February 29, 2020 • 23 mins
Today we revisit a 2013 episode about the Boston Massacre. That sounds like the slaughter of many innocents, but the reality is smaller and not nearly so one-sided. But there's a reason why we call it a massacre. And that reason is propaganda.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. Coming up on March five is the
two fiftieth anniversary of the Boston massacre, and back in
December we talked about the Boston massacre and how patriot
propaganda shape the way that it is remembered in the
United States today. Towards the end of the episode, we
mentioned a game meant for elementary and middle school kids
about the massacre. That game does not seem to be
(00:24):
online anymore, but the Massachusetts Historical Society still has a
lot of primary sources online. One of the things that
we did want to note before we put this episode
out again is that in the years since it originally aired,
there have been numerous really high profile incidents of law
enforcement officers firing on and killing unarmed people of color,
(00:44):
and also of a militarized police response to protests. That
also happened before this episode came out, but it's been
a lot more widely covered in the years since then.
So if we were recording this episode today, that probably
would have affected our approach to the topic and our
demeanor and talking about it, which is a little jovial,
because some aspects of this were ridiculous. So enjoy, Welcome
(01:12):
to Stuff you missed in History Class the production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Collie Frying.
And I think I may have been desensitized by living
in today's world of free killings and mass murders, because
(01:33):
when I hear the word massacre, I think of something
like the Red Wedding and Game of Thrones, right, or
maybe one of its real world inspirations, which was the
Massacre of Glencoe. And that's when soldiers under Archibald Campbell,
who was the tenth Earl of Argyle, watered thirty eight
members of the McDonald clan. So you think of something
(01:55):
with high volume and pretty um aggressive wholesale killing of
basically undefended people. Uh So, the word massacre, which is
it brings up way bloodier images than what really went down.
In our second most requested massacre topic, the first one
being the massacre Aglinco, which we just mentioned. That's the
(02:17):
Boston massacre, which at the time was known as the
Bloody massacre in in King Street, and massacre kind of
makes it sound as though it was the wholesale slaughter
of a bunch of innocent Bostonians who were just standing
around mining their own business, which is not true at all.
(02:38):
It was not at all like that. But there is
definitely a reason why we call it the Boston massacre
and not the minor Boston kerfuffle with a few unfortunate casualties,
and that reason is propaganda. Maybe we should start a
Facebook page to try to change it to the Boston
minor kerfuffle with a few unfortunate casualtiests. So yeah, that
(03:00):
that's what we're going to talk about today, what actually
happened during the Boston massacre and why we call it
a massacre today and not something else. So we're going
to talk about the propaganda aspect. But first we need
to put a little context into the situation. Uh So,
on June seventeen sixty seven, the British Parliament passed the
Townsend Revenue Act with the purpose of raising forty pounds
(03:22):
per year to quote defray the charge of the administration
of Justice and the support of civil government. In other words,
they needed to offset the British government's cost of running
the colonies, and this put a tax on several really
common items that were exported to the colonies. From Britain.
Here's the actual list. I find this list delightful. Uh
(03:43):
for every hundredweight average deploise of crown plate, flint and
white glass, four shillings and eightpence. For every hundredweight average
poise of red lead, two shillings, for every hundredweight average
poise of green glass, one shilling and twopence for every
hundredweight average poise of white lead, two shillings, for every
(04:05):
hundredweight average boys of painters colors, two shillings, for every
pound weight average poise of t threepence, and for every
ream of paper usually called or known by the name
of atlas fine twelve shilling and average poise. Is basically
the pounds and ounces weight system that many of us
(04:25):
still used today. And if you are familiar in any
way with the US on the subject of taxes, you
can probably imagine how very popular this whole plan was. Yes,
which is not at all right. And on top of that,
taxation of goods was already an extremely sore subject in
the colonies. In sevent sixty five, Parliament had passed the
(04:46):
Stamp Act, which was a tax on quote, every skin
or piece of vellum or parchment or sheet or piece
of paper, and paper and vellum for different uses were
subject to different rates of tax. So the Stamp Act
was supposed to fund the defense of the American frontier,
and the colonies objected to the whole idea of using
attacks to raise money rather than to regulate commerce. And
(05:11):
the colonies were very concerned about the President that that
that this set that you know, Britain could just say,
who here have attacks now that we're going to use
to raise lots of money. This uh led to the
colonists responding to the Stamp Acts with protests and violence,
and consequently Parliament repealed it in seventeen sixty six, although
and basically the same breath, it also passed what was
(05:34):
called the Declaratory Acts, and those more or less said, hey,
Britain can pass laws for the colonies and the colonies
have to follow them, and too bad if you don't
like it. So just a couple of years behind, the
Stamp Act, which was so very wildly popular, of the
Town in Act also went over poorly, so poorly in fact,
that the British government had to send regiments of regulars
(05:56):
to Boston just to keep the peace. Customs officials were
being her asked and threatened as a result of these taxes,
and the governor wanted military help just to help restore order.
So the regulars, who became increasingly known as the Red Coats,
started arriving on October one of seventeen sixty eight. So
you may recall from our recent episode on the Hessians
that deploying troops to the colonies from Britain was an
(06:18):
extremely long and time consuming task. So that is why,
even though it had been quite a while since the
Act was passed, uh, many many months later did the
military show up to try to tom things down. And uh,
the people of Boston didn't not really like this one bit.
On top of the principle of a military force just
(06:40):
showing up to make them behave themselves, soldiers were also
raising the competition for jobs because they would sometimes take
on additional work in their off hours to supplement their income,
and they were willing to take less money because they
also had their pay as a soldier. So consequently, the
citizens of Boston greeted the Red Coats with Thomson jeers
and a lot of fighting and spitting, and all in all,
(07:02):
relationships between the troops and the city went extremely poorly
for about eighteen months before the tensions really started to
rise in March of seventeen seventy. By this point, people
were trying to get shopkeepers to stop selling imported products
from Britain entirely, and also vandalizing stores that did carry
British products. So in the days after the massacre a
(07:25):
packet of military depositions was sent back to England which
described the environment uh this way. From the British perspective.
Whoever has conversed much with those who have been lately
at Boston must know that the arrival of the King's
troops at that town in seventeen sixty eight was exceedingly
disgustful to all that part of the people who call
(07:45):
themselves the sons of Liberty and deny the authority of
the British Parliament to pass the Late Acts for imposing
duties upon certain articles of trade imported into America, and
who certainly form a great majority of the people in
that town own, though perhaps not of the person's of
the best fortunes and most respectable characters in the place. Basically,
(08:06):
the rabble are cranky. That was the British version of
the story, for sure. So on March five, seventy, that's
when the Boston masker took place. Captain John Goldfinch was
walking down King Street when the wig maker's apprentice, whose
name was Edward Garrick, hollerd in him that he had
(08:27):
not paid for his wig. Captain Goldfinch just ignored him,
and so Edward then repeated this accusation to other passers
by in a similarly hollering fashion. So Hugh White, who
was the sentry on duty at the customs House, heard
this commotion, and he told Edward that the Captain, being
(08:47):
a gentleman, would of course pay for anything he had bought. Edward, however,
disbelieved that there were any gentleman among the Red Coats,
and he expressed that quite loudly. Uh. And that prompted
White to leave his post and strike Edward with his musket,
at which point the crowd, which had already started to
(09:08):
gather in response to all of this yelling in the street,
started heckling and taunting White, and he returned to his post,
loaded his weapon, and called for the main guard. At
roughly the same time, there were crowds having similar altercations
with the British at other points nearby in Boston, and
there was a lot of hurling of insults and snowballs
(09:29):
at the uniformed troops. Someone also rang a firebell, which
prompted even more people to come out into the streets,
and this whole giant crowd started to converge on the
customs House. John Adams later called this crowd quote a
motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and Mulatto's, Irish tigus
and outlandish jacktars. It was kind of reality. Take that
(09:51):
as you will. And all this commotion, Captain Thomas Preston
heard that people were planning to carry White off from
his posts and murder him, and perhaps while they were
at it, they were also going to rob the customs house.
So he decided to intervene, and he brought seven men
from the twenty nine regiment to back him up. At
that point, the crowd had started throwing snowballs, which sounds
(10:14):
not so terrible, but then also sticks, rocks, oyster shells,
ouch and whatever else was at hand. The soldiers arranged
themselves in a kind of half circle, facing out to
the crowd. So we're leaning on unreliable almost two d
and fifty year old eyewitness testimony here, so it's a
little unclear exactly who did what to cause the first
(10:36):
shot to be fired. We do know that a man
named Crispus Addicts, who was carrying a club, approached the
soldiers and grabbed one of their bayonets, and that soldier
Hugh Montgomery was knocked down. When Montgomery got up, he
fired his musket kind of at the general direction of
the crowd, and he shouted for others to fire. They did,
(10:56):
even as Captain Preston was yelling orders for them to
hold their fire. And then uh, there was general chaos
and shooting and sort of a big mass melee. Melee
is a perfect word defray, And that went on with
some confusion until the dust settled. Three men died at
(11:18):
the scene. These were Christmas Addicts, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell.
Christmas Addicts was the son of an African man and
a Native American woman. He was the first of all
after being shot twice in the chest. He has since
become known as the Revolution's first hero, and we don't
really know much about his life before the massacre, except
that he had escaped from slavery and found work as
(11:40):
a whaler and a rope maker. In addition to the fatalities,
eight other people were injured, and Samuel Maverick and Patrick
Carr ended up dying of their injuries later. That brings
the death toll of the Boston massacre to five. Warrant
was issued for the arrest of Captain Preston a little
after midnight that night. Pretty Much the only way they
(12:00):
were able to get the crowd to go back about
their business was to reassure them that yes, there would
be an investigation and that these men would see justice
done so. In response to the killings, the people of
(12:22):
Boston demanded that the soldiers who had participated in the
shooting along with their captain, be tried for murder. Captain
Preston and his eight soldiers were indicted on March thirteenth,
although the trial was put off for several months to
allow the town's passions to cool down, and they all
remained in jail and interim. In the interim, Preston wrote
letters from his jail cell, and some of them were
(12:44):
published in the Boston papers, and those that had been
published expressed empathy for the citizens and those who had
fallen while on the other hand, a letter that was
published back in England was basically pretty scathing. Uh. And
naturally word got back to the colonies about that one. Uh,
and that did not really help his case. No, he
was kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
(13:06):
The citizens of Boston also demanded that the British troops
be removed, and, eventually, fearing further retaliation, Acting Governor Thomas
Hutchinson and Colonel Dalrymple, who was in charge of the units,
had the troops removed to Castle William, which is on
an island three miles out in Boston Harbor. Captain Preston
(13:26):
and the soldiers were arraigned on September seven, and they
all pled not guilty. Captain Preston was tried for murder
in October of seventeen seventies, separately from the other soldiers.
The soldiers had requested that they all be tried together.
Their defense was that they were just following orders, and
Preston's defense was that he had not actually given an
order to fire. So the soldiers were really understandably afraid
(13:49):
that if Preston was tried first and then found guilty,
that they would automatically be guilty with no possible way
to prove their innocence. Their request, though, was denied with
no explanation, and as you can imagine, they had a
hard time finding legal representation in Boston. Most lawyers feared
that they would never work again if they dared to
defend these soldiers, and in the end, leading the defense
(14:12):
for both the captain and his men was John Adams.
Robert Akmooty and Josiah Quincy Jr. Helped defend the captain,
and Quincy and Sampson Salter Blowers helped defend the soldiers.
So there was a transcription presumably made of Captain Preston's trial,
and that has not survived until today, but we know
the basics. Eyewitnesses for the defense insisted that Captain Preston
(14:35):
had not ordered for anyone to fire. On the other hand,
eyewitnesses for the prosecution insisted that he had. Adam's defense
relied on raising doubts about the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses,
and the Captain's trial lasted from October to October, with
the sequestered jury eventually finding him not guilty. This was
(14:58):
a shock too many people. The eight British soldiers were
tried as well in November and December of seventeen seventy,
and the trial was officially known as Rex versus Weems
at All. The transcript of this trial still exists today,
and their defense hinged on the idea that the soldiers
were firing in self defense. Six of the soldiers were
(15:21):
acquitted on the grounds that they were defending themselves. In
John Adams words quote, if an assault was made to
endanger their lives, the law is clear they had a
right to kill in their own defense if it was
not so severe as to endanger their lives. Yet, if
they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows
of any sort, by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs, or
(15:41):
sticks of any kind, this was a provocation for which
the law reduces the offense of killing down to manslaughter
in consideration of those passions in our nature which cannot
be eradicated. So, while six of the soldiers were acquitted,
two of them were indeed convicted of manslaughter, and if
they're sentencing, they pled a benefit of clergy. Laws at
(16:02):
the time basically allowed for clergy to receive more lenient sentencing,
especially when it came to the death pencil penalty, and
this allowance had, over many centuries, come to apply to
all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. So
pleading the benefit of clergy reduced their sentence to having
the letter M branded onto their thumbs, so they would
(16:24):
be marked forever as manslaughters on their thumbs. Uh. John Adams,
as you can imagine, initially faced hostility for his role
in the trials, but his events of the soldiers was
eventually viewed as something of an act of bravery. And then,
of course he became George Washington's vice president and then
the second President of the United States, so it did
not really tain his reputation as much as people had
(16:47):
expected in the end. Now and in the today, it's
become an example in law schools sometimes of an example
of when somebody has defended uh, you know, a clearly
unpopular choice of someone to defend in the interest of
making sure that person got actual justice. John Adams later
(17:07):
wrote this in his diary. The part that I took
in defense of Captain Preston and the soldiers procured me
anxiety and obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the
most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life,
and one of the best pieces of service I ever
rendered my country. Judgment of death against those soldiers would
(17:28):
have been as foul a stain upon this country as
the executions of the Quakers or witches anciently. But the
bigger impact of this massacre was its influence on the
American Revolution. The dead became martyrs, and the incident raised
a rallying cry for independence. And one of the many
people stirring the pot was John Hancock, who had become
(17:50):
a vocal opponent of the British after his sloop the
Liberty was seized after its cargo of wine was unloaded
without Hancock paying the duties on it, so not paid
his taxes no, and his ship was taken. He objected
to that idea. Paul Revere created an engraving which shows
(18:17):
a line of British soldiers in their red coats just
firing indiscriminately at a huge kind of people. It ran
under the name the Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston.
Samuel Adams also contributed to the massacre Moniker, writing letters
in the Boston Gazette as well as helping to pen quote.
A short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated
(18:40):
on the evening of the fifth day of March seventeen
seventy by soldiers of the twenty ninth Regiment, with which
the fourteenth Regiment were then quartered there, with some observations
on the state of things prior to that catastrophe. Also
known as a short Horative Narrative of the Horrid Massacre
in Boston, because that first title is a little worthy
extremely long. The British counterpart to this pamphlet was set
(19:03):
was the set of depositions we read from earlier, and
that was titled A Fair account of the Late Unhappy
Disturbance at Boston in New England. Guess perspective changes everything.
They did not call this the Boston massacre in Britain.
They called it like the incident in Boston. It was
not referred to as a massacre at all. And basically
(19:24):
the reason why we in the United States call it
a massaker is because Paul Revere and Samuel Adams were
basically acting like spin doctors. Yeah, they were propagandizing the events. Yes,
if you were angry about spin and the news it
is absolutely not a new thing at all, and one
of the things that was just the best. The best
(19:45):
part of researching this episode is the fact that most
of these pamphlets still exist and and you can see
the blindingly different interpretations of what happened. For a number
of years after March fifth was a of remembrance in Massachusetts.
The site of the massacre is a spot on the
Freedom Trail that still exists. Uh. And a memorial to
(20:07):
Christmas Addicts was erected in Boston Commons over the opposition
of historical organizations that viewed him as a villain not
a hero. Yeah, it's because the you know that the
records of that day are so glad and fuzzy. Uh.
There are people who see Christmas Addicts as like the
first real patriot dying in the Revolution, Like he was
(20:29):
the person that stood up stood up to the Red coats.
You could really look at the same accounts and more
arrive at the idea that that he was basically the
the guy that threw a first punch and in a
bar fight, and in that bar fight throwing the first
punch hit a cop like right, that you could really
(20:50):
look at it either way. Um, but but he does
wind up with with also a notable place as being
one of the first African Americans to have played a
big role in that way the revolution. So there are
lots of layers there, and luckily you can do plenty
of looking around at a lot of this stuff. As
Tracy mentioned just a moment ago, the Massachusetts Historical Society
(21:11):
has a bunch of these documents all grouped together in
one easy to find place, and they're kind of hilarious,
not only because of the obvious lanth and spinning that's
going on depending on who's writing, but also because of,
as Tracy says, the long esses that looks like that
look like guess yes, and we'll link you to that,
uh in the show notes we will. There's also the
(21:32):
Bostonian Society has made a game that is meant for
elementary and middle school students that's all about investigating the massacre,
which is pretty fun. I did not play all the
way through it, but it basically is like, hey, you're
an investigator. You got to figure out what happened at
this massacre. It's very fun. It's quite fun and a
cool way to engage kids and adults frankly about learning
(21:55):
about history. Yeah, what every historical event had one of
those that would be so awesome. I I really I
wanted to do the whole thing, but I really really
really needed to finish my notes so that I can
go home. So yes, the Boston massacre. I pulled some
random people as I. As I got into this story,
I was like, hey, how many how many people do
(22:17):
you think I killed at the Boston massacre? Hundreds? Well,
nobody said hundreds, but most people came up with a
number that was more than twenty. And when I said
to five, they were like, really, So I don't want
to belittle the fact that five human beings lost their lives, Like,
that's not the point. The point is more that massacre
is a great, big, bloody word, and what happened was
(22:38):
much more like a street brawl with casualties. It was
an incident that went poorly, but it was not kind
of the big, huge I mean it probably took moments, yes,
and was not quite the event that the word massacre
conjures in most people's mind. Right. Thank you so much
(23:03):
for joining us today for this Saturday Classic. If you
have heard any kind of email address or maybe a
Facebook you are l during the course of the episode.
That might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because
we have changed our email address again. You can now
reach us at history Podcasts, at i heart radio dot com,
and we're all over social media at missed in History
(23:23):
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you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radios How stuff Works.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(23:43):
favorite shows.
Happy Saturday, everybody. Coming up on March five is the
two fiftieth anniversary of the Boston massacre, and back in
December we talked about the Boston massacre and how patriot
propaganda shape the way that it is remembered in the
United States today. Towards the end of the episode, we
mentioned a game meant for elementary and middle school kids
about the massacre. That game does not seem to be
(00:24):
online anymore, but the Massachusetts Historical Society still has a
lot of primary sources online. One of the things that
we did want to note before we put this episode
out again is that in the years since it originally aired,
there have been numerous really high profile incidents of law
enforcement officers firing on and killing unarmed people of color,
(00:44):
and also of a militarized police response to protests. That
also happened before this episode came out, but it's been
a lot more widely covered in the years since then.
So if we were recording this episode today, that probably
would have affected our approach to the topic and our
demeanor and talking about it, which is a little jovial,
because some aspects of this were ridiculous. So enjoy, Welcome
(01:12):
to Stuff you missed in History Class the production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Collie Frying.
And I think I may have been desensitized by living
in today's world of free killings and mass murders, because
(01:33):
when I hear the word massacre, I think of something
like the Red Wedding and Game of Thrones, right, or
maybe one of its real world inspirations, which was the
Massacre of Glencoe. And that's when soldiers under Archibald Campbell,
who was the tenth Earl of Argyle, watered thirty eight
members of the McDonald clan. So you think of something
(01:55):
with high volume and pretty um aggressive wholesale killing of
basically undefended people. Uh So, the word massacre, which is
it brings up way bloodier images than what really went down.
In our second most requested massacre topic, the first one
being the massacre Aglinco, which we just mentioned. That's the
(02:17):
Boston massacre, which at the time was known as the
Bloody massacre in in King Street, and massacre kind of
makes it sound as though it was the wholesale slaughter
of a bunch of innocent Bostonians who were just standing
around mining their own business, which is not true at all.
(02:38):
It was not at all like that. But there is
definitely a reason why we call it the Boston massacre
and not the minor Boston kerfuffle with a few unfortunate casualties,
and that reason is propaganda. Maybe we should start a
Facebook page to try to change it to the Boston
minor kerfuffle with a few unfortunate casualtiests. So yeah, that
(03:00):
that's what we're going to talk about today, what actually
happened during the Boston massacre and why we call it
a massacre today and not something else. So we're going
to talk about the propaganda aspect. But first we need
to put a little context into the situation. Uh So,
on June seventeen sixty seven, the British Parliament passed the
Townsend Revenue Act with the purpose of raising forty pounds
(03:22):
per year to quote defray the charge of the administration
of Justice and the support of civil government. In other words,
they needed to offset the British government's cost of running
the colonies, and this put a tax on several really
common items that were exported to the colonies. From Britain.
Here's the actual list. I find this list delightful. Uh
(03:43):
for every hundredweight average deploise of crown plate, flint and
white glass, four shillings and eightpence. For every hundredweight average
poise of red lead, two shillings, for every hundredweight average
poise of green glass, one shilling and twopence for every
hundredweight average poise of white lead, two shillings, for every
(04:05):
hundredweight average boys of painters colors, two shillings, for every
pound weight average poise of t threepence, and for every
ream of paper usually called or known by the name
of atlas fine twelve shilling and average poise. Is basically
the pounds and ounces weight system that many of us
(04:25):
still used today. And if you are familiar in any
way with the US on the subject of taxes, you
can probably imagine how very popular this whole plan was. Yes,
which is not at all right. And on top of that,
taxation of goods was already an extremely sore subject in
the colonies. In sevent sixty five, Parliament had passed the
(04:46):
Stamp Act, which was a tax on quote, every skin
or piece of vellum or parchment or sheet or piece
of paper, and paper and vellum for different uses were
subject to different rates of tax. So the Stamp Act
was supposed to fund the defense of the American frontier,
and the colonies objected to the whole idea of using
attacks to raise money rather than to regulate commerce. And
(05:11):
the colonies were very concerned about the President that that
that this set that you know, Britain could just say,
who here have attacks now that we're going to use
to raise lots of money. This uh led to the
colonists responding to the Stamp Acts with protests and violence,
and consequently Parliament repealed it in seventeen sixty six, although
and basically the same breath, it also passed what was
(05:34):
called the Declaratory Acts, and those more or less said, hey,
Britain can pass laws for the colonies and the colonies
have to follow them, and too bad if you don't
like it. So just a couple of years behind, the
Stamp Act, which was so very wildly popular, of the
Town in Act also went over poorly, so poorly in fact,
that the British government had to send regiments of regulars
(05:56):
to Boston just to keep the peace. Customs officials were
being her asked and threatened as a result of these taxes,
and the governor wanted military help just to help restore order.
So the regulars, who became increasingly known as the Red Coats,
started arriving on October one of seventeen sixty eight. So
you may recall from our recent episode on the Hessians
that deploying troops to the colonies from Britain was an
(06:18):
extremely long and time consuming task. So that is why,
even though it had been quite a while since the
Act was passed, uh, many many months later did the
military show up to try to tom things down. And uh,
the people of Boston didn't not really like this one bit.
On top of the principle of a military force just
(06:40):
showing up to make them behave themselves, soldiers were also
raising the competition for jobs because they would sometimes take
on additional work in their off hours to supplement their income,
and they were willing to take less money because they
also had their pay as a soldier. So consequently, the
citizens of Boston greeted the Red Coats with Thomson jeers
and a lot of fighting and spitting, and all in all,
(07:02):
relationships between the troops and the city went extremely poorly
for about eighteen months before the tensions really started to
rise in March of seventeen seventy. By this point, people
were trying to get shopkeepers to stop selling imported products
from Britain entirely, and also vandalizing stores that did carry
British products. So in the days after the massacre a
(07:25):
packet of military depositions was sent back to England which
described the environment uh this way. From the British perspective.
Whoever has conversed much with those who have been lately
at Boston must know that the arrival of the King's
troops at that town in seventeen sixty eight was exceedingly
disgustful to all that part of the people who call
(07:45):
themselves the sons of Liberty and deny the authority of
the British Parliament to pass the Late Acts for imposing
duties upon certain articles of trade imported into America, and
who certainly form a great majority of the people in
that town own, though perhaps not of the person's of
the best fortunes and most respectable characters in the place. Basically,
(08:06):
the rabble are cranky. That was the British version of
the story, for sure. So on March five, seventy, that's
when the Boston masker took place. Captain John Goldfinch was
walking down King Street when the wig maker's apprentice, whose
name was Edward Garrick, hollerd in him that he had
(08:27):
not paid for his wig. Captain Goldfinch just ignored him,
and so Edward then repeated this accusation to other passers
by in a similarly hollering fashion. So Hugh White, who
was the sentry on duty at the customs House, heard
this commotion, and he told Edward that the Captain, being
(08:47):
a gentleman, would of course pay for anything he had bought. Edward, however,
disbelieved that there were any gentleman among the Red Coats,
and he expressed that quite loudly. Uh. And that prompted
White to leave his post and strike Edward with his musket,
at which point the crowd, which had already started to
(09:08):
gather in response to all of this yelling in the street,
started heckling and taunting White, and he returned to his post,
loaded his weapon, and called for the main guard. At
roughly the same time, there were crowds having similar altercations
with the British at other points nearby in Boston, and
there was a lot of hurling of insults and snowballs
(09:29):
at the uniformed troops. Someone also rang a firebell, which
prompted even more people to come out into the streets,
and this whole giant crowd started to converge on the
customs House. John Adams later called this crowd quote a
motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and Mulatto's, Irish tigus
and outlandish jacktars. It was kind of reality. Take that
(09:51):
as you will. And all this commotion, Captain Thomas Preston
heard that people were planning to carry White off from
his posts and murder him, and perhaps while they were
at it, they were also going to rob the customs house.
So he decided to intervene, and he brought seven men
from the twenty nine regiment to back him up. At
that point, the crowd had started throwing snowballs, which sounds
(10:14):
not so terrible, but then also sticks, rocks, oyster shells,
ouch and whatever else was at hand. The soldiers arranged
themselves in a kind of half circle, facing out to
the crowd. So we're leaning on unreliable almost two d
and fifty year old eyewitness testimony here, so it's a
little unclear exactly who did what to cause the first
(10:36):
shot to be fired. We do know that a man
named Crispus Addicts, who was carrying a club, approached the
soldiers and grabbed one of their bayonets, and that soldier
Hugh Montgomery was knocked down. When Montgomery got up, he
fired his musket kind of at the general direction of
the crowd, and he shouted for others to fire. They did,
(10:56):
even as Captain Preston was yelling orders for them to
hold their fire. And then uh, there was general chaos
and shooting and sort of a big mass melee. Melee
is a perfect word defray, And that went on with
some confusion until the dust settled. Three men died at
(11:18):
the scene. These were Christmas Addicts, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell.
Christmas Addicts was the son of an African man and
a Native American woman. He was the first of all
after being shot twice in the chest. He has since
become known as the Revolution's first hero, and we don't
really know much about his life before the massacre, except
that he had escaped from slavery and found work as
(11:40):
a whaler and a rope maker. In addition to the fatalities,
eight other people were injured, and Samuel Maverick and Patrick
Carr ended up dying of their injuries later. That brings
the death toll of the Boston massacre to five. Warrant
was issued for the arrest of Captain Preston a little
after midnight that night. Pretty Much the only way they
(12:00):
were able to get the crowd to go back about
their business was to reassure them that yes, there would
be an investigation and that these men would see justice
done so. In response to the killings, the people of
(12:22):
Boston demanded that the soldiers who had participated in the
shooting along with their captain, be tried for murder. Captain
Preston and his eight soldiers were indicted on March thirteenth,
although the trial was put off for several months to
allow the town's passions to cool down, and they all
remained in jail and interim. In the interim, Preston wrote
letters from his jail cell, and some of them were
(12:44):
published in the Boston papers, and those that had been
published expressed empathy for the citizens and those who had
fallen while on the other hand, a letter that was
published back in England was basically pretty scathing. Uh. And
naturally word got back to the colonies about that one. Uh,
and that did not really help his case. No, he
was kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
(13:06):
The citizens of Boston also demanded that the British troops
be removed, and, eventually, fearing further retaliation, Acting Governor Thomas
Hutchinson and Colonel Dalrymple, who was in charge of the units,
had the troops removed to Castle William, which is on
an island three miles out in Boston Harbor. Captain Preston
(13:26):
and the soldiers were arraigned on September seven, and they
all pled not guilty. Captain Preston was tried for murder
in October of seventeen seventies, separately from the other soldiers.
The soldiers had requested that they all be tried together.
Their defense was that they were just following orders, and
Preston's defense was that he had not actually given an
order to fire. So the soldiers were really understandably afraid
(13:49):
that if Preston was tried first and then found guilty,
that they would automatically be guilty with no possible way
to prove their innocence. Their request, though, was denied with
no explanation, and as you can imagine, they had a
hard time finding legal representation in Boston. Most lawyers feared
that they would never work again if they dared to
defend these soldiers, and in the end, leading the defense
(14:12):
for both the captain and his men was John Adams.
Robert Akmooty and Josiah Quincy Jr. Helped defend the captain,
and Quincy and Sampson Salter Blowers helped defend the soldiers.
So there was a transcription presumably made of Captain Preston's trial,
and that has not survived until today, but we know
the basics. Eyewitnesses for the defense insisted that Captain Preston
(14:35):
had not ordered for anyone to fire. On the other hand,
eyewitnesses for the prosecution insisted that he had. Adam's defense
relied on raising doubts about the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses,
and the Captain's trial lasted from October to October, with
the sequestered jury eventually finding him not guilty. This was
(14:58):
a shock too many people. The eight British soldiers were
tried as well in November and December of seventeen seventy,
and the trial was officially known as Rex versus Weems
at All. The transcript of this trial still exists today,
and their defense hinged on the idea that the soldiers
were firing in self defense. Six of the soldiers were
(15:21):
acquitted on the grounds that they were defending themselves. In
John Adams words quote, if an assault was made to
endanger their lives, the law is clear they had a
right to kill in their own defense if it was
not so severe as to endanger their lives. Yet, if
they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows
of any sort, by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs, or
(15:41):
sticks of any kind, this was a provocation for which
the law reduces the offense of killing down to manslaughter
in consideration of those passions in our nature which cannot
be eradicated. So, while six of the soldiers were acquitted,
two of them were indeed convicted of manslaughter, and if
they're sentencing, they pled a benefit of clergy. Laws at
(16:02):
the time basically allowed for clergy to receive more lenient sentencing,
especially when it came to the death pencil penalty, and
this allowance had, over many centuries, come to apply to
all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. So
pleading the benefit of clergy reduced their sentence to having
the letter M branded onto their thumbs, so they would
(16:24):
be marked forever as manslaughters on their thumbs. Uh. John Adams,
as you can imagine, initially faced hostility for his role
in the trials, but his events of the soldiers was
eventually viewed as something of an act of bravery. And then,
of course he became George Washington's vice president and then
the second President of the United States, so it did
not really tain his reputation as much as people had
(16:47):
expected in the end. Now and in the today, it's
become an example in law schools sometimes of an example
of when somebody has defended uh, you know, a clearly
unpopular choice of someone to defend in the interest of
making sure that person got actual justice. John Adams later
(17:07):
wrote this in his diary. The part that I took
in defense of Captain Preston and the soldiers procured me
anxiety and obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the
most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life,
and one of the best pieces of service I ever
rendered my country. Judgment of death against those soldiers would
(17:28):
have been as foul a stain upon this country as
the executions of the Quakers or witches anciently. But the
bigger impact of this massacre was its influence on the
American Revolution. The dead became martyrs, and the incident raised
a rallying cry for independence. And one of the many
people stirring the pot was John Hancock, who had become
(17:50):
a vocal opponent of the British after his sloop the
Liberty was seized after its cargo of wine was unloaded
without Hancock paying the duties on it, so not paid
his taxes no, and his ship was taken. He objected
to that idea. Paul Revere created an engraving which shows
(18:17):
a line of British soldiers in their red coats just
firing indiscriminately at a huge kind of people. It ran
under the name the Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston.
Samuel Adams also contributed to the massacre Moniker, writing letters
in the Boston Gazette as well as helping to pen quote.
A short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated
(18:40):
on the evening of the fifth day of March seventeen
seventy by soldiers of the twenty ninth Regiment, with which
the fourteenth Regiment were then quartered there, with some observations
on the state of things prior to that catastrophe. Also
known as a short Horative Narrative of the Horrid Massacre
in Boston, because that first title is a little worthy
extremely long. The British counterpart to this pamphlet was set
(19:03):
was the set of depositions we read from earlier, and
that was titled A Fair account of the Late Unhappy
Disturbance at Boston in New England. Guess perspective changes everything.
They did not call this the Boston massacre in Britain.
They called it like the incident in Boston. It was
not referred to as a massacre at all. And basically
(19:24):
the reason why we in the United States call it
a massaker is because Paul Revere and Samuel Adams were
basically acting like spin doctors. Yeah, they were propagandizing the events. Yes,
if you were angry about spin and the news it
is absolutely not a new thing at all, and one
of the things that was just the best. The best
(19:45):
part of researching this episode is the fact that most
of these pamphlets still exist and and you can see
the blindingly different interpretations of what happened. For a number
of years after March fifth was a of remembrance in Massachusetts.
The site of the massacre is a spot on the
Freedom Trail that still exists. Uh. And a memorial to
(20:07):
Christmas Addicts was erected in Boston Commons over the opposition
of historical organizations that viewed him as a villain not
a hero. Yeah, it's because the you know that the
records of that day are so glad and fuzzy. Uh.
There are people who see Christmas Addicts as like the
first real patriot dying in the Revolution, Like he was
(20:29):
the person that stood up stood up to the Red coats.
You could really look at the same accounts and more
arrive at the idea that that he was basically the
the guy that threw a first punch and in a
bar fight, and in that bar fight throwing the first
punch hit a cop like right, that you could really
(20:50):
look at it either way. Um, but but he does
wind up with with also a notable place as being
one of the first African Americans to have played a
big role in that way the revolution. So there are
lots of layers there, and luckily you can do plenty
of looking around at a lot of this stuff. As
Tracy mentioned just a moment ago, the Massachusetts Historical Society
(21:11):
has a bunch of these documents all grouped together in
one easy to find place, and they're kind of hilarious,
not only because of the obvious lanth and spinning that's
going on depending on who's writing, but also because of,
as Tracy says, the long esses that looks like that
look like guess yes, and we'll link you to that,
uh in the show notes we will. There's also the
(21:32):
Bostonian Society has made a game that is meant for
elementary and middle school students that's all about investigating the massacre,
which is pretty fun. I did not play all the
way through it, but it basically is like, hey, you're
an investigator. You got to figure out what happened at
this massacre. It's very fun. It's quite fun and a
cool way to engage kids and adults frankly about learning
(21:55):
about history. Yeah, what every historical event had one of
those that would be so awesome. I I really I
wanted to do the whole thing, but I really really
really needed to finish my notes so that I can
go home. So yes, the Boston massacre. I pulled some
random people as I. As I got into this story,
I was like, hey, how many how many people do
(22:17):
you think I killed at the Boston massacre? Hundreds? Well,
nobody said hundreds, but most people came up with a
number that was more than twenty. And when I said
to five, they were like, really, So I don't want
to belittle the fact that five human beings lost their lives, Like,
that's not the point. The point is more that massacre
is a great, big, bloody word, and what happened was
(22:38):
much more like a street brawl with casualties. It was
an incident that went poorly, but it was not kind
of the big, huge I mean it probably took moments, yes,
and was not quite the event that the word massacre
conjures in most people's mind. Right. Thank you so much
(23:03):
for joining us today for this Saturday Classic. If you
have heard any kind of email address or maybe a
Facebook you are l during the course of the episode.
That might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because
we have changed our email address again. You can now
reach us at history Podcasts, at i heart radio dot com,
and we're all over social media at missed in History
(23:23):
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
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you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
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For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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(23:43):
favorite shows.
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Tracy Wilson
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