“The Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead”

Revolutionary Spaces preserves what might be the first piece of legal paperwork arising from the Boston Massacre: the report of an inquest convened the day after the shooting.

This document a printed form filled out with specific details on the deceased and the names and signatures of the coroner and his jury. I’ve transcribed it with the printed words in boldface:

Suffolk, ss.

AN Inquisition Indented, taken at Boston within the said County of Suffolk the Sixth Day of March in the tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third by the Grace of God, of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Before Robert Pierpont Gentm. one of the Coroners of our said Lord the King, within the County of Suffolk aforesaid;

upon the View of the Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead, by the Oaths of Benjamin Waldo Foreman Jacob Emmons John McLane William Fleet John Wise John How Nathaniel Hurd William Baker junior William Flagg William Crafts Enoch Rust Robert Duncan William Palfrey & Samuel Danforth good and lawful Men of Boston aforesaid, within the County aforesaid; who being Charged and Sworn to enquire for our said Lord the King, When and by what Means, and how the said Michael Johnson came to his Death: Upon their Oaths do say,

That the said Michael Johnson was wilfully and feloniously murdered at King Street in Boston in the County aforesaid on the Evening of the 5th. instant between the hours of nine & ten by the discharge of a Musket or Muskets loaded with Bullets, two of which were shot thro’ his body, by a party of Soldiers to us unknown, then and there headed and commanded by Captain Thomas Preston of his Majesty’s 29th. Regiment of foot against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King his Crown and dignity and so by that means he came by his death as appears by evidence.

In Witness whereof, as well I the Coroner aforesaid, as the Jurors aforesaid, to this Inquisition have interchangeably put our Hands and Seals, the Day and Year aforesaid.

This document was made so early that Bostonians hadn’t realized that “Michael Johnson” was really named Crispus Attucks.

Revolutionary Spaces shared an essay about this document’s history as a museum artifact and the work that’s been done to conserve it.

Tonight I’ll speak online to the American Revolution Round Table of New Jersey about how Massachusetts’s legal system responded to the Boston Massacre. Four criminal trials followed that event, though we usually hear about only one or two (so I might end up talking more about the others). 

Upcoming Events on Revolutionary History at the M.H.S.

Here are three different types of online events coming up from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Tuesday, 6 February, 5:00 to 6:15 P.M.
Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar Series
“The Social World of Revolutionary New England”
Panel discussion with:

• Nicole Breault, University of Texas, El Paso
• Christopher Walton, Southern Methodist University
• Mark Peterson, Yale University

Nicole Breault’s research centers on Boston watchmen who walked the streets at night to monitor for signs of fire, distress, and disorder. Through night constables’ reports, orders governing watches, town records, acts of the General Court, and justice of the peace records, Breault’s paper examines local-level police training prior to the professionalization of law enforcement and more broadly, quotidian acquisitions of legal knowledge in early America.

Christopher Walton’s work examines how Congregational clergy in the Connecticut Valley ministered to their communities through suffering during the American Revolution. As the religious community dealt with sickness and death locally, it learned to respond piously to loss at the battlefront. Through suffering, religion became personal as individuals took solace in religious truth and cultivated piety.

Peterson, author of The City-State of Boston, will comment on Breault and Walton’s papers (which are available to seminar subscribers).

Register for “The Social World of Revolutionary New England” here.

Thursday, 15 February, 6:00 to 7:00 P.M.
“First Family: George Washington’s Heirs & the Making of America”
Cassandra Good, Marymount University,
in conversation with Sara Georgini, M.H.S.

While George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, they raised numerous children together. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, and also meet the children he helped to raise. The children of Martha Washington’s son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye. Raised in the country’s first “first family,” they remained well-known not only as Washington’s family, but also as keepers of his legacy throughout their lives.

As the country grapples with concerns about political dynasties and the public role of presidential families, the saga of Washington’s family offers a human story of historical precedent.

Register for “First Family: George Washington’s Heirs & the Making of America” here. This is a free public event.


Monday and Tuesday, 19–20 February, 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
“Perspectives on the Boston Massacre & the Legacy of Crispus Attucks”
Teacher Workshop

This two-day workshop is offered for Grade 3-12 educators with a focus on Grade 5, covering content relevant to Grade 5 Investigating History, Early U.S., 19th Century, and African American History.

On a cold night in March 1770, simmering conflict broke out into a riot between colonial Bostonians and British soldiers. Competing witness accounts from across all walks of Boston life made it difficult to know exactly what happened, but the night ended with the death of five colonists including Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor, and became a flashpoint in the conflict between colonists and British rule.

Eighty-five years later, Black historian and community leader William Cooper Nell brought Crispus Attucks back into the public’s consciousness, connecting Black participation in the Revolutionary Era to 19th-century abolitionists’ calls for emancipation and equal civil rights for Black Americans.

Using primary sources and resources from the MHS’ History Source, educators will:

• Explore conflicting witness testimonies and multiple perspectives from a diverse array of Bostonians.
• Investigate ways in which people of color have been both present for and critical actors in turning points in American history.
• Discuss how and why public memory of the Boston Massacre has changed over time–and how point of view influences our interpretation of the past.
• Model strategies for analyzing primary sources in the classroom.

This teacher workshop has a fee of $40 per person. Participants can earn P.D.P.’s or other professional credits—see the webpage for any additional fees. Register for “Perspectives on the Boston Massacre & the Legacy of Crispus Attucks” here.

Revolutionary Lectures from Five Different Years

This has been a busy week in video events for me. I delivered two live talks, video-chatted with the Mount Vernon Book Group, and recorded a story for an upcoming National Park Service project.

Meanwhile, videos of several older events got posted. So if you have nothing else to watch on this weekend—after all, it’s just the basketball and the movie awards—here are some video links.

The Dedham Museum & Archive recorded the talks that Katie Turner Getty, Christian Di Spigna, and I delivered earlier this month on 6 March. Katie spoke about women at the Boston Massacre, Christian about Dr. Joseph Warren’s career, and I about the evidence and unanswered questions about Crispus Attucks. We also fielded audience questions. So be aware, the video of this “Revolutionary Martyrs” program runs about an hour and forty-five minutes.

The Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site has posted the videos of four lectures I delivered around Evacuation Day in recent years. The National Park Service works to ensure all its videos are accessible to people with limited sight or hearing, so these include captions and descriptions.

I started delivering Evacuation Day lectures at Washington’s Headquarters several years ago when I was working on a historic resource study for the agency. At first I drew on chapters from that study. Later I started to pull out stories spread out over several chapters, or topics on which I’d found new material. Looking back, I’m surprised I’ve found so much to say.

• 2017: “Washington’s Riflemen: Heroes or Headaches?”
• 2018: “Myths and Realities of Col. Henry Knox’s First Mission”
• 2019: “When John & Abigail Met George: The Adamses’ Encounters with Washington”
• 2020: “Native Americans at the Siege of Boston”

Each of these presentations was about an hour long, with questions at the end. They were made possible by the Friends of Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. Enjoy.

Massacre Commemorations in Dedham and New Bedford, 6 Mar.

The final events of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation’s commemoration of the Boston Massacre will be on Sunday, anniversary of the doctor’s second memorial oration.

Sunday, 6 March, 1:00–3:00 P.M.
Boston’s Revolutionary Martyrs: Those Involved & Those Forgotten
Dedham Historical Society and Museum
612 High Street, Dedham

On March 5, 1770, British troops fired on protestors in a skirmish that became known as the Boston Massacre. In this in-person program a panel of scholars will discuss one of the most recognized events in American history and some of the pivotal individuals involved—Who died? Who witnessed the violence? Who shaped the memory?

J. L. Bell will discuss Crispus Attucks, a man of mixed race killed at the riot, and how he has been remembered at different points in history. Katie Turner Getty will share her research into women and children who witnessed the deadly interactions between colonists and British soldiers. Christian Di Spigna will reveal new discoveries about Dr. Joseph Warren and his pivotal role in the Massacre's aftermath and its enduring legacy. Finally, there will be an opportunity for discussion and book sales.

A fifer and drummer will perform outside the museum’s entrance, welcoming guests in celebration of the museum’s first in-person event since March 2020. Inside the hall attendees can view some relics of Dr. Warren’s life and Dedham’s history.

Admission will be $15 to benefit the Dedham Historical Society. Reserve seats through this page.

Sunday, 6 March, 7:00–9:00 P.M.
Boston’s Revolutionary Martyrs
Masonic Hall
435 County Street, New Bedford

The Massachusetts Freemasons host this final event, which will feature two presentations followed by a question-and-answer session.

“Boston Massacre and Its Place on the Road to American Independence”: What was it about that “Horrid Affair in King Street” that led to the Boston Massacre having an enduring place in American memory and historical thought? Jonathan Lane will discuss how a violent affray in the streets of Boston led to a propaganda coup on behalf of the Sons of Liberty; the unlikely defense of the British soldiers by John Adams and Josiah Quincy; and how their successful legal defense led to the foundational American principle of the rule of law.

Lane is currently coordinator of Revolution 250, a consortium of more than 70 organizations across the commonwealth, working together on the commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution. He is the author of numerous small monographs and editor of From the Potomac to the Etowah, the Civil War Correspondence of Alonzo Hall Quint.

“The Martyr & the Massacre: The Story of Dr. Joseph Warren”: The Boston Massacre stands as one of the most memorable events in American History. Yet often overlooked is the man who helped immortalize the event—Dr. Joseph Warren. Discover Warren's pivotal role in the Massacre's aftermath as we highlight new discoveries and deconstruct why he remains a forgotten figure even though his fingerprints left an indelible mark on the Massacre's enduring legacy.

Christian Di Spigna is the author of Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in History from Columbia University and is currently the Executive Director of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation.

This event is free, but the host asks attendees to register in advance here.

Co-sponsors of this series of events including the hosting organizations, Revolution 250, the Massachusetts Freemasons, the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Henry Knox Color Guard.

“Revolutionary Martyrs” Panel in Framingham, 4 Mar.

There won’t be a reenactment of the Boston Massacre outside the Old State House this year, but there will be other, mostly indoor events commemorating that 1770 milestone. And I’m involved in some of them, including this one.

Friday, 4 March, 7:00 P.M.
Boston’s Revolutionary Martyrs
Framingham History Center

The Boston Massacre is one of the most famous events in American history, but many details about the episode remain mysterious. Was it really the first fatal violence of the Revolution? What do we know about the most famous victim, Crispus Attucks? How many victims ultimately died from the shooting? Was the famous Massacre engraving really designed by Paul Revere? How did Revolutionary leaders like Dr. Joseph Warren keep the memory of the Massacre alive? And how did the idea of martyrdom shape the cause of American liberty?

This event will consist of three presentations followed by a question-and-answer period. The panelists will be:

• Katie Turner Getty, speaking on women at the Massacre. All the soldiers and all the people shot were male, but women were also on the scene and testified about what they experienced. 
• me, J. L Bell, talking about Crispus Attucks, a native of Framingham. What clues can we glean about his life from the record of 1770, and what additional sources and theories have surfaced in recent years? 
• Christian Di Spigna, author of a biography of Dr. Joseph Warren, speaking on the annual orations in Boston that honored the Massacre’s martyrs and how the only two-time orator became a martyr himself.

Also on hand will be the Henry Knox Color Guard, who will demonstrate musket firing on the town common. Inside the Framingham History Center will be a one-night display including a full-scale replica of John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Warren, a portion of the doctor’s missing medical ledger, and the doctor’s Bible, now owned by the Massachusetts Freemasons.

This panel discussion was organized by the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation to observe the anniversary of Warren’s first oration about the˜ Massacre in 1772. Other sponsoring organizations include the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Massachusetts Freemasons, and Revolution 250.

Tickets for this event are $15 to benefit the Framingham History Center. There are no plans to put the presentations online live. To register, follow the instructions on the Framingham History Center webpage.

(The photo above shows Framingham’s Crispus Attucks Bridge, courtesy of David Strauss.)

Glimpsing Another Copy of Revere’s Massacre

Ben Edwards alerted me to this report from Antiques and the Arts about sales at the Doyle auction house early this month that set records for works by Paul Revere.

The items on sale all appear to have come from the collection of Monroe F. Dreher, an mid-20th-century advertising executive, and his wife Elizabeth. The “period rooms” in their Connecticut home was featured in The Magazine Antiques in 1954. Dreher was known for recording the provenances of the pieces he bought, many descended within families, and his collection hasn’t been on display or on the market for decades.

Among the silverware sold was a “Liverpool” pitcher by Revere from 1805 that sold for $94,500, or about three times the estimated price, and a cream jug made by Paul Revere, Jr., in 1783 for $22,680.

But the major sale was a copy of Revere’s “Bloody Massacre” engraving for $429,000, a new record for that print.

This is yet another example of the print with the face of one victim, upside-down and half-hidden within the crowd in the lower left corner, colored a little darker than the faces of other people around him.

This coloring can be only subtly different, enough to make one wonder whether it’s just an artifact of time, or that face can be a dark brown, as in the Philadelphia public library’s copy. This example is somewhere in between.

That pattern of an extra color wash, along with the dual chest wounds painted onto several copies, has convinced me that figure was always supposed to represent Crispus Attucks. Revere wasn’t able to depict him as a person of color in the engraving alone, but the coloring rendered him an individual.

Reading “The 1619 Project”

Two years ago the New York Times published a special issue of its Sunday magazine called “The 1619 Project.” And the historiographical disputes it kicked up are still going on.

Not only is there an expanded and revised form of that essay collection coming out as a book this season, but so are multiple books that seek to refute its argument.

Most of the negative attention has focused on project leader Nikole Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay, which begins, “My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard…” More particularly, on her take on the American Revolution.

I’ll quote the portions of Hannah-Jones’s original text that relate directly to the Revolution and the founding of the U.S. of A.:

Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. . . . They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. . . .

The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. . . .

The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. . . .

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his portable writing desk in a rented room in Philadelphia and penned these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the last 243 years, this fierce assertion of the fundamental and natural rights of humankind to freedom and self-governance has defined our global reputation as a land of liberty. As Jefferson composed his inspiring words, however, a teenage boy who would enjoy none of those rights and liberties waited nearby to serve at his master’s beck and call. His name was Robert Hemings, and he was the half brother of Jefferson’s wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s father and a woman he owned. It was common for white enslavers to keep their half-black children in slavery. Jefferson had chosen Hemings, from among about 130 enslaved people that worked on the forced-labor camp he called Monticello, to accompany him to Philadelphia and ensure his every comfort as he drafted the text making the case for a new democratic republic based on the individual rights of men.

At the time, one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggled under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before. Chattel slavery was not conditional but racial. It was heritable and permanent, not temporary, meaning generations of black people were born into it and passed their enslaved status onto their children. Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but as property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such. . . .

Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.

Jefferson and the other founders were keenly aware of this hypocrisy. And so in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he tried to argue that it wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, he blamed the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the unwilling colonists and called the trafficking in human beings a crime. Yet neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery, and in the end, they struck the passage.

There is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it. The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge.

The essay, having already discussed the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in 1619, then went on to address the ante-bellum period, the Civil War, the backlash against Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and finally the civil rights movement. The extracts I’ve quoted total more than 1,000 words, and they’re just one part of this essay, which in turn was just one essay in “The 1619 Project.”

Almost immediately, in August 2019, the magazine noted that this essay had made a common error in saying the Declaration of Independence was “signed” on 4 July 1776. Well, the text was signed that day, but only by Continental Congress chairman John Hancock and secretary Charles Thomson to signify that the body had approved it.

When we talk about the Declaration signing, we usually mean when dozens of delegates put their names on the handsome, widely reproduced handwritten copy. That process started on 2 August. So the Times scrupulously changed “signed on July 4” to “approved on July 4” and noted the correction, as good news outlets do.

I would also change the statement “The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man,…Crispus Attucks.” Young Christopher Seider was killed eleven days earlier in violence arising directly from Boston’s effort to resist the Townshend duties. Forgetting him is another very common error.

In addition, while Attucks surely had African ancestry, eyewitnesses saw as much or more Native ancestry in his appearance; they referred to him as “the mulatto” or even “the Indian.” Attucks might well be considered “black” today. Nonetheless, I think we shouldn’t omit his full heritage nor forget the European conquest of the Americas began well before the establishment of chattel slavery on those continents.

Neither of those details was what in these thousand words kicked up so much controversy, however.

TOMORROW: Primary reasons.

I Am This Place at Old South This Month

Starting today, the Old South Meeting House will host eight performances of a new play inspired by Crispus Attucks.

Written by Miranda ADEkoje and directed by Pascale Florestal, I Am This Place imagines nine characters, played by actors Maria Hendricks and Dominic Carter, representing Attucks’s parents and ancestors through a century of life in colonial New England.

The contemporaneous record of 1770 has left us very little information about Attucks. In 1860 the abolitionist and historian William Cooper Nell shared a letter about the Attucks family from an unnamed correspondent in Natick, identifying his parents as Jacob Peter Attucks and Nanny.

Later authors linked, however, Attucks to Prince Yongey and Nancy Peterattucks instead, though the dates of their marriage don’t match his reported age.

It’s clear from how people of 1770 described him that Attucks had both Native American and African ancestors. In recent years scholars and genealogists have done a lot of work on how people from those backgrounds, under various pressures from British colonists, formed communities in New England. In other words, Attucks’s heritage was by no means unusual in his time, especially in the area of Natick and Framingham.

I Am This Place creates fictional individuals to explore the lives of black and indigenous people living through wars, slavery, epidemics, religious revival, and other changes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Massachusetts. It also, director Florestal says, shifts Attucks’s own “narrative from martyr to a man with hopes, dreams, ambition and most importantly family.”

Hendricks and Carter will perform I Am This Place at 11:30 A.M. and 1:30 P.M. this weekend and next for anyone visiting Old South. I expect there might be more performances scheduled in the future if the play gets a good reception.

Revolutionary Spaces plans more public art productions like this “to bring people together to reimagine what it means to be a part of America’s Revolutionary story.” Here’s the recording of a panel discussion last fall featuring playwright ADEkoje, Patrick Gabridge of producer Plays in Place, and others on the challenges and rewards of creating such site-specific drama.

The Boston Massacre’s Political Resonance

The Boston Massacre was a political event, of course.

It arose from conflicts between sources of authority—the imperial government and the town government, the British army and the local community, two groups of people feeling threatened and in the right.

In the immediate aftermath, the Whigs memorialized that event as part of that larger political campaign. Then in 1783, when independence had been won and the U.S. of A. was no longer part of internal British politics, Boston stopped commissioning orations every March.

The Massacre gained new political meaning in the mid-1800s as William Cooper Nell and other abolitionists used the figure of Crispus Attucks to argue that Americans of African descent had long been central to the nation and deserved equal rights.

As Mitch Kachun traces in First Martyr of Liberty, Attucks became an emblem of African-American patriotism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Boston erected a monument to the Massacre victims on the Common in 1889, black civil rights campaigners had been among its strongest proponents, and it was informally called “the Crispus Attucks monument.” (Not to be left out, Irish-Americans pointed to Patrick Carr and German-Americans to Christopher Seider as important martyrs.)

Other African-American heroes and models became prominent in the twentieth century, and Attucks’s name lost some of its resonance. In Boston, Melnea Cass revived the tradition of Crispus Attucks Day, shown in this photograph from 1970. His inspiration and her legacy will be discussed at Revolutionary Spaces’s ”Grief, Remembrance, Justice” online panel discussion on 5 March at 5:00 P.M.

Two months after that 1970 anniversary, National Guardsmen shot and killed four student protesters at Kent State University. Within days, Eric Hinderarker reports in Boston’s Massacre, someone published the poster shown above, paralleling the shooting on King Street and the shooting in Ohio. At almost the same time, Mississippi police officers killed two more students at Jackson State University.

Blacks were not the only Americans seeing their cause reflected in the Massacre of 1770. In Boston, the Bicentennial coincided with a federal court instituting busing to integrate schools. One of the more militant white groups resisting that order, R.O.A.R., attended the 1775 Massacre reenactment in force. When the muskets fired, as J. Anthony Lukas recounted here, scores of those protesters fell down, too—assuming the role of victims of an oppressive government.

The 1999 reenactment was the first I attended in a long time. It came a month after New York detectives had killed an African immigrant named Amadou Diallo, shooting 41 rounds at the unarmed man sitting on his front stoop. The current issue of the New Yorker, dated 8 March, showed a white policeman at a fairground shooting booth with a sign that read “41 Shots 10¢.” At the reenactment, I recall hearing a couple of spectators shout, “Forty-one shots for a dime!”

Last May after a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on Boston Common, Boston police forcefully went after straggling groups of protesters, resulting in arrests, looting, and vandalism. There was slight damage to some historic sites and statuary. In subsequent days the governor called out the state militia, and Jake Sconyers caught a resonant image of a military vehicle parked in front of the Old State House on a spot where some of the crowd had stood on 5 March 1770.

As long as we have conflicting sources of authority, as long as groups feel threatened, rightly or wrongly—in other words, for the foreseeable future—the Massacre will continue to have contemporary political resonance.

A Call for the Cradle of Liberty

Having laid out the history of the name “Faneuil Hall” and my principles for changing historic memorials, I’m going to share my thoughts on whether to rename that building because of Peter Faneuil’s slave-dealing.

First off, I think naming the whole complex “Faneuil Hall Marketplace” gives the man too much credit. I was actually surprised to find that was the official name and that “Quincy Market” applied to only the central 1820s building. Mayor Josiah Quincy did a lot more to develop Boston than Peter Faneuil did.

But what about the original building that Faneuil paid for? (Or, rather, the much expanded successor to that building, as shown in this photo from Archipedia New England.)

If the community decides to rename that building, I feel strongly that the Faneuil Hall name shouldn’t completely disappear. And not just because so many history books and tourist guides have used it. If we New Englanders really cared about tourists knowing where they are, we’d put up more street signs.

Rather, the change should remain visible for the reasons I listed back here: the overlap of old and new names would more clearly communicate the change, the reasons behind it, and the process of historical change, hopefully for the better. To answer Mayor Marty Walsh’s 2018 objection to renaming the site, people would know why the city did it.

And let’s face it—even with a new official name we’ll still call the site “Faneuil Hall” a lot of the time until we die. We’re not good at giving up names here. Just look at “Bell Circle” in Revere; that local name endured for decades after the eponymic tire dealership nearby closed, despite not appearing on any signs or maps. Eventually it lasted so long a new development adopted it, and Bell Circle became official.

For another example, here’s a 2012 article providing directions to the Massachusetts Historical Society via the “Auditorium Stop,” which had been officially renamed twenty-two years earlier. In five years naming rights for the T.D. Garden, formerly FleetCenter, will be up for bid again, but we’re all going to keep calling it “the Garden,” right?

What should the new name be? To gather proposals, I looked at news articles about the renaming campaign and even took the risk of reading the comments.

Kevin Peterson, an early advocate of the change, has suggested renaming the hall after Crispus Attucks, killed in the Boston Massacre. Attucks’s body, along with James Caldwell’s, lay in Faneuil Hall before their funeral in March 1770. Attucks is far from forgotten in Boston, however. There’s a large monument to the victims of the Massacre on Boston Common, a prominent stone in the Granary Burying-Ground, and a wide marker in the sidewalk near the Old State House. Of the five or six people killed, Attucks is the one whose name is most familiar to Americans today.

Another suggestion that I’ve seen is “Douglass Hall,” after Frederick Douglass. He indeed spoke against slavery in the meeting hall several times. But Douglass spoke a lot of places—he spent years as a professional orator. Douglass lived in New Bedford; Lynn; Rochester, New York; and Washington, D.C., but never in Boston. To me seizing on his name looks too much like an attempt to claim a celebrity just when he’s getting recognized more and more. There are abolitionists with stronger ties to Boston.

I saw one suggestion coming from multiple people: “The Cradle of Liberty.” Authors have applied that sobriquet to the building since 1835 at least. (Previous to that, as I traced in this posting, the term was used to mean Boston, Massachusetts, and even Great Britain.) “The Cradle of Liberty” is boastful, to be sure, but historic and recognizable. It also highlights the question of freedom at the heart of the famous debates within Faneuil Hall and this debate about its name. So far that strikes me as the best possibility.

So my starting point is “The Cradle of Liberty (formerly Faneuil Hall).” But I wouldn’t stop there. I think the building offers the chance to recognize more people and more history.

TOMORROW: Doorways into the past.

The “Reflecting Attucks” Exhibit Expands Online

Some of the last historical events I attended in person were the Sestercentennial commemorations of the Boston Massacre at the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House—now Revolutionary Spaces.

At the time, the Old State House museum was opening a new exhibit called “Reflecting Attucks.” I was looking forward to visiting it as soon as my schedule cleared. And then the pandemic shut us all down.

Revolutionary Spaces has now reopened for limited visitation, Thursdays through Sundays, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. The organization has also launched a digital companion to “Reflecting Attucks” using programming and digital content to offer a deeper look at the life and legacy of Crispus Attucks.

Upcoming online programs for the public include these panel discussions featuring historians and other scholars.

Wednesday, 16 September, 4:00 P.M.
“Attucks: A Man of Many Worlds”
A lively online discussion about Attucks’s Afro-Indian community and the experiences that might have informed his thinking and brought him out to King Street.

Tuesday, 22 September, 4:00 P.M.
“Liberty and Sovereignty in 18th-Century New England”
This discussion delves into the political and philosophical conversations about liberty and sovereignty that evolved around the time of the Boston Massacre.

Tuesday, 29 September, 4:00 P.M.
“Imagining Attucks”
The panelists explore how Attucks has been interpreted through the years and grapple with the challenges that come with portraying Attucks.

Tuesday, 20 October, 4:00 P.M.
“Demanding Freedom: Attucks and the Abolition Movement”
A group reflection on how nineteenth-century abolitionists revived Crispus Attucks’s memory in their fight to end slavery.

In addition, there are three online talks for Revolutionary Spaces members starting on 9 September.

“In like manner killed by two balls”

As discussed yesterday, there’s good evidence that Crispus Attucks was the first person shot at the Boston Massacre.

There’s even stronger evidence that he was hit with two musket balls.

The 12 Mar 1770 Boston Gazette reported that Attucks was “killed instantly; two balls entering his breast one of them in special goring the right lobe of the lungs, and a great part of the liver most horribly."

Dr. Benjamin Church did an autopsy and wrote in even more detail:

I found two wounds in the region of the thorax, the one on the right side, which entered through the second true rib within an inch and a half of the sternum, dividing the rib and separating the cartilaginous extremity from the sternum, the ball passed obliquely downward through the diaphragm and entering through the large lobe of the liver and the gall-bladder, still keeping its oblique direction, divided the aorta descendens just above its division into the iliacs, from thence it made its exit on the left side of the spine. This wound I apprehended was the immediate cause of his death.

The other ball entered the fourth of the false ribs, about five inches from the linea alba, and descending obliquely passed through the second false rib, at the distance of about eight inches from the linea alba…

Church’s main point in all that Latinate anatomy was that “from the oblique direction of the wounds, I apprehend the gun must have been discharged from some elevation”—i.e., from the windows above the soldiers. His deposition was part of the Whigs’ argument that the Customs service was involved in the shooting.

But the angle of the musket balls was affected by how Attucks was standing. John Danbrook testified, “The Molatto was leaning over a long stick he had, resting his breast upon it.” With Attucks leaning forward, musket balls shot level into his chest would probably have exited at lower points on his back.

Danbrook and other witnesses agreed that Attucks fell quickly after the first musket shot, before they heard another gun fire. He didn’t continue standing long enough to be shot by a second gun. That strongly suggests he was hit by two musket balls at once, both coming from one discharge.

I’ve previously noted how Edward Crafts reported Cpl. Hugh McCann telling him that on a British army patrol that night “every man [was] loaded with a brace of balls.” There are many other examples of muskets reported to fire two balls at once in this period.

It’s also significant that the coroner’s jury decided that Attucks was killed by “the discharge of a Musket or Muskets loaded with bullets, two of which were shot thro’ his body.” Those men didn’t see the two wounds as necessary evidence of two guns.

What’s more, Attucks wasn’t the only man wounded twice. Immediately after him on the newspaper’s list of victims was:

Mr. James Caldwell, mate of Capt. [Thomas] Morton’s vessel, in like manner killed by two balls entering his back.

Danbrook’s testimony even suggests that Caldwell was killed by the same shot that killed Attucks, meaning the balls went through one man’s body and then another. There’s not as much evidence to support that, however, as that both men fell immediately after being hit with two balls.

The third man to die quickly, Samuel Gray, was shot in the head. Witnesses observed only one wound on his body, but it was a big one.

In addition, sailor Robert Patterson testified about how “the sentinel up with his gun and fired, the balls going through my lower right arm.” However, the Boston Gazette reported only that “a ball went through his right arm, and he suffered great loss of blood.” So the evidence of multiple balls in Patterson’s case seems ambiguous.

In the cases of Attucks and Caldwell, on the other hand, by far the most likely explanation of their double wounds is that each was hit by two balls fired from one gun.

Was Crispus Attucks Really the First Man Shot at the Massacre?

Another question about the Boston Massacre that I saw come up this Sestercentennial season is whether Crispus Attucks was really the first man to be killed in that event.

Attucks is certainly remembered as the “First Martyr of Liberty,” as in the title of Mitch Kachun’s book on the historical memory of the man. That reflects the importance of Attucks’s African ancestry to the abolitionist and civil-rights movements. (Of course, it sets aside young Christopher Seider, killed eleven days earlier.)

But what evidence says that Attucks was the first man shot on King Street? Given the stress and confusion of the moment, how consistent and reliable could the witnesses be?

In fact, a review of the eyewitness testimony finds multiple witnesses describing Attucks as being the first person to fall. There’s a little confusion since the first shot seems to have come from Pvt. Edward Montgomery, but it’s not clear he shot Attucks. He may have fired his musket high and hit no one but spurred another soldier to fire at Attucks soon afterwards. Nonetheless, people saw Attucks fall before anyone else.

Here’s some of eyewitness John Hickling’s deposition:

I instantly leaped within the soldier’s bayonet as I heard him cock his gun, which that moment went off between Mr. [Richard] Palmes and myself. I, thinking there was nothing but powder fired, stood still, till upon the other side of Mr. Palmes and close to him, I saw another gun fired, and the man since called Attucks, fall. I then withdrew about two or three yards, and turning, saw Mr. Palmes upon his knee, and the soldiers pushing at him with their bayonets. During this the rest of the guns were fired, one after another, when I saw two more fall. I ran to one and seeing the blood gush out of his head though just expiring, I felt for the wound and found a hole as big as my hand. This I have since learned was Mr. [Samuel] Gray. I then went to Attucks and found him gasping, pulled his head out of the gutter and left him…

Unlike Hickling, Charles Hobby blamed Capt. Thomas Preston:

The Captain then spoke distinctly, “Fire, Fire!” I was then within four feet of Capt. Preston, and know him well; the soldiers fired as fast as they could one after another. I saw the mulatto fall, and Mr. Samuel Gray went to look at him, one of the soldiers, at the distance of about four or five yards, pointed his piece directly for the said Gray’s head and fired. Mr. Gray, after struggling, turned himself right round upon his heel and fell dead.

Sailor James Bailey had been standing with sentry Hugh White as the crowd built up. According to John Adams’s notes at the soldiers’ trial, he said:

Montgomery fired the first Gun. He was the next Man to me close to me, at the right. Cant Say whether the 1st. Gun killed or hurt any one. I Stoopd down to look under the Smoke and the others went off. 1/2 a Minute between 1st. and 2d. Gun. . . . Montgomery fired, about where the Molatto fell. It was pointing towards the Place where we saw Attucks lie.

All those men were up toward the front of the crowd. John Danbrook was somewhere in the middle, and he also testified that Attucks was the first man shot—but also that another man was hit immediately afterwards. Here’s Danbrook at the soldiers’ trial:

Q. Was you looking at Montgomery when he discharged his piece?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see any body fall upon his firing?

A. Yes, I saw two fall, one fell at my elbow, another about three feet from me. I did not hear the sound of another gun, before they both fell.

Q. Were they standing before Montgomery?

A. Yes, about twelve or fifteen feet from him, and about five feet apart, one was the Molatto, the other I did not know.

Q. Do you think one gun killed both these men?

A. Yes, for I heard no other gun when they fell.

Q. Are you certain the other person was killed?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you hear any other gun before that man fell?

A. No.

And Adams’s notes on Danbrook’s testimony:

I saw Montgomery there and saw him fire. . . . I saw two fall as he fired, before I heard any other Gun. One fell just vs. my left Elbow, and the other about 3 foot from me about 10 or 15 foot from the Soldier. In a range with me, one was the Molatto. I believe it was with the first Gun that they were. They were 5 foot a sunder. It was not a Minute, after the Molatto fell that the other Man fell. I cant say, I heard another Gun, before I Saw the 2d Man down. 

I couldn’t find any witness identifying another victim as dropping before Attucks.

Thus, while witnesses disagreed on some details, they did provide us with strong support for saying that Crispus Attucks was the first man fatally shot in the Massacre.

TOMORROW: Was Attucks shot twice?

“They all four were buried in one grave”

On the afternoon of Thursday, 8 Mar 1770—250 years ago today—Boston had a huge public funeral for the first four people to die after the Boston Massacre.

This was only eleven days after the funeral for Christopher Seider, reportedly attended by 1,300 to 2,000 people. The March procession had, in the estimate of merchant John Rowe, at least five times as many mourners:

I attended the Funeral of the four Unhappy People that were killed on Monday last. Such a Concourse of People I never saw before — I believe Ten or Twelve thousand. One Corps with their Relations followed the other & then the Select Men & Inhabitants.

Christopher Davis alerted me through Facebook to a letter about this funeral from Henry Prentiss (1749-1821, shown here in middle age) to his father, a minister in Holliston. Prentiss had just finished an apprenticeship with the merchant Oliver Wendell and asked his father to check “what he [Wendell] was to give me when my time was up”—meaning he didn’t have a copy of his own indenture.

Prentiss sent his father an eyewitness account of the shooting on King Street and the government deliberations that followed. In a postscript, he added what information he’d gathered about the Massacre victims:

The Names of those persons that were killed and their occupation. Jackson a Molatto fellow. Sailor. Gray a Rope maker. Covil mate of a vessell. Munk a Boat Builder. Maverick a Lad about fifteen years of age. Wounded viz., Edwd Payne Mercht in this town shot thro his arm. Green a Taylor shot through his thigh. Patterson shot thro his arm. The Names of the Rest have slip’d my memory.

Even what Prentiss recalled had errors. The “Molatto fellow” was then being identified as “Michael Johnson,” though within days he’d been named as Crispus Attucks. “Covil” was James Caldwell.

It doesn’t appear that Prentiss was close to any of the victims. Indeed, he gave only one man’s full name—Edward Payne, a fellow merchant. 

The next morning, Prentiss appended his description of the funeral:

Yestaday Afternoon four of those unhappy persons that were shot last Monday Evening were inter’d, the procession was much the grandest of any ever seen in America. Gray’s Corps went first then his Relations, then Covil and his Relations, then Maverick and his Relations & then Jackson & after Jackson the Inhabitants walk’d four a brest. I imagine to the number of three or four Thousand, & then a vast number of Carriges, they all four were buried in one grave & young Snider dug up & put with them.

severall company’s of Soldiers are gone to the Castle and the Remainder embarking as fast as possible, to-morrow Night the town will be Clear of them.

Prentiss’s estimate of the crowd at “three or four Thousand” might have been more accurate than Rowe’s, but that was still the largest procession Boston had seen in decades. And speaking of estimates, it took a lot longer than two days to move all the soldiers out of Boston.

(My thanks to Christopher Davis, and to Holliston chronicler George F. Walker, for bringing this source to light.)

EXTRA: After the Sestercentennial of the Massacre

And you thought the Sestercentennial commemoration of the Boston Massacre was over after the reenactments on Saturday. But no!

Here are the events I know about in the coming month.

Sunday, 8 March, 12:30-2:30 P.M.
Faneuil Hall to the Granary Burying-Ground, Boston
Reenactors and the public are invited to a period oration delivered by Henry Cooke IV under the Samuel Adams statue, followed a procession to the Granary Burying Ground to lay a wreath at the victims’ tomb.

Tuesday, 10 March, 7:00 P.M.
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester
Mitch Kachun, author of First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory, discusses how and why certain historical narratives gain widespread credibility and familiarity while others are forgotten or marginalized. This talk explores the different ways that Crispus Attucks has been either made a part of or excluded from Americans’ understandings of the story of the American Revolution and the story of the nation.

Thursday, 12 March, 6:30-8:00 P.M.
Old South Meeting House, Boston
“Sanguinary Theatre: Dr. Joseph Warren & His Massacre Oration” will blend modern context and costumed interpretation to revive a fiery oration of 1775. Following the Boston Massacre, the residents of Massachusetts Bay made their feelings on the violent event known in a series of annual memorial meetings, with speeches by well-known orators of the day. Dr. Joseph Warren delivered such a speech to a tense and rowdy crowd at Old South Meeting House in March 1775, months before his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In this oration, Warren both mourned the Massacre victims as martyrs and inspired his audience with a call to protect liberty for future generations. Witness Warren’s thoughts on the military occupation of Boston, the Bloody Massacre on King Street, and these events’ repercussions as colonists found themselves on the brink of war. Tickets available through this page.

In addition, as already noted, Serena Zabin will be speaking about her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, in Lexington on 10 March and in Newport, Rhode Island, on 12 March.

And don’t miss these ongoing museum exhibits:

• “Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere,” split between the Worcester Art Museum and the Concord Museum through early June.
• “Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre” at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston through late June.
• “Reflecting Attucks” at the Old State House in Boston through March 2021.

And of course the legal trials that followed the Boston Massacre in late 1770 were important historic events in their own right. Stay tuned!

The Great 1770 Quiz Answers, Part 3

Here are answers from the start of the second part of the Great 1770 Quiz.

VII. What were the real names of people in Boston behind these nicknames or pseudonyms used in 1770?

A) Determinatus
B) The Irish Infant
C) Michael Johnson
D) Paoli
E) Philanthrop
F) Shan-ap-Morgan
G) Vindex
H) William the Knave

One site to find almost all of these names is Boston 1775. Use the search box in the upper left corner of the screen (on the desktop design). I’ve discussed everything but “Paoli.” Of course, one should still confirm what I’ve written, but this site offers a quick start.

Three of those names are pen names used in newspaper essays. Samuel Adams wrote as “Determinatus” and “Vindex,” among many other pseudonyms. Jonathan Sewall signed himself “Philanthrop.” Many newspaper readers knew the identities behind those signatures; they weren’t actually concealing much.

Two other nicknames are examples of how people attacked their political enemies in newspaper essays. Adams called Customs Commissioner John Robinson “Shan-ap-Morgan” because he came from Wales. Boston Chronicle printer John Mein called William Molineux “William the Knave,” along with my favorite, “Admiral Renegado.”

It’s not clear which category “Paoli” belongs in. In 1769 the unsuccessful Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807) was celebrated in Britain, where it was easier to cheer people rebelling against the French king than rebelling against one’s own. American Whigs toasted Paoli, Ebenezer Mackintosh named a child after him, and a Pennsylvania tavern with his name grew into a township (and 1777 battle site).

In an 18 Feb 1770 letter Thomas Hutchinson wrote about Molineux, “whom the Sons of Liberty have given the name of Paoli.” The Censor magazine for 14 Mar 1772 likewise referred to “the Bostonian who assumes the name of Paoli.” But those are Loyalist voices, not actually Molineux’s friends. In fact, they were his enemies, eager to make him seem conceited or alarming.

So did Molineux and his colleagues really use the nickname “Paoli” regularly and unironically? I’m not sure. But many historians have accepted Hutchinson as an accurate reporter and repeated that Molineux seized on the Corsican’s name.

On to “Michael Johnson.” In the week after the Boston Massacre, newspapers and coroners referred to one dead victim under that name. Then suddenly they started calling that tall mulatto man Crispus Attucks—without, unfortunately, offering any explanation for the change. Most historians suspect Attucks was living under an alias, but that’s still a guess.

Finally, in his autobiography John Adams recalled how the merchant James Forrest, “then called the Irish Infant,” asked him to defend the soldiers after the Massacre. Adams used the same nickname in an 1816 letter to Jedidiah Morse. He described Forrest in tears, so people have interpreted the nickname to mean Forrest, an Irishman, cried as easily as a baby.

That said, I haven’t found any other source describing Forrest by that name or trait. When Forrest told the Loyalists Commission about the services he’d rendered to the Crown, he didn’t mention securing the soldiers’ defense attorney. And the younger Abigail Adams used the phrase “the Irish infant” to describe a little person she saw in London in 1785. So there’s still a little mystery there.

Both Kathy and John matched all the nicknames to the right people.

VIII. After approving the Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, Boston voted to send a copy to about two dozen potentially sympathetic readers in Britain. Who was the only woman on that list?

Boston’s Short Narrative report can be found at many websites, and in multiple editions. The first printing, as shown by the copy Molineux sent to Robert Treat Paine and the Massachusetts Historical Society later digitized, ends with an index of witnesses. The town meeting authorized a committee to send copies to “the Duke of Richmond, General [Henry Seymour] Conway, and such other Gentlemen as they may think proper” in Britain.

On 16 May, the printers produced more copies with some new pages at the end listing the people in Britain that committee had chosen. A footnote explained, “This list and the following letter, are annexed to such copies only of this pamphlet, as are intended for publication in America.” Then more material was added for later printings. The longer copies were the basis of reprints in 1849 and 1870.

There’s one female name on that long list of recipients: the Whig historian Catharine Macaulay (shown above during her 1784-1785 visit to the U.S. of A.).

Both John and Kathy identified that supporter of the American cause.

IX. What site on the Freedom Trail came under new management in 1770?

There are a limited number of sites on the Freedom Trail, some of which didn’t even exist in 1770. So that narrows down the possibilities.

The Freedom Trail Foundation’s own webpage about those sites includes an entry that begins: “Built around 1680, the Paul Revere House, owned by the legendary patriot from 1770-1800…” A-ha!

A little research in biographies confirms that Paul Revere bought the North End house now named after him in late 1770. It was his home and place of business for several years, though he moved out for grander quarters well before he sold it.

Both Kathy and John correctly landed on that site.

TOMORROW: Tar, feathers, and death.

“David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses”

On 5 Mar 1770, eleven days after David Bradlee saw Ebenezer Richardson shooting out of his house, there was a confrontation between soldiers and civilians in King Street. That became, of course, the Boston Massacre.

Among the people on the scene was Benjamin Burdick, Jr., constable of the town house watch. He testified about what he saw in multiple forums. Burdick’s most detailed account appears in the town’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, and in part it says:

I then looked round to see what number of inhabitants were in the street, and computed them to be about fifty, who were then going off as fast as possible; at the same time I observed a tall man standing on my left-hand, who seemed not apprehensive of the danger he was in, and before I had time to speak to him, I heard the word “Fire!” and immediately the report followed, the man on my left hand dropped, I asked him if he was hurt, but received no answer, I then stooped down and saw him gasping and struggling with death. I then saw another man laying dead on my right-hand, but further advanced up the street.

I then saw the soldiers loading again, and I ran up the street to get some assistance to carry off the dead and wounded. Doctor Jos. Gardner, and David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses, and as we were stooping to take them up, the soldiers presented at us again; I then saw an officer passing busily behind them. We carried off the dead without regarding the soldiers.

At the soldiers’ trial the shorthand expert John Hodgson, who was a relative newcomer to town and didn’t know everyone, quoted Burdick this way:

When the Molatto man was dead, I went up, and met Dr. Gardner and Mr. Brindley. I asked them to come and see the Molatto, and as we stooped to take up the man, the soldiers presented their arms again, as if they had been going to fire, Capt. [Thomas] Preston came, pushed up their guns, and said stop firing, do not fire.

“Mr. Brindley” is clearly the man Burdick knew as “David Bradley.”

The tailor David Bradlee was thus at three violent political events in Boston in the space of five months: the tarring and feathering of George Gailer on 28 Oct 1769, the fatal confrontation at Richardson’s house on 22 Feb 1770, and the Massacre.

Furthermore, Bradlee was willing to walk under the guns of the British troops to help pick up Crispus Attucks’s body.

We write a lot about the Boston “crowd” and the “Sons of Liberty” as a collective actor, but of course that group was made up of individual people. David Bradlee was evidently one of those people. He did the work of resisting Crown authority at the street level. He was part of the crowd that genteel political leaders like Samuel Adams, James Otis, and William Molineux relied upon.

COMING UP: The Bradlees and the Tea Party.

“Speak Out!” at Old South, 27 Mar.

On Wednesday, 27 March, the Old South Meeting House will host the fifth annual “Speak Out!” commemoration of the annual Boston Massacre orations, co-sponsored by the Bostonian Society.

The event description says:

Each year from 1772 to 1775, massive numbers of men, women, and children gathered here at Old South Meeting House to commemorate the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, with rousing speeches by John Hancock, Benjamin Church, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Join us to hear excerpts of these speeches, performed by an inter-generational group in the same hall where the orations took place 240 years ago!

This year’s program will include excerpts from the “Crispus Attucks Memorials” delivered in 1858 by William Cooper Nell and Dr. John Sweatt Rock, which zeroed in on the institution of slavery in relation to the rhetoric of liberty.

This occasion isn’t just for listening to speeches, though. Audience members can choose to read selected excerpts, and the most rousing orators in youth and adult categories will receive prizes.

Folks who want to study the texts in advance can send a request to education@osmh.org with the subject line “Orations Reader.”

This event will start at 6:00 P.M. It is free and open to the public, but Old South asks people to register here.

The picture above shows William Cooper Nell (1816-1874), who in addition to being one of Boston’s foremost civil-rights activists in the mid-1800s was also a Revolutionary War historian.

The Massacre, Black Lives, and Boys

Before departing this Massacre season, I want to call attention to Farah Peterson’s thought-provoking article in The American Scholar titled “Black Lives and the Boston Massacre.”

Peterson, a law professor and legal historian at the University of Virginia School of Law, writes:

The trial cemented [John] Adams’s reputation as the archetypal lawyer-as-hero, a man willing to be hated in order to give individuals the chance to have their cause fairly heard. And it confirmed for Revolutionary British North Americans that theirs was a cause rooted in legal ideals. We have remembered the trial this way ever since: as a triumph of principle over self-interest or impetuous emotionalism.

But an honest look at the transcript complicates the story by showing how racial prejudice contributed to the outcome. A critical part of Adams’s strategy was to convince the jury that his clients had only killed a black man and his cronies and that they didn’t deserve to hang for it.

Peterson underscores how Adams’s trial argument made the most of Crispus Attucks being a tall, muscular man of color, just as apologists for some recent dubious law-enforcement shootings have insisted that young black men or children looked dangerous.

That’s an compelling parallel to think about, and not necessarily new. Twenty years ago, the Massacre reenactment took place a month after New York police officers killed Amadou Diallo, and some people in the crowd called out the similarities.

Ironically, Peterson undercuts the argument with the way she presents the start of the confrontation on King Street:

This is how the massacre began, with a group of “boys”—that is, teenagers—surrounding a young soldier named Hugh White, who was standing stiffly in his red coat on sentry duty at the Custom House. They started shouting at him, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “lobster” and screaming to each other (hilariously), “Who buys lobster?” They made a game of pitching snowballs and debris at him and joked about picking up the sentry box and lobbing it into Boston Harbor.

That description has (white) teenagers picking on Pvt. White for no reason. But the sentry was the first to use violence, clubbing an apprentice named Edward Garrick for speaking disrespectfully of an army captain. The article refers to “a rumor that a soldier had hurt a young boy,” immediately suggesting that rowdies might have concocted that story to rile up other Bostonians. In fact, there’s a lot of testimony about the interaction between the sentry and the apprentice.

Peterson quotes Adams reminding the soldiers’ jury about “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.” Genteel society worried about all those classes of people, seeing them as on the boundaries of society and prone to impetuous violence.

Peterson rightly notes how Adams’s argument as a defense attorney and a Whig depended on casting such a mob as unrepresentative of Boston. That was a common stance for Boston politicians; the year before, Loyalist printer John Mein had complained about their “usual sayings” that any violence “was done by Boys & Negroes, or by Nobody.” The blame never fell just on blacks—those men were always grouped with boys and/or sailors.

Thus, while rightly noting how Adams played on the prejudice against men of color like Attucks, Peterson’s recounting of the Massacre trips into replicating the similar prejudice against teenagers.