249 years ago today the Incident on King Street, later dubbed The Boston Massacre, occurred. This is an area of particular expertise for me, as I worked as a Redcoat at the Old State House here in Boston for two summers, and the marker for where the massacre took place is just in front of that building (the actual location was in the middle of what is now a high traffic seven way intersection), so you can imagine we got asked about it a lot.
The incident began when a man accosted a guard in front of the Boston Custom House (now a Bank of America, go figure). The British soldiers in Boston were imported from England, not locals, and were thus despised by the populace as a symbol of Britain’s control over colonial America. Which is why Edward Garrick decided to harass one of the guards claiming a bill was due when it was not (Garrick would go down in history for insulting a guard, but not for being good at it). The guard disregarded him, but Garrick didn’t give up and the dispute got heated. The guard hit him with the butt of his firelock. Garrick cried out “I have been murdered” (pictured: Edward Garrick)
A crowd arrives at the State House to intimidate the guards. Captain Thomas Preston rounded up four men to go reinforce the two posted at the Custom’s House. The crowd is shouting at the guards daring them to shoot, throwing snowballs which frequently contained rocks. This is where accounts get dicey but the version that I trust is that a snowball with a rock in it hits a musket causing it to discharge. Captain Preston went over frustrated and asked the soldier “why did you fire?” The other soldiers, highly trained and sensitive to commands, heard the word “fire” and began to shoot. It’s at this point in the story I need to remind you that these are military police, not civil police. If they had not followed an order given, particularly at a time and place where the army was ripe with dissent, they would have been hanged for refusing an order.
Five were killed and some greater number wounded on King’s Street on March 5 1770, but there’s really only one anyone remembers today (apologies to my friend Lorenzo who played another Massacre victim for his costumed tours). His name was Crispus Attucks. We don’t know much about him. He was either an escaped slave or the son of one. His mother was probably Native American but we can’t really know what tribe because we don’t know where he was born. He was a ship worker, suggesting he was an escaped slave as many of them would work the seas to avoid slave catchers. Whatever his background, he was at the scene of the Massacre, and became the “first blood of the American Revolution.” How awkward that a war fought by slave owners began with a black martyr. Interestingly, Attucks (1st picture) was fairly light skinned, part of why the Native blood seems credible. As the 19th century began and endured, Attucks’ image would become more of a caricature of what white Americans thought black people looked like as he became an icon used by abolitionists (see 2nd picture, a depiction of the Massacre from 1858). I’m not sure how much of an icon Crispus was in his day, as he is notably absent from Henry Pelham’s contemporary engraving of the Massacre, which Paul Revere would add a dog to and declare his own (4th picture. Look at that pupper.)
In a town of 15,000, 5 people being killed was a big deal. It made news all across the British Empire, too. The guards and Captain Preston were arrested, but not court marshaled. Governor Hutchinson decided it was a criminal matter, not a military one. Samuel Adams, the head of the rebel junta The Committee of Correspondence, knew that the soldiers must be given a fair trial to display that America was not a land of mob rule (a debatable stance) and hired his cousin John Adams to defend the guards. John bought on his friend Josiah Quincy Jr (who may be who the town Quincy, MA was named for – it’s not clear but it was definitely someone in his lineage) and the always overlooked Loyalist barrister Sampson Blowers. Blowers would go on to flee America after the Port Act shut down the courts and put him out of work, returned to America during the War only to be persecuted as a Loyalist, and then flee to Nova Scotia where he worked on the Supreme Court to abolish slavery.
The trail was heated, of course. Testimonies came from Preston, the guards, and many eye witnesses. Ultimately the verdict came down acquitting all defendants but two guards, who were convicted of manslaughter and not murder (had they been found guilty of the latter, they would have been hanged). The guards were branded on their thumbs with an “M,” and my greatest regret as a guard would be that I never used henna to write the same on mine.
Two parting thoughts on the Incident on King’s Street:
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Captain Preston and the Massacre is a great name for a punk band.
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His Majesty King George III gave Crispus Attucks more justice than Eric Garner ever received.
