45. The Boston Massacre

The Boston nonimport movement, however, still faced grave problems. The original Boston agreement was scheduled to expire at the beginning of 1770. But in mid-October the merchants had joined their brethren in other colonies by continuing the agreement until repeal of the Townshend Acts. Many of the reluctant merchants grew restive at this turn of events and at the turn of the year eight began to bolt the agreement. A mass meeting of nonimporting merchants began in mid-January to sit in continuing session, the better to put pressure on truants. The eight offenders were unanimously condemned by the more than a thousand persons present, as having forfeited all confidence of their fellow men. The whole crowd then quietly visited each delinquent in turn, but four still refused to yield. By January 23, the merchants voted to withhold from the stubborn four “not only all commercial dealings but every act and office of common civility.”

Governor Hutchinson seized the occasion of the meeting to precipitate a test of strength with the merchants. He sent a message to the meeting denouncing it as illegal and its actions as terroristic. He ordered them to disperse and ban “all such unlawful assemblies for the future.” Later Hutchinson was able to induce the Council to approve his actions by a slim majority. The merchants, however, continued undaunted as before and the justices of the peace refused to act against them.

It is important here to distinguish between two types of violence: violence committed by the people against their oppressors or the allies of their oppressors (for example, the Stamp Act riots against Hutchinson, the intimidation of John Mein), and the violence used by the oppressors against the people or their leaders (for instance, the assault on Otis, the Massacre of St. George’s Fields). The difference is not simply a question of which side one may favor. The former is the eruption of the people in indignation or rebellion against that minority that has arms of the state apparatus concentrated in its hands. This use of violence is a casting off of the unwanted rule-by-violence of a ruling clique. On the other hand, violence against the people by the (invariably better armed) ruling clique is a panicky attempt to stem the rising tide of indignation by the people, and to use the state’s means of violence to yoke its unwanted rule even more burdensomely to the neck of society. Violence by a rebellious populace is an attempt to overthrow the camouflaged everyday violence of rule by the state over the people. Open violence by the state is an attempt to use extra measures to sit on the shaky lid. The former violence is therefore in essence defensive, whereas the latter is offensive or aggressive beyond the everyday norm.

Violence against individuals is also very different in the two cases. Violence against state officials is an attempt by a rebellious people to cast off their rule. Violence against individual leaders of the people (Otis, for instance) reveals the unending tendency of oppressors to think of a revolutionary movement as being not a genuine mass movement based on real grievances, but a frenzied mob whipped up by a few radical and obstreperous demagogues. Violence against customs officials was an inherent part of the revolt against tyranny. The assault on Otis not only was purely vindictive, but also reflected the tyrannical Tory error of shifting blame from mass grievances to supposedly diabolic leaders who were seducing a people otherwise happy and content with their rulers and their lot. This error, of course, is a highly convenient one for the rulers to make, for it allows them to state that the hearts of a seemingly rebellious people really belong to their masters.

Violence had been building up in Boston since the arrival of the British troops in late 1768. Boston had to contend with troops and customs commissioners as well as with reluctant merchants. The liberals had not succeeded in mounting resistance to the landing of the troops, but, once there, they waged an unremitting campaign for the liberation of Boston. Sam Adams and James Otis led a campaign of persistent and indefatigable agitation and struggle. Particularly significant was the widening of the campaign beyond the weekly readership of the Boston Gazette. The campaign was superbly planned. An inner group of radical leaders wrote a daily account of the pettiness and brutality committed by the troops upon the people of Boston, and each week a record was sent to New York City, to John Holt, libertarian editor of the New York Journal. Holt published these items as the Journal of Occurrences or Journal of the Times. He then distributed the Journal widely throughout the colonies; it was reprinted in numerous newspapers from Massachusetts to Georgia. Authors of the Journal included Sam Adams; William Cooper, Boston town clerk and brother of the libertarian clergyman the Reverend Samuel Cooper; and the radical councillor James Bowdoin, a wealthy merchant of Boston.

During the summer of 1769, two of the four British regiments were removed, and Thomas Hutchinson replaced Bernard as governor. But the lessened power of the troops did not endear them more. Furthermore, the rumor spread that England planned to alter the precious Massachusetts constitution. The Boston Town Meeting again insisted on the repeal of the Townshend and other duties, as well as the recall of the customs commissioners and troops. The popular radical leaders continued their pressure. Numerous festivals (such as on the anniversary of the great Stamp Act riots) were promoted by Adams, Otis, and the Sons of Liberty to rally the people for liberty against its enemies; at such gala events toasts were drunk to commemorate the hallowed numbers 45 and 92, and calls were issued for “strong halters, firm blocks, and sharp axes to all such as deserve them.”

Agitation against the troops was supplemented by sterner measures. The people of Boston made it clear to the troops that they were unwelcome there. Occasionally, isolated soldiers were beaten up on the streets by groups of Bostonians. Soldiers aggressing against citizens were promptly hauled into court.

As a result of the persistence and fortitude of the Bostonians, the British troops began to grow ineffectual in enforcing the trade acts. For fear of popular upheaval, the civil authorities grew wary in calling on troops for their support. Thus, in late October 1769, Governor Hutchinson wanted to use troops against a mob that had seized a hated customs informer, but was warned off by the advice of the Council, sheriff, and justices of the peace. Also in late October, a crowd attacked a British troop with sticks and stones and forced it to disperse. The agitated Colonel William Dalrymple, commander of the troops, blustered that this incident was “but a prelude” and that “never was the popular insolence at such a pitch.”

Nonimportation, British troops, liberal agitation, mounting climate of violence, increasing edginess and ineffectuality of the soldiers—all culminated and came fatefully to a head in early 1770.

The culminating crisis unsurprisingly arose from the pressuring of the four mercantile holdouts against nonimportation: John Taylor, Theophilus Lillie, William Jackson, and Nathaniel Rogers, nephew of Governor Hutchinson. On February 22, some schoolboys led a crowd in placing an effigy of the four importers at the door of Theophilus Lillie. Seeing this, the “infamous informer” Ebenezer Richardson denounced the boys and tried to destroy the effigy. The appearance of the reviled customs informer was just what was needed to inflame the crowd, which pursued him to his house crying “Informer! Informer!” There the boys threw rocks at his house, whereupon the panicky Tory Richardson fired repeatedly into the crowd, killing eleven-year-old Christopher Snider and wounding the eleven-year-old son of Captain John Gore. The effect of this massacre of the children on Boston public opinion can readily be imagined. Richardson himself barely escaped being hanged on the spot. The four miscreant importers either left town or mounted an armed guard. The funeral procession for little Christopher Snider, organized by the Sons of Liberty, was two miles long, perhaps the largest ever gathered in America. The huge funeral, significantly enough, was patterned after the Wilkite funeral in England for the innocent victim of the Massacre of St. George’s Fields. To the Boston liberals the murder of young Snider recalled the tragic assault upon Otis, “the object of the fury of the cursed cabal.” But Snider was “the first, whose LIFE has been a victim to the cruelty and rage of oppressors!” The Boston Gazette thundered that “the blood of young Allen [the victim at St. George’s Fields] may be covered in Britain. But a thorough inquisition would be made in America for that of young Snider, which crieth for vengeance, like the blood of the righteous Abel.”

The killing of young Snider would not be the final incident. In less than two weeks, on March 2 and 3, clashes occurred between Bostonians and the troops. British complaints were to draw retorts by the Massachusetts Council that the evident solution was to withdraw the troops. For their part, the populace believed the customs commissioners (the bosses of Richardson) to be implicated in the child murder, and were indignant at the soldiers being used to guard the hated commissioners at the customhouse.

The final crisis arrived on the night of March 5. The troops began the day by printing an insulting handbill. A small riot was then precipitated by a fist-fight between a soldier and a ropewalk worker; there had been bad blood between ropewalk laborers and the troops before. As night fell, a soldier struck, with his musket, a young apprentice, who had been denouncing British officers and rousing ugly memories of the child killing of two weeks before. A crowd now gathered before the barracks of the Fourteenth Regiment and pelted the sentries with snowballs.

Meanwhile, the meeting bell was rung and a crowd gathered at the customhouse on King Street, where the main body of troops was stationed. Someone recognized the soldier who had assaulted the young apprentice—a sentry at the customhouse—and the crowd attacked him with sticks of broken ice and snowballs. At this critical juncture, the customs officials at the customhouse called for the main guard headed by a Captain Thomas Preston to come to the rescue of the honor of the sentry, the army, and the commissioners who had brought the troops to Boston in the first place. Captain Preston and his guard of seven men stalked through the crowd, pricking the people with fixed bayonets. The crowd pressed in courageously on the bayonets, and when the gun of one soldier was knocked to the ground the soldiers emptied their muskets into the crowd. Joining in the shooting were customs officials, who fired upon the crowd from the privileged sanctuary of the upper floor of the customhouse. Five men fell dead or dying from that murderous volley, and six other Bostonians were wounded. The incident swiftly became known far and wide as the “Boston Massacre.” The first to fall dead was Crispus Attucks, a tall Negro sailor, who had been one of the most zealous front-fighters in the Sons of Liberty. The others killed were a sailor, a ropemaker, and two young apprentices. At the sound of firing the townsmen fell back, but soon advanced again to take away their dead and wounded. The panicky soldiers got ready to fire again, but Captain Preston struck their guns out of position. Soon the Boston crowd began to form in earnest, and the streets rang with the cry of “To arms! To arms! Turn out with your guns!” Nearly five hundred people assembled, swearing to kill every British soldier who had fired upon the people. Preston and his men thereupon retreated rapidly to the safety of the guardhouse.

This was it. The people of Boston and of Massachusetts had had enough. The Boston Massacre was the final straw that sent this most sensitive spot in the American colonies once again to the brink of revolution. The next day, an extraordinarily large town meeting was held in Boston. Challenged by the rousing speech of Sam Adams, the meeting unanimously demanded the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Boston. Adams and Hancock were selected to head a town committee to present the demands before Hutchinson and the Council. The governor’s offer to withdraw one of the two regiments was scornfully spurned. Unless there was total evacuation, warned Adams, the troops would be destroyed. Fifteen thousand armed citizens, thundered Adams, were ready and eager to pour into Boston to eliminate the hated soldiery. When Adams made these threats, he noticed that Hutchinson trembled and grew pale, and he “enjoyed the sight.” The Council unanimously advised surrender, and warned Hutchinson that all New England would soon rise in arms against the troops and that “the night which was coming on would be the most terrible that was ever seen in America.” Before night fell, Hutchinson yielded, and promised speedy and complete evacuation of the troops. Soon the soldiery left, to the hooting of the crowd, for the safety of Castle William.

Sam Adams’ threats were not idle ones. Forty thousand New Englanders were ready to march for the liberation of Boston. Ten thousand were set to march from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, alone, led by the Portsmouth Sons of Liberty, who proclaimed that the “bloody work in Boston calls loud for VENGEANCE.” The Liberty Boys of Salem, Massachusetts, promised thousands of yeomen from Essex County to destroy a “licentious and bloodthirsty soldiery.” Indeed, armed men had already begun to march on Boston, until stopped by Bostonians with the word that the crisis was over.

Expulsion of the troops accomplished the first objective of the popular forces. The next goal was to bring those responsible for the massacre to the bar of justice. As early as March 6, Captain Preston and his men were arrested by the civil authorities of Boston and indicted for murder. The Crown authorities dragged their feet, however. The royally appointed superior court judges delayed the trial for as long as they could—actually until October. The prosecution was deliberately weak, and permitted a jury of which no member came from the town of Boston. Preston and most of the soldiers were acquitted; two of the soldiers were convicted of manslaughter, but their punishment was absurdly limited to being branded on the hand. The historian Oliver Dickerson has brought out that one of the reasons for acquittal of the soldiers was the angle of the bullets killing Attucks and others, indicating a firing from the upper story of the customhouse, that is, by customs officials.*

The people were understandably resentful of the acquittal and the light sentences. Was a slight brand on the hand to be the full payment made for five murders? The judges were bitterly reviled, and one eager young radical, the son of a chancellor, posted a notice urging assassination of the judges. Sam Adams, as “Vindex” in the Gazette, attacked the verdict and spread the liberal account of the massacre far and wide. Adams made March 5 an annual observance, to keep fresh in the minds of the people the “bloody work” of the “butchers” of King Street.

The obstruction by the judges was used by Adams to show that it was futile for the people to look to the (royally appointed) courts for redress of their grievances. Even the juries were unreliable. Only an armed people’s militia could be relied upon to deal successfully with the enemy, the British redcoats. With rumors flying of new British landings to punish Boston’s uprising, the Sons of Liberty trained a militia and resolved to fight and resist any future landing. “Innocence is no longer safe,” declared Adams in the Boston Gazette; “we are now obliged to appeal to God, and to our ARMS for defense.”

Despite the dereliction of the judges in the massacre case, popular pressure did force them to proceed with the trial of the child killer Ebenezer Richardson. Richardson was tried and convicted of murder, but pardoned by the Crown and allowed by the authorities to flee the country. Though they did not manage to bring the soldiers to justice, the popular forces were able to drive the hated customs commissioners as well as the troops out of Boston. John Robinson, the assaulter of Otis, fled to England and secured the pardon of Richardson, as well as a handsome reward by the Crown for the patriotic work of the judges in seeing that the soldiers and customs officials escaped punishment.

The Boston liberals still faced the task of enforcing nonimportation, and increased pressure was now put on the few recalcitrant merchants. The mob finally forced Nathaniel Rogers to flee Boston. The Sons of Liberty sent a message to their brethren in New York to be ready for him, and the New York Sons prepared a tarring-and-feathering party for Rogers. Driven from New York too, and having learned a rough lesson, Rogers returned to Boston in May to sue fruitlessly for restoration to good standing. The Boston Town Meeting also redoubled its efforts to help the merchants agitate for compliance with the agreement. The result of the merchants’ nonimportation campaign was to lower imports from Britain into Boston from four hundred and thirty thousand pounds in 1768 to less than two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds the following year. Overall in the American colonies, imports from Great Britain fell substantially from 2.15 million pounds in 1768 to 1.33 million pounds in 1769.

The revolutionary temper of the people of Boston in the months after the Boston Massacre may be gauged by the instructions given on May 15 by the Boston Town Meeting to its representatives in the General Court. The town attacked Britain’s “deep laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism... for the extinction of all civil liberty in America.” The town meeting also challenged any “pretended right or power of... any exterior authority” to limit any American constitutional or natural rights or liberties. To an earlier Boston challenge to the right of Parliament to regulate any colony by statute, it now added the far-reaching rejection of the power of the Crown to instruct the colonial governors. To these, Hutchinson reacted in horror, believing they were “designs... to bring about a revolution, and to attain to independency.”

*Oliver M. Dickerson, “The Commissioners of Customs and the ‘Boston Massacre,’” New England Quarterly (September 1954): 307–25.