception which the radicals had encouraged among Bostonians. It was based on an undoubted truth, that soliders could not use force against civilians unless some civil authority so requested. […] Unfortunately and tragically, the purveyors of this supposed principle forgot its necessary corollary. No one, soldier or civilian, need without retaliation suffer a mortal attack.”6
“The notion that forgetting is America’s strength should be a concern for us all, not just for those who care about the past, but those who care about the country’s future as well.”7
Happen to be near Northampton, Massachusetts today? There’s a staged reading of Blood on the Snow at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence tonight and tomorrow night!
Tickets: https://www.historicnorthampton.org/blood-on-the-snow.html
Blood on the Snow details an imagining of the events that happened in the Council Chamber of the Old State House the night after the Boston Massacre. (I have mentioned the play previously in a Touch Points post about physical space.)
There are also events happening through Revolutionary Spaces, the organization that runs the Old State House and Old South Meeting House. You can look them up here: https://revolutionaryspaces.org/
There are also some interesting blog posts up on their blog, Boston Reconsidered, like this one: https://revolutionaryspaces.org/you-think-this-is-a-massacre/
Patriot Joseph Warren’s 1775 Boston Massacre Oration in full text
https://www.drjosephwarren.com/2015/03/warren%E2%80%99s-1775-boston-massacre-oration-in-full-text-our-country-is-in-danger-but-not-to-be-despaired-of/
Richard Archer, As If An Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009),104.
Archer, 179.
Archer, 185.
Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 205.
Zobel, 197.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, “The National Museum of African American History and Culture: The Vision”, Journal of Museum Education (New York), Vol 42, No 1, 2017, pg 8.