Thomas Preston
Thomas Preston was the officer in command at the Boston Massacre, and he was acquitted by a Boston jury. He was a captain of the 29th Regiment, said to have been Irish-born, and had served long enough to be unremarkable. On the evening of 5 March 1770 a sentry outside the Custom House was surrounded by a crowd throwing snowballs, ice and oyster shells after an argument over an unpaid barber's bill. Preston took seven men and formed them in a semicircle with fixed bayonets to relieve him. Someone was knocked down, a shot went off, and a ragged volley followed. Five men died, the first of them Crispus Attucks. The central question at his trial was whether he had given the order to fire. Witnesses swore both ways, including some who could not have heard him over the noise they described. He was defended by John Adams, who took the case because he believed the town's cause would be worth nothing if it could not give an unpopular man a fair trial, and who was elected to the legislature anyway. Adams argued that the crowd's own conduct created the reasonable fear that justified the shooting, and Preston was acquitted in October 1770. Two soldiers were convicted of manslaughter and branded on the thumb. He was given a pension and left America. Paul Revere's engraving, which shows him ordering a disciplined volley into unarmed civilians, is what most people know of the night, and the jury did not believe it.
- Lived: 1722 CE – 1798 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military
