Boston Massacre
British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street in Boston on 5 March 1770 and killed five people. The troops had been in the town since 1768, sent to protect the customs commissioners, and were resented for the ordinary reasons — quartered among a hostile population, competing for casual work in their off-duty hours at lower wages. The evening began with an apprentice insulting an officer over an unpaid bill and a sentry striking him with a musket butt. A crowd gathered, threw snowballs, ice and oyster shells, and rang the fire bells, which brought more people out. Captain Preston brought seven men to relieve the sentry and formed them in a semicircle with fixed bayonets. Somebody was knocked down, a shot was fired, and then a ragged volley. Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Wampanoag descent, was the first killed. Preston insisted he had never given the order and the evidence supported him. The two things that followed are the interesting part. Paul Revere produced an engraving within three weeks showing an officer ordering a disciplined line to fire on unarmed civilians, which is inaccurate and was the most effective piece of propaganda of the decade. And John Adams defended the soldiers at their trial, on the argument that facts are stubborn things and that a fair trial mattered more than the cause; six were acquitted and two convicted of manslaughter. He later called it one of the best services he ever rendered his country. The word massacre is Samuel Adams's contribution and was applied within days to an incident in which five men died. Both the propaganda and the trial were necessary to the cause, which is a combination that a movement rarely manages.
- Year: 1770 CE
- Category: Military
