Boston Massacre (1770): The Shooting on King Street

The Boston Massacre took place on the evening of 5 March 1770, when British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street in Boston, killing five men and wounding six others. It grew out of months of tension between Bostonians and the troops stationed in their town. Turned into a powerful symbol by Patriot propaganda, especially Paul Revere’s famous engraving, it became one of the defining events on the road to the American Revolution, even though the soldiers’ trials, with John Adams for the defence, ended mostly in acquittals.

Background: soldiers in a protesting town

Boston was the centre of resistance to British taxation. Protests against the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Acts in 1767 and 1768 made it, in the eyes of officials in London, the most disorderly town in the colonies. After a riot over the seizure of John Hancock’s sloop Liberty in June 1768, the government sent soldiers to support the customs commissioners and royal officials.

Regiments began landing on 1 October 1768. At its peak the garrison numbered around 2,000 soldiers in a town of roughly 15,000 to 16,000 people. Townspeople resented the troops, who were seen as a standing army in peacetime and who were often quartered in public buildings and warehouses. Off-duty soldiers sought part-time work, which brought them into competition with Boston labourers. Fights, insults and court cases became common.

By early 1770 the garrison had been reduced, leaving mainly the 14th and 29th Regiments of Foot. Tension then rose sharply. On 22 February 1770 a customs informer, Ebenezer Richardson, fired into a crowd attacking his house and killed an 11-year-old boy, Christopher Seider. His funeral drew a large crowd. In early March, brawls broke out between soldiers and ropewalk workers at John Gray’s ropewalk.

The night of 5 March 1770

It was a cold evening with snow on the ground. At the Custom House on King Street, a lone sentry, Private Hugh White, exchanged insults with a young wigmaker’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, who had been taunting an officer about an unpaid bill. White struck the boy with his musket. A crowd gathered, church bells began ringing, which Bostonians usually took as a fire alarm, and more people poured into the street.

Soon a crowd of perhaps 300 to 400 people surrounded the sentry, throwing snowballs, chunks of ice and other objects, and daring him to fire. The officer of the day, Captain Thomas Preston, came to White’s aid with a corporal and six privates of the 29th Regiment. They formed a rough semicircle in front of the Custom House, muskets loaded and bayonets fixed.

For several minutes the soldiers faced a pressing, shouting crowd. Preston stood in front of his men, trying to calm the situation. Then Private Hugh Montgomery was knocked down by a thrown club or stick. He got up and fired, and after a pause the other soldiers fired too, in a ragged series of shots rather than a single volley. Witnesses disagreed about whether anyone shouted “fire”, and if so who.

Eleven men were hit. Crispus Attucks, a sailor and rope worker of African and Native American ancestry, Samuel Gray, a ropewalk worker, and James Caldwell, a sailor, died at the scene. Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old apprentice, died the next morning, and Patrick Carr, an Irish-born leather worker, died on 14 March. Six others were wounded and survived.

The immediate aftermath

Preston pulled his men back and called out more troops, and for a time the town seemed close to open fighting. The acting governor, Thomas Hutchinson, appeared on the balcony of the Town House (now the Old State House) and promised that justice would be done. Preston and the eight soldiers were arrested.

The next day, under intense pressure from a town meeting led by Samuel Adams, Hutchinson agreed to remove both regiments to Castle William, a fort on an island in Boston Harbour. On 8 March four of the dead were buried together in the Granary Burying Ground after a funeral procession that, by contemporary estimates, drew 10,000 or more people. Patrick Carr was later buried in the same grave.

Revere’s engraving and the battle for opinion

Within days, Boston’s Patriot leaders were calling the event a “massacre”. The town published A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, with dozens of sworn statements, and sent it to Britain. The most powerful piece of propaganda was an engraving titled The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, published by the silversmith Paul Revere in late March 1770.

Revere’s print was based closely on a drawing by the artist Henry Pelham, who complained in a letter that Revere had copied his work without permission. It shows a neat line of soldiers firing on an officer’s command into a peaceful, well-dressed crowd, with a gun firing from a window of the Custom House, which is labelled “Butcher’s Hall”. Almost every detail is misleading: the crowd was not passive, there was no order to fire in line, and the scene took place at night on snow. In many copies Crispus Attucks is not shown as a man of colour. The image was nevertheless reprinted widely and shaped how Americans remembered the event for generations.

The trials

Hutchinson delayed the trials until the autumn to let tempers cool. Captain Preston was tried separately from his men. Remarkably, his defence was led by John Adams, a rising Boston lawyer and a supporter of colonial rights, together with Josiah Quincy II and Robert Auchmuty. Adams later said he took the case because no one else would, and because every accused person deserved counsel.

Preston’s trial ran from 24 to 30 October 1770. The prosecution, led by Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy, could not prove that Preston had ordered his men to fire, and he was acquitted.

The eight soldiers were tried together from 27 November to 5 December 1770. Adams and Quincy argued that the soldiers had acted in self-defence against a threatening mob. In his closing argument Adams declared that “facts are stubborn things”, insisting that the jury decide on the evidence rather than on passion. Six soldiers were acquitted. Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy were found guilty of manslaughter. They avoided the death penalty by claiming “benefit of clergy”, an old legal plea for first offenders, and were branded on the thumb before being released.

In a separate trial in December, four civilians accused of firing from the Custom House were acquitted after the main witness against them was found to have lied.

Key people

• Thomas Preston, the captain of the 29th Regiment who led the guard, acquitted at his trial.
• Crispus Attucks (c. 1723–1770), the first man killed, later honoured as the first casualty of the American Revolution.
• John Adams (1735–1826), the defence lawyer and future second president of the United States.
• Paul Revere (1735–1818), the silversmith whose engraving made the event famous.
• Samuel Adams (1722–1803), the political leader who forced the troops out of Boston and promoted the event’s memory.
• Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780), the acting governor who calmed the crowd and arranged the trials.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: The soldiers fired a disciplined volley on Captain Preston’s order. Fact: The evidence at trial suggested the firing was ragged and began after a soldier was knocked down; it was never proved that Preston gave an order.

Myth: The crowd was peaceful. Fact: Many in the crowd were throwing snowballs, ice and clubs and challenging the soldiers to fire, though this did not make the killings any less shocking to Bostonians.

Myth: The shooting started the American Revolutionary War. Fact: The war began five years later, at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. After 1770 tensions in Boston eased for a time.

Timeline

• 1768, 1 October: British troops land in Boston.
• 1770, 22 February: Christopher Seider, aged 11, is shot dead by a customs informer.
• 1770, 2 March: Soldiers and ropewalk workers fight at John Gray’s ropewalk.
• 1770, 5 March: Soldiers fire on the crowd on King Street; in London, Lord North proposes partial repeal of the Townshend duties.
• 1770, 6 March: Hutchinson agrees to move the troops to Castle William.
• 1770, 8 March: Four victims are buried after a mass funeral.
• 1770, 24–30 October: Captain Preston is tried and acquitted.
• 1770, 27 November – 5 December: The soldiers’ trial ends with six acquittals and two manslaughter convictions.
• 1771, 5 March: Boston holds the first annual Massacre oration.

Legacy

From 1771 to 1783 Bostonians marked 5 March each year with a public oration, given by figures such as Joseph Warren and John Hancock, keeping the memory of the “massacre” alive. Calm returned for a time after the troops left and most Townshend duties were repealed, but new crises followed, beginning with the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Revere himself became famous again in 1775 for his midnight ride.

In the nineteenth century, Black abolitionists honoured Crispus Attucks as a patriot who had given his life for American liberty, and in 1888 a memorial to the victims was unveiled on Boston Common. Today a circle of cobblestones in front of the Old State House marks the approximate site of the shooting.

Why it matters

The Boston Massacre showed how a confused street confrontation could become a powerful political symbol. It hardened colonial opposition to standing armies, gave the Patriot movement martyrs and an enduring image, and, through the fair trial won by John Adams, also left a lasting example of the rule of law in a time of anger.