The Boston Massacre

The name "Boston Massacre" sounds as though it was the slaughter of a bunch of innocents in colonial Boston. The reality is much 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

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy V. Wilson and I and I think
I may have been desensitized by living in today's world
of free killings and mass murders because when I hear

(00:23):
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, swatered thirty eight members of the
McDonald clan. To think of something with high volume and

(00:47):
pretty um aggressive wholesale killing of basically undefended people. Uh So,
the word massacre, which is it brings up way bloody
or images than what really went down in our second
most requested massacre topic, the first one being the massacre Iglinco,
which we just mentioned. That's the Boston massacre, which at

(01:09):
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. It was not at
all like that. But there is definitely a reason why

(01:31):
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 that's what we're
gonna talk about today, what actually happened during the Boston

(01:53):
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 thou pounds per year to quote

(02:13):
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 attacks on several really common items that were
exported to the colonies from Britain. Here's the actual list.
I find this list delightful. Uh for every hundredweight average

(02:34):
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 hundredweight average boys of

(02:56):
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 still used today. And

(03:16):
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 sixty five, Parliament had passed the Stamp Act, which

(03:37):
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 a tax to
raise money rather than to regulate commerce. And the colonies

(04:01):
were very concerned about the President that that that this
set that you know, Britain could just say, who here
have a tax 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 called

(04:24):
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
towns in Act also went over poorly, So poorly in fact,
that the British government had to send regiments of regulars

(04:45):
to Boston just to keep the peace. Customs officials were
being harassed 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 for Britain was an

(05:08):
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 calm things down. And uh,
the people of Boston did not really like this one bit.
On top of the principle of a military force just

(05:29):
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 Thompson jeers
and a lot of fighting and spitting, and all in all,

(05:52):
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

(06:14):
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

(06:35):
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, though perhaps not of the persons of the
best fortunes and most respectable characters in the place. Basically,

(06:56):
the rabble are cranky. That was the British version, no
story for sure. So on March five, seventy. That's when
the Boston Master took place. Captain John Goldfinch was walking
down King Street when the wig maker's apprentice, whose name
was Edward Garrick hollerded him that he had not paid

(07:17):
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 a gentleman,

(07:38):
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
gather in response to all of this yelling in the street,

(08:00):
started heckling and taunting White, and he returned to his post,
loaded his weapon, and called for the main guard. That
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
at the uniformed troops. Someone also rang a firebell, which

(08:22):
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, this kind of unity. Take that as
you will. And all this commotion, Captain Thomas Preston heard

(08:46):
that people were planning to carry White off from his
post 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 not so terrible,
but then also sticks, rocks, oyster shells, ouch and whatever

(09:10):
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 shot to be fired.
We do know that a man named Crispus Addicts, who

(09:30):
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 must get kind
of at the general direction of the crowd, and he
shouted for others to fire. They did, even as Captain
Preston was yelling orders for them to hold their fire.

(09:51):
And then uh, there was general chaos and shooting and
sort of a big mess. Melee melee is a perfect
were frey. And that went on with some confusion until
the death settled. Three men died at the scene. These
were Christmas Addicts, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell. Christmas Addicts

(10:13):
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 a whaler
and a ropemaker in addition to the fatalities, eight other

(10:34):
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. A warrant was
issued for the arrest of Captain Preston a little after
midnight that night. Pretty Much the only way they were
able to get the crowd to go back about their
business was to reassure them that yes, there would be

(10:54):
an investigation and that these men would see justice done so.
In response to the killings, the people of 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

(11:16):
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 published in
the Boston Papers, and those that have 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

(11:38):
got back to the colonies about that one, uh, and
that did not really help his case. He was kind
of talking out of both sides of his mouth. The
citizens of Boston also demanded that the British troops be removed, and, eventually,
fearing further retaliation, Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson and Colonel Dalrynkele,
who was in charge of the units, had the troops

(12:01):
removed to Castle William, which is on an island three
miles out in Boston Harbor. Captain Preston 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

(12:22):
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 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,

(12:43):
they had a hard time finding legal representation in Boston. Uh.
Most lawyers feared that they would never work again if
they dared to defend these soldiers, and in the end
leading the defense for both the captain and his men
was John Adams. Robert Akmooty and Josiah Quincy Jr. Helped
fend the captain and Quincy and Sampson Salter Blowers helped
defend the soldiers. So there was a transcription presumably made

(13:07):
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 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

(13:31):
from October to October, with the Sequester jury eventually finding
him not guilty. This was shocked 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 Weims at All. The transcript of this

(13:53):
trial still exists today, and their defense hinged on the
idea that the soldiers were firing in self defense. Six
of the soldiers were 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

(14:15):
their lives. Yet, if they were assaulted at all, struck
and abused by blows of any sort, by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs,
or sticks of any kind, this was a provocation for
which the law reduces the offensive killing down to manslaughter
in consideration of those passions in our nature which cannot
be eradicated. So, while six of the soldiers were acquitted,

(14:36):
two of them were indeed convicted of manslaughter. And if
they're sentencing, they played the benefit of clergy. Laws at
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

(14:58):
pleading the benefit of clergy reduced their sentence to having
the letter M branded onto their thumbs, so they would
be marked forever as manslaughters on their thumbs. Uh. John
Adams says, you can imagine initially faced hostility for his
role in the trials, but his defense of the soldiers
was eventually viewed as something of an act of bravery.

(15:19):
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 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

(15:40):
clearly unpopular choice of someone to defend in the interest
of making sure that person got actual justice. John Adams
later 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, interests, manly and disinterested actions of my

(16:02):
whole life and one of the best pieces of service
I ever rendered my country. Judgment of death against those
soldiers would 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

(16:25):
incident raised a rallying cry for independence. And one of
the many people stirring the pot was John Hancock, who
had become 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
he had not paid his taxes no, and his ship
was taken. He objected to that idea. Paul Revere created

(16:49):
an engraving which shows 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
per Pe traded 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

(17:10):
of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, perpetrated 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 mom The

(17:33):
British counterpart to this pamphlet was set was the set
of depositions we read from earlier, and that was titled
A Fair account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance of Boston
in New England. Yes, perspective changes everything. They did not
call this the Boston massacre in Britain. They called it
like the incidents in Boston. It was not referred to

(17:55):
as a massacre at all. And basically the reason why
we in the United States all at a masker 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 spinning the news, it's not. It
is absolutely not a new thing at all, and one

(18:15):
of the things that was just the best. The best
part of researching this episode is the fact that most
of these pamphlets still exist and you can and you
can see the blindingly different interpretations of what happened. For
a number of years after March fifth was a day
of remembrance in Massachusetts. The site of the massacre is

(18:36):
a spot on the Freedom Trail that still exists. Uh,
And a memorial to Christmas Addics was erected in Boston
Commons in over the opposition of historical organizations that viewed
him as a villain not a hero. Yeah, it's because
you know that the records of that day are so
glad and fuzzy. Uh. There are people who see Christmas

(18:58):
add Addicts as like the first real patriot dying in
the Revolution, Like he was the person that stood up
the good up to the red coats. You could really
look at the same accounts and more arrive at the
idea that that he was basically that the guy that
threw a first punch and in a bar fight, and

(19:18):
in that bar fight throwing the first punch hit a
cop like right, that you could really 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 in the Revolution. So there're lots of players there,
and luckily you can do plenty of looking around at

(19:39):
a lot of this stuff. As Tracy mentioned just a
moment ago, the Massachusetts Historical Society 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 lamp 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 f And we'll link

(20:01):
you to that, uh in the show notes we will.
There's also the 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 gotta figure out
what happened at this massacre. That's very fun. It's quite

(20:23):
fun and a cool way to engage kids and adults
frankly about learning about history. Yeah, what every historical event
had one of those that would be 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

(20:44):
some random people, uh as I as I got into
this story, was like, hey, how many how many people
do 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, we're like really, so I don't want them
belittle the fact that five human beings lost their lives, Like,

(21:05):
that's not the point. The point is more that massacre
is a great, big, bloody word, and what happened was
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

(21:27):
conjures in most people's mind. So with that, do you
also have some listener mail? I do. I have two
brief pieces of listener mail that are both about our
two part episode on Audrey Lord. The first one is
from Amy, and Amy says, hey, ladies, I just wanted
to give you a shout out about the Audrey Lord podcast.
I'm currently students studying and living in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico,

(21:50):
and I just wanted to let you know that, yes,
it is about an hour and a half to get
to Mexico City, because although Google Maps says an hour,
the entire route is through the mountains and has a
lot of switchback highway curves, so you can't actually go
to speed limit. Therefore, it would probably take about the
same amount of time in the fifties if they still
had the toll roads when you get on and off
the highway. Many of the people who live in Cornavaca

(22:12):
work in Mexico City because the climate in the community
is better here than in the cold, bustling city of
d f also known as Distrito that are out. There
is still a large expatriate community here, although and although
I have not actively been seeking out other Americans, I
am told that there's a fairly substantial community in the city.
I just wanted to let you know about the city

(22:33):
I have grown to love more and more each day.
Thanks ladies. Amy Cool thanks Amy Um. That will save
us to drive down to test it. Let's do that
the history road trip. Okay, let's to see how long
it takes to go for Mexica. Loved do wacky history
road trips for things exactly like that. Let's see how

(22:54):
long this would taken. That reminds me of After our
Johnny Apples Need podcast, we had somebody right in and
talk about a trip they were taking on I think
on foot to retrace the Apple scene. Yeah, which pretty cool,
and whether or not it was actually viable for him
to have done what people said he did. Yes. Our
second note is from Dan and it came to us

(23:15):
in our Facebook handbox and dances. I really loved the
two part are on auttery Lord. I wanted to tip
you guys off to part of Lord's intellectual legacy that
I've been writing about a lot recently. I've defended my
doctoral dissertation on the history of the of African American
AIDS activism last week, and one of my chapters covered
a movement of black gay men in the late nineteen

(23:37):
eighties and early nineteen nineties called the Black Gay Renaissance.
They were deeply influenced by Lord and women from the
Kitchen Table Circle, including Barbara Smiths, Sharing Moraga and Gloria
and I'll Do It. They applied the idea of intersectionality
to HIV slash AIDS prevention, arguing that black gay men
were subject to a unique set of social and psychological

(23:59):
pressures because of their multiple marginalized identities, putting them at
high risk for HIV. They also produced a lot of
art aimed at raising the visibility of black gay men.
Notable names include Joseph beame, X pemp hill, A Soota Saint,
and filmmaker Marlon Rings. Maybe they could be the subject
of a future episode. Thanks again for enlightening us about

(24:20):
Audrey Lord. I loved this letter. Yeah, because there's so
much focus on Audrey Lord's impact in the worlds of
literature and uh like the women's movement and feminism and
especially black feminism. Uh, there's so much focus on women
and gay women that I had not actually heard about

(24:43):
any influence that had instead to do within I had
not either, so that was wonderful insight. It was so
thank you so much, Dan, I think that sounds like
a fascinating doctoral districation. Then, also, congrats on defending thesis
indeed this So if you would like to write to
us about this or anything else, you can. We are
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on

(25:07):
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on Twitter at miss in History. Are Tumbler is missed
in History dot tumbler dot com, and we are pinning
things away on contrast, if you would like to learn
about another watershed moment in the history of the American Revolution,
you can come to our website and put the words
Boston Tea Party in our search part and you will
find an article called how the Boston Tea Party Works.

(25:29):
You can do all of that and a whole lot
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(25:53):
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