Boston Massacre: A History from Beginning to End (American Revolution Book 1) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

How the Incident on King Street Became the Boston Massacre

“Every circumstance connected with this wanton and sanguinary event is important to be noticed. The people were provoked beyond endurance; and they can be justly accused only of resisting a fierce and vindictive soldiery, at the hazard of life.”

—A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre

Samuel Adams was an influential man in Boston for reasons which put him at odds with the acting governor. Hutchinson called him “the great incendiary” for his stance on the rights of the colonies when they were in opposition to royal prerogative. His second cousin, John Adams, of a demeanor less radical than Samuel, viewed Samuel as one who “made it his constant rule to warn against the hostile designs of Great Britain.” Both the Adams men had been educated at Harvard. John Adams, who was younger, had studied law. Samuel Adams, then 47 years old, was the recording clerk for the Massachusetts House. He was also a vehement patriot, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, and a skilled propagandist who frequently wrote letters to newspapers under an alias in support of his views.

When a citizens group met after the shootings to determine their course of action, they chose Samuel Adams to chair a committee to petition the acting governor to remove the troops immediately. To Hutchinson’s claim that he did not have the authority to do this, Adams replied, “Sir, if the Lieutenant Governor or Colonel Dalrymple, or both together, have the authority to remove one regiment, they have the authority to remove two and nothing short of a total evacuation of the town, by all regular troops, will satisfy the public mind or preserve the peace.”

Acting Governor Hutchinson, realizing that it was to his advantage to delay the trial of the British soldiers as long as he could while the friction between the military and the citizens cooled, was able to hold off the trial until months later. He was encouraged in his efforts by General Thomas Gage, the commander of the British forces in the colonies. Not long after the episode, Hutchinson wrote, “In matters of dispute between the King and the colonies government is at an end and in the hands of the people.”

The leaders of both factions were not idle during this cooling-off period; both sides were eager to present their cases to the public in the form of a media frenzy. Eighteenth-century publicity may have lacked the unceasing coverage that modern-day news receives through technology, but that didn’t prevent the supporters sympathetic to the patriot cause and those who remained loyal to the British from doing their utmost to sway public opinion.

According to the Boston Gazette, the deaths of the five civilians in a shooting—now heralded as a massacre—was the consequence of quartering the soldiers in Boston and had been part of a conspiracy to stifle the spirit of liberty. The effort to win proponents went as far as London, where pamphlets were published to bring the British public into the audience.

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