An exaggerated version of events by silversmith and Boston resident Paul Revere of the events of March 5, 1770, better known as the Boston Massacre.
By 1768, tensions between American colonists and the British reached dangerous levels. In Boston, colonists became increasingly agitated over new taxes imposed on them from London without any American representation in the British Parliament. The British sent about 4,000 soldiers to Boston in response to the increased hostility. This only increased the resentment among the colonists. With so many British soldiers, it was a matter of time before violence erupted. It did on a cold night in March 1770, as British soldiers opened fire on a group of colonists. This event became known as the “Boston Massacre.”
On February 22, 1770, an eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Seider was part of a crowd that was upset with an importer named Theophilus Lillie, who had defied a boycott many in Boston had called for against British goods after the implementation of a series of taxes known as the Townsend Acts. A hated British customs official named Ebenezer Richardson intervened. The small crowd turned on Richardson and someone threw a rock through his window. In response, Richardson fired his musket to try and disperse the crowd. This shot struck and killed young Seider. The death outraged many in Boston and Seider’s funeral became an event attended by over 1,000 people.
After the death of Seider, the city of Boston was on edge on March 5, 1770. That night, a group of British soldiers was guarding the Royal Customs House in Boston when a group of colonists began to taunt them. Some in the crowd brandished clubs and other colonists began to throw snowballs and other items, including trash and oyster shells. The British soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets in response. A snowball hit a young private in the British army named Hugh Montgomery, who discharged his weapon in response. Montgomery stated he heard the word “fire,” but the evidence was unclear. There was no evidence the command to fire came from the British officers. In response to a weapon being fired, the other British soldiers immediately did the same. After the shots, five colonists were dead and several others were injured.
The second part of the story is about what happened after the deaths. News quickly spread and American patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams used the deaths as a cry for American independence. Three weeks later, Revere, a silversmith by training, engraved a print that depicted the killings as a slaughter. The colonists wanted the British soldiers punished severely.
But that did not happen. Rather, the beginning of the tenets of the American justice system, principally the right to a fair trial, emerged. The colonists had their own judicial system based on the British system. A mob mentality would damage the credibility of colonial justice, so a fair trial was important. Nobody would defend the British soldiers until a lawyer named John Adams agreed to do it. The same John Adams who became a leading figure in the fight for American independence and the second president of the United States, among many accomplishments.
John Adams
Adams argued that the British soldiers were provoked by the actions of the colonists and had acted in self-defense. After all the arguments were made, the jury found six of the eight soldiers on trial not guilty. Private Montgomery and one other soldier were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded with an “M” for murder on their thumbs.
The trial of the British soldiers when public emotions were high helped establish that the colonies, and later the United States, would be a nation of laws, not of mobs. Later, Adams claimed his role in the trial was “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”
Note: Ebenezer Richardson was convicted and sent to prison for killing Christopher Seider but was pardoned by the king and returned to England in 1773.