BOSTON MASSACRE

On the snowy evening of Monday, March 5, 1770, a mob of more than one hundred Bostonians confronted a band of nine British soldiers near a sentry box outside the Boston Custom House. Despite the best efforts of Captain Thomas Preston, commander of the squad, tensions between the civilians and the soldiers quickly escalated. Within the space of a few minutes the soldiers began firing, killing or fatally wounding five civilians. Among those who died in the Massacre are Crispus Attucks, a former slave turned sailor; James Caldwell, another sailor; Patrick Carr, an immigrant Irishman who made leather trousers; Samuel Gray, a rope maker; and Samuel Maverick, the brother–in–law of mob leader Ebenezer Mackintosh. Six other colonists were wounded, some of them innocent bystanders who had not been part of the mob.

Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson and his supporters worked through the night to avoid further bloodshed. Tensions were partially relieved by the arrest of Preston and his eight men early the following morning. The event, which became known as the Boston Massacre, helped convince both radical patriots and conservative loyalists that Parliament's efforts to tax the colonists against their will could only end in violence.

The roots of the Boston Massacre lay in the resistance to the Townshend Acts, passed by Parliament in 1767. Parliament's Secretary for American Affairs, Wills Hill, Lord Hillsborough, ordered four British regiments be stationed in Boston after a crowd mobbed customs officers who, on suspicion of smuggling, had seized a merchant ship owned by (radical patriot) John Hancock. On August 1, 1768, the Massachusetts General Court responded. Led by representative Samuel Adams it adopted a Nonimportation Agreement that placed a boycott on imported British goods. The radical patriots hoped that this measure would put economic pressure on Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts. Although the boycott, later adopted by several other colonies, eventually persuaded Parliament to repeal the acts, it also prolonged the hard times many of Boston's poorest citizens were experiencing. The aftermath of the French and Indian War (1754–63) brought a prolonged economic depression to the colonies. Jobs were especially scarce for unskilled laborers. Many of the colonists who formed part of the Boston mob competed directly with the soldiers for these jobs. Others, such as the sailors Crispus Attucks and James Caldwell, held jobs that were affected by the boycott. They may have been prepared to take their frustrations out on the soldiers who represented the British government.

From the time the soliders arrived in Boston, there were bad feelings between the military and the town's citizens. Soldiers broke into private shops and stole goods. Citizens took soldiers' equipment. Others encouraged soldiers to desert their units and seek refuge from their officers in the surrounding countryside. Sometimes the differences between the groups came out in violent confrontations that were made worse by the colonial courts' bias in favor of the citizenry. On July 13, 1769, for instance, a private soldier named John Riley exchanged blows with a grocer named Jonathan Winship. Winship complained to Justice of the Peace Edmund Quincy, obtained a warrant for Riley's arrest, and had the soldier arrested and fined. When Riley did not pay the fine Quincy ordered him to jail. Riley was rescued from the courthouse by several members of his regiment, who fought off the court's constable. In another incident, on October 24, British Ensign John Ness was charged with assaulting a colonial official named Robert Pierpoint and stealing his cargo of wood. On his way to answer the charges before a Justice of the Peace, Ness and his men were mobbed, and several of the soldiers were injured. On February 22, 1770, loyalist sympathizer Ebenezer Richardson was attacked in his home by a mob of stone–throwing radical patriots. One of the stones hit Richardson's wife and, in a rage, he seized a gun and fired into the crowd, killing an eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Seider. All these events increased tensions between the radical patriots and the supporters of the Crown.

Events that led directly to the March 5 confrontation began on Friday, March 2, 1770. Around noon that day, hoping to find work during his off–duty hours, Private Patrick Walker approached rope maker John Gray's ropeworks around noon on that day. He was insulted by worker William Green, who invited Walker to "clean out my shithouse." More citizens and soldiers joined the exchange, and it broke out into a fight. The fighting spread on Saturday, resulting in a fractured skull and arm for one of the soliders. Rumors of armed and angry townspeople looking for an excuse to fight spread throughout the town on Sunday and Monday. On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White was threatened by a crowd made up largely of the working poor of Boston—day laborers, apprentices, and merchant seamen. White called for assistance and was supported by a squad of eight soldiers, including Captain Preston and two soldiers who had been involved in the fight at the ropeworks the previous day. The mob began pelting the soldiers with mud, ice, and snow. Although Preston tried to maintain order, his soldiers panicked and began firing into the crowd.

Preston and his soldiers were arrested and taken into custody. They had to wait until the following October, however, before Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson concluded that they could receive a fair trial. His decision was based in part on a popular (and inaccurate) print of the massacre by silversmith Paul Revere. Most Bostonians believed Preston and his soldiers deliberately fired into the crowd. The nine were threatened with lynching while they awaited their trials. After a three-day trial, defense lawyer John Adams won Preston's acquittal. Of the eight other soldiers, six were found not guilty. Two, however, were convicted of manslaughter and were branded on their thumbs before being returned to their regiments.

Captain Preston's acquittal and the relatively light sentences given to the two soldiers were due in part to the desire of the radical patriot faction to make martyrs out of the victims of the Boston Massacre. However, there was also an economic motive to these events. By the autumn of 1770, the Townshend Acts had largely been repealed and merchants in New York, Boston, and elsewhere were no longer observing the Nonimportation Agreement. As a result, jobs were more plentiful, work for unskilled laborers was easier to find, and the crowds of unemployed urban poor that made up the mobs of citizens melted away. Nonetheless, these very same working poor would return at the outbreak of the American Revolution (1775–83).

BOSTON MASSACRE

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