Boston in the American Revolution by Brooke Barbier

Boston in the American Revolution by Brooke Barbier

Author:Brooke Barbier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2017-01-14T16:00:00+00:00


A young and stoic John Adams. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, New York Public Library.

Over the course of the trial, two of the soldiers were identified as having fired fatal shots into the mob. Hugh Montgomery was known to have killed Attucks, and Matthew Killroy was believed to have killed Gray. Because it wasn’t known who of the other six soldiers had fired the shots that killed the three other victims, they could not be convicted. Montgomery had a better case than Killroy because he benefitted from witness testimony. Richard Palmes swore that “something resembling ice” hit Montgomery, who stepped back after the impact and then fired. If Montgomery had been hit by a rebel first, there could be no malice in his firing. Rather, his shooting into the crowd was a response to being hit. Therefore, under British law, Montgomery could not be convicted of murder.65

The lack of malice would be a harder case to prove for Killroy (an unfortunate name for a man on trial for murder), since he was at the ropewalk fight a few days before and had been overheard saying he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to shoot Boston’s townspeople. Furthermore, there was no firm evidence proving that Gray had first assaulted Killroy before he shot into the crowd. But Judge Trowbridge claimed, “if the assault upon [Killroy]…would justify firing and killing…that would not inhance the killing to murder.” It became very difficult for the jury—which had no Bostonians sitting on it—to convict Killroy of murder because the crowd had clearly assaulted him and the other soldiers first. At the end of a long trial (long by colonial standards at just over a week, but nothing like the duration of high-profile trials today), Montgomery and Killroy were both found guilty of manslaughter, not murder. Their punishment was to have their thumbs branded. It was not the outcome that most rebels had hoped for.66

Governor Hutchinson probably thought he would have an angry and unruly town on his hands after the Boston Massacre trial. After six people had been killed by British officials in ten days, Boston could and should have been more explosive than ever. Yet many Bostonians shockingly accepted the outcome of the trial. With the troops gone and most taxes off the books—the Townshend Duties had been repealed, except for the tax on tea—Bostonians seemed to retire their hatred of the British Empire. And for the next few years, Boston went into a lull, as there wasn’t much to complain about. For rebel leaders, it was difficult to get townspeople riled up when life seemed normal again and there was no immediate threat to their liberties, safety or pocketbooks. It took a few years, but it would be Hutchinson, yet again, who would give Samuel Adams a cause to rally people around.



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