Charles Bahne on the Scene of the Massacre

As we approach the anniversary of the Boston Massacre on 5 March, Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, kindly shared this essay analyzing what may be our earliest visual source on the question: What did the Boston Massacre look like?

Besides the depositions and testimony given by eyewitnesses to the Boston Massacre, we have two contemporary pictorial depictions of the incident. Better known of the two is the copperplate print of “The Bloody Massacre”, “Engrav’d Printed & Sold by Paul Revere, Boston.” As discussed here, Revere’s print of the Massacre was copied—some say plagiarized—from an almost identical image by Henry Pelham.

The Revere/Pelham print is an accurate portrayal of the setting for the Massacre — the buildings, the starry night with its crescent moon, the overall streetscape. But its depiction of the events is far less accurate; issued as part of the radicals’ propaganda efforts, it contains some deliberate distortions. And to compress the entire action into one image, the perspective was foreshortened, placing the victims in much closer proximity than they really were.

For a more accurate depiction, we look to the above image, also attributed to Paul Revere, but with less certainty, since it’s unsigned. (Mellen Chamberlain, who gave this document to the Boston Public Library, said that the handwriting matched Revere’s.) Unlike the more famous print, which was fairly widely distributed, this image existed only in manuscript and wasn’t circulated publicly until over a century later.

We’re looking at a plan or map of the action that evening, drawn from an overhead perspective. North is at right, west at top. In the upper center the Town House (Old State House) is prominently marked. Rows of buildings line either side of King Street (State Street), with other streets branching off to right and left.

But while this plan is a more accurate portrayal of the Massacre events, it also has its limitations. Four bodies lie in the street, some drawn in intricate detail, along with six circles, which apparently show the injured townsfolk. That makes a total of ten victims, but eleven people were actually shot—five dead and six wounded.

At extreme upper right is a seventh circle, unlabeled by the artist and unnoticed by any earlier commentator. Could this be the eleventh victim, or is it something else entirely, being so remote from the rest of the action?

All four bodies, and five of the circles for the wounded, are labeled with letters. Two letters clearly match the names of the slain: A for Attucks and G for Gray. But the other two bodies are marked C and G, only a partial match with the other martyrs, Caldwell, Carr, and Maverick. The circles are labeled with three Ps and two Ms; the six wounded citizens were Payne, Patterson, Parker, Monk, Clark, and Green.

Some discrepancy may have been caused by the belated deaths of Patrick Carr and Samuel Maverick. Was one of them considered wounded, rather than killed, when the plan was drawn?

Still, there are just nine letters in this plan. With eleven known victims, we’re missing two Cs; while a G and an M appear to have been switched between the injured (Green) and the deceased (Maverick).

At lower right, in front of the Custom House, stands a curved line of seven soldiers—not the eight who were actually there. Some historians have theorized, partly on the basis of this plan, that one of the regulars may have stood behind the others, not in line with his colleagues.

Unfortunately, the meaning of the letters, numbers, and circles must remain a matter of speculation. If a key to the plan was created, it’s been lost. Some say that a key was written on the back of the paper, which has since been glued to a board, permanently obscuring whatever it may once have said.

In their recent books about the Massacre, Neil York and Richard Archer both attempt to match the bodies and circles with the names of the fallen citizens—and they disagree. (Neil York consulted with me on this, and cites me in his book.)

The bottom line is that we know with some certainty where Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray fell, next to the soldiers, and where Edward Payne was hit, standing on his doorstep at lower left. James Caldwell is one of the other bodies shown on the plan, probably the prominent one in the middle of the intersection. As for the other victims, we can only guess who fell where.

TOMORROW: How the scene looks today.

Stones in My Passway

Earlier this month, the Boston Globe reported that the cobblestone circle set out to mark the site of the Boston Massacre (shown here in a Globe file photo) had been removed for roadwork and eventual replacement. Boston 1775 friend Charles Bahne wrote into the paper with a historic perspective, and has graciously offered his full letter for posting here.

As a historian and tour guide, I regularly point out the circle of stones marking the Boston Massacre site in front of the Old State House. I was shocked to see the stones missing a few days ago, and I thank the Globe for printing an explanation.

This will not be the first time that subway construction has required the stones’ relocation. They were originally placed in the street pavement in 1887 near the corner of State and Exchange Streets, much closer to the present site of 60 State Street. (Exchange Street is now gone, but it roughly corresponded with the southbound lanes of Congress Street.)

In 1904 they were removed to allow construction of the subway to East Boston, and replaced in a new site right in the middle of the intersection, near where James Caldwell had died.

Again in the 1960s, when urban renewal caused reconfiguration of the streets, the circle of stones was moved to its most recent site, apparently chosen simply because that’s where the city wanted to place a traffic island.

All this means that the circle of stones no longer represents the spot “where Crispus Attucks fell.” To stand on that site, you'd have to go back to the 1887 location of the stones, and you’d probably get hit by a truck as soon as the traffic signal changed.

I’ve long marveled at how research located the Massacre exactly where city planners saw the need for a traffic island. Now I understand how the process of historic revision continually updates the accuracy of that siting, reflecting the changing present’s priorities and interests.

Boston 1775 Visits the Ngram Viewer

Last month brought a new time sink from Google Books, the Ngram Viewer, which searches the entire database for requested phrases. As an example, LibraryThing’s Jeremy Dibbell mentioned how @cliotropic had asked to compare terms for trousers (including the modern “jeans” and “pants”). I pushed that backwards, asking for a comparison of “breeches” (“britches,” the phonic spelling, produced negligible results), “pantaloons”, “trowsers” (the old spelling), “trousers”, and “pants.” Here’s the result.

The words “breeches” and “pants” have additional, non-sartorial meanings, of course. Nonetheless, it’s clear how the first word/garment became much less popular between 1780 and 1980, and the second much more. “Trowsers” overtook “pantaloons” and “pants” in the 1810s, and bowed to “trousers” in the 1830s.

However, I also found some glitches in the Ngram Viewer database. Its results are only as good as the input data. Here’s a comparison of the phrases “Boston Tea Party” and “destruction of the tea.” That shows some examples of the former phrase from before 1820, but clicking into the data reveals that those are simply volumes with the wrong publication date applied. With numbers so small, a few errors can really shift the lines. Still, we can see how the “Boston Tea Party” label overtook the older “destruction of the tea” around 1890, and eclipsed it since.

Other quirks:

• The program doesn’t care for hyphens, periods, or other punctuation marks. Apostrophes have to be the straight up and down kind, as in this look at “Bunker Hill” replacing “Bunker’s Hill.”
• It’s case-specific, so “Sons of Liberty” is different from “sons of liberty”.
• For books published in the 1700s, try putting an “f” where the “long s” should be: “Bofton” shows up more than “Boston.” Some Google Books scans have been adjusted for that typographical shift, and others haven’t.

All those grains of salt applied, Ngram Viewer is still a compulsive delight.

Who got the most press, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams? (Of course, there might be more than one John Adams.)

When did Americans start writing about “Sally Hemings”? (But note: That blip of early mentions is mostly misdated material. I can’t figure out a way to see examples of people writing about her without using her full name.)

Look how “von Steuben” overtook “de Steuben” (the general’s own usage) in the twentieth century.

How famous did Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, become in the early 1800s, relative to other scientists?

Are people learning how to spell the name of young Christopher Seider?

See how “lobster back” starts to appear in significant numbers after 1820, and “lobsterback” at the time of the Centennial.

Or headgear. “Mob cap” starts its rise in 1800, “tricorn hat” in 1880.

In the late 1900s the name of Crispus Attucks starts to appear far more often than the (more common) names of the other victims of the Boston Massacre.

The new term “vaccination” overtook “inoculation” twice, and “smallpox” replaced “small pox.”

Of the spellings “huzzah”, “hurray”, “huzzay”, “hooray”, “hoorah”, or “hurrah,” the last has dominated for a long time. Remove it to see how the Z spellings used to be more popular.

Where do we see the euphemisms “appeal to heaven” and “recourse to arms”?

The phrases “liberty tree”, “liberty pole”, and “liberty cap”? (Once again, the results for the early end of the timeline look suspect to me. I’ve learned to distrust those symmetric plateaus.)

How Henry W. Longfellow (after 1860) and Esther Forbes (after 1940) made Paul Revere a household name, with John Hancock and Henry Knox for comparison.

The Problem with “Mark Codman”

Yesterday’s Boston Globe included an article by Francie Latour rounding up several books and a movie issued over the past decade about slavery in New England. It offers a good reading list on the subject, including Elisa Lemire’s Black Walden (and avoiding one unreliable recent title).

The article’s subhead says, “More than we like to think, the North was built on slavery”; a bunch of right-wing commenters confirmed that by showing that they’d prefer not to see such essays at all.

I have my own objection to how the article begins:

In the year 1755, a black slave named Mark Codman plotted to kill his abusive master.

The name “Mark Codman” pulled me up short because that’s not how the man was referred to in his lifetime.

John Codman called his slave “Mark,” with no surname. Massachusetts society and legal practices followed suit. Mark was tried, convicted, and executed under that single name. Referring to blacks by only a given name was undoubtedly a way to signal their lesser status in colonial society. But tacking on their owners’ surnames now strikes me as, in its small way, both a distortion of that history and another imposition on those individuals.

In many cases, we know that people who had been enslaved adopted the surnames of their former masters: Tony Vassall of Cambridge, Prince Estabrook of Lexington, Phillis Wheatley of Boston until her marriage to John Peters, and so on. But in other cases, enslaved people used surnames that differed from their owners’ or former owners’.

Crispus Attucks’s last name hints at a connection to the Natick Indians. Peter Salem also went by the name Salem Middlesex; he apparently took surnames from locations rather than from his one-time owners, Jeremiah Belknap and Lawson Buckminster.

In Framingham in 1721, two African-born slaves of the Rev. John Swift married. They are listed in church records as Nero Benson and Dido Dingo, the latter sounding more like an African name than an English one. Subsequent legal records usually refer to this couple by their first names only, but the surname “Benson” got passed down to their free descendants. (In Maryland later, Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Bailey, and never knew where his original surname came from—clearly not his or his mother’s owner. William S. McFeely’s biography suggests it might be a form of “Belali,” a common African name.)

Sally Hemings’s surname came from the ship’s captain who owned one of her ancestors and fathered another. The Hemings family retained that surname for generations despite owners like Thomas Jefferson usually referring to them only by given names. (Even today, one can often detect writers who want to dismiss Sally Hemings and her descendants’ link to Jefferson by how they refer to her only as “Sally,” or spell the name “Hemmings” as a white Jefferson biographer did.)

Being able to control their own names appears to have been significant for African-Americans. Gary Nash showed in a study of Philadelphia that emancipated black families quickly dropped the classical, geographic, and African day-names that colonial slave-owners liked—no more Pompey, Bristol, or Cuffee. Free blacks instead favored Biblical and common English names, like most of their neighbors.

Given those patterns, I always look for the name that an enslaved or formerly enslaved person appears to have freely chosen and preferred, and to try to use it in the same style as I would for white contemporaries: Attucks, Wheatley, Hemings, &c. (Olaudah Equiano presents a difficult case.) But when I can’t find a surname, I don’t add an owner’s surname because I’ve seen enough examples of individuals choosing otherwise. And recognizing people as individuals is what naming is all about.

I can therefore see the motive to give Mark a surname like most of his Massachusetts contemporaries. But he suffered at the hands of John Codman, and killed the man. Would he really want to be retroactively named “Mark Codman”? Enslavement constricted Mark’s life and treated him as less than fully human; the fact that he was called only “Mark” is a significant reflection of that history.

Local and Material History at the Concord Museum

The Concord Museum is celebrating the 375th anniversary of the town with an exhibit called “into your hands…,” featuring objects passed down in Concord families and entrusted to the museum. Among the items:

• The Bloody Massacre, the famed Revere engraving that was a milestone in America’s road to independence, owned by Emerson Cogswell, a hatmaker, in 1775 Concord. A gift to the Museum in 2002 by Cogswell’s great, great, great-granddaughter.
• Pvt. Abner Hosmer’s powderhorn, worn at the fight at the North Bridge, April 19, 1775, where the 21-year-old Acton native was killed. A gift to the Museum in 1936.
• An 18th-century high chest made in Concord and descended in the Wheeler Family of Concord. A gift to the Museum from the family of Wilfrid and Emily Wheeler in 1996.

This exhibit will be up through 19 Sept 2010.

My notes indicate that the Concord Museum’s copy of Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre print shows the same wounds as on the copy once owned by the New England Merchants National Bank and made into a poster for my office. (Okay, that might not have been the poster’s original purpose.) A man lying at the lower center bleeds from the head, and a man in the crowd at the left bleeds from two wounds in the chest.

The Massacre print now at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington is similar as well. In both that print and the poster, the figure bleeding from his chest looks slightly darker-skinned than the rest. Back here I wondered if he was supposed to represent Crispus Attucks.

The wounds and flesh tones are significant because they weren’t part of the underlying engraving. Revere and helpers (artistic partner Christian Remick, apprentices, kids?) painted the blood and skin by hand. So if the same wounds were painted onto most of the original prints, and that one face was usually given a light brown wash, then the team was trying to depict the figures in a very particular way. My poster says there are nine prints surviving from the first run. Someone test this hypothesis for me!

“Among the mob near the town-house in Boston”

Tonight there will be a reenactment of the Boston Massacre, taking place on the actual site of the shooting on 5 Mar 1770. As preparation, here’s an account of that evening from Edward Hill.

I was among the mob near the town-house in Boston, on Monday the 5th of March instant [i.e., this year], about nine o’clock at night, when the bells were set a ringing by order of the towns men (as I do believe) in order to bring the people together. I saw some of them armed with sticks, and heard some of them say they would go down to the custom-house, where there was a centry placed, and they would take him off his place.

Hearing this, I went to the main-guard, and acquainted the soldiers with what I heard. I heard the serjeant of the guard order a party of men to conduct the officer of the guard to his post; I staid thereabout till I saw Capt. [Thomas] Preston and another officer join the guard; then I saw Capt. Preston with a party of men go towards the custom-house; then, as I went towards the post-office, I heard the report of two muskets, fired as if from the custom-house; upon this I returned and went towards the custom-house with a number of towns-men;

while I was one the way thither, I heard the report of three or four muskets more; when I went down, I saw the people carrying off for dead one or two men; and then I saw a man lying on his back with a gore of blood by him, who, as I afterwards learned, was a Mulatto, upon which I heard the towns-people cry out to the soldiers who stood at the custom-house, “Fire, damn you, we defy you to fire;” whereon one of the soldiers of that party, thus provoked, turned out of the ranks a little, took up his musket, and was going to fire, when Capt. Preston took him by the arm and hindered him from firing.

It was after the firing beforementioned was over, according to the best of my knowledge, that I heard the drum beating to arms. I saw several officers of the 14th regiment running towards their barracks, and some of the towns-people running after them, crying, “Knock them down, sons of bitches.”

As I was running after some of these officers; I had in my hand a small stick, which somebody pursuing the officers asked me to let him have. I refused, saying, I wanted it myself. He took hold of the stick, and endeavoured in vain to take it from me; a crowd of people coming up, and walking faster than I did, threw me down.

As I got up again, some of them asked, “Who son of a bitch was that?” and one of them made a thrust at me with a blade, which I took to be a cut and thrust sword, and by the thrust cut through my jacket on the left breast about six inches; then I run down to the barracks of the 14th regiment, where I remained all night.

This deposition was taken down on 15 Mar 1770 by justice James Murray, a fervent supporter of the royal government. Customs Commissioner John Robinson, who had laid low since his coffee-house brawl with James Otis, Jr., carried it to London, and it was published with others in a pamphlet titled A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston in New England.

Capt. Preston’s defense team, which consisted of John Adams, Robert Auchmuty, and Josiah Quincy, Jr., called Hill as their second defense witness. The notes on his testimony add a few details to this account. Hill was “in a house by Mr. Deblois” before going out. The other officer at the main guard with Preston was “Mr. Bassett”—twenty-year-old Lt. James Bassett, officer of the guard that night. And the soldier whom Preston stopped from shooting had “Attempted to fire at a Boy.” Hill did not clarify exactly why he had been running after army officers with a stick in his hand.

Hill’s deposition identified him as “late servant to Mr. George Spooner, merchant, of Boston.” Usually Bostonians used “servant” to mean “slave,” but that meaning doesn’t seem to fit this context. As for Spooner, he had attended the Sons of Liberty dinner in Dorchester in August 1769, but five years later he was a Loyalist and left town with the British military.

(Photo of the Old State House at night by Wally Gobetz, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

New in the Massachusetts Historical Review

The 2009 issue of the Massachusetts Historical Review, published by the Massachusetts Historical Society (but not yet listed on the website), contains three hefty articles related to the Revolution and its local heritage. We can tell they uphold the highest standards of scholarship because all three titles include quotation marks.

First, J. Patrick Mullins examines the political fight between the Boston’s most outspoken minister of the early 1760s and the new royal governor in “‘A Kind of War, Tho’ Hitherto an Un-Bloody One’: Jonathan Mayhew, Francis Bernard and the Indian Affair.” Compared to the huge political battles that would follow, those disputes seem as petty and hard to understand as a public argument over, oh, the President telling schoolchildren to study hard. But already we can see the sides forming.

Next, Neil Longley York (he of the Johnny Tremain study) offers “Rival Truths, Political Accommodations, and the Boston ‘Massacre’.” Legal trials are usually seen as attempts to settle the truth, York says, but in 1770 each of the two political camps interpreted the trials that followed the Massacre in its own way, cementing differences instead of erasing them.

Finally, Stephen Kantrowitz has contributed “A Place for ‘Colored Patriots’: Crispus Attucks among the Abolitionists, 1842-1863.” How did the movement to end slavery and provide civil rights take inspiration from and use the memory of the one Massacre victim people can still name today?

There are other articles as well, plus reviews of such books as Abolitionists Remember, by Julie Roy Jeffrey. She’s speaking at the “Abolitionism in Black & White” symposium, where I am right now. The Review is available at the Massachusetts Historical Society and finer local libraries.

ADDENDUM: And now there’s a cover image, and a link for purchases!

The Confusion over Henry Pelham’s Massacre Image

During Boston Massacre week, my posting about how Henry Pelham complained that Paul Revere had copied his image of the shooting on King Street prompted some questions from Boston 1775 visitors.

As the links back there show, Pelham’s print looks very much like Revere’s—which is only natural, since Revere appears to have copied it. The silversmith altered only a few details, such as adding the label “Butcher’s Hall” to the Customs House on the right.

Pelham’s can be quickly distinguished from Revere’s by the title “The Fruits of Arbitrary Power” at top and a skull and crossbones at bottom left. Here’s a colored version from Bryn Mawr.

Unfortunately, a few years back, the website for the P.B.S. television show Africans in America offered a lesson plan with this page identifying the image above as Pelham’s print of the Massacre. That image isn’t even in the same medium as the 1770 prints. As the quality of line and coloring shows, it’s a lithograph rather than a painted copperplate engraving.

That lithograph was created around 1856 by John Henry Bufford, working from a painting by William L. Champney. I’ve also seen a grayscale version reproduced in books. And now it’s appeared on a lot of educational websites as Pelham’s picture.

Obviously, there are some resemblances. Champney based his composition on the Pelham/Revere prints: the Old State House and the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy’s meeting-house are again in the background, and the soldiers on the right all fire in a line. However, Champney’s work reflects the political issues of 1856 rather than 1770. He put Crispus Attucks, with clearly African features, at the center of the composition. This print was part of the Abolitionist movement’s recovery of Attucks as a symbol of black patriotism. In contrast, Pelham and Revere buried Attucks in the otherwise-white crowd, if they showed him at all.

The Pelham/Revere print from 1770 and the Champney/Bufford lithograph from 1856 do lend themselves to a compare-and-contrast lesson on visual images as historic documents and/or political propaganda. But it helps to get the names and dates right.

And there’s more digital confusion out there. Several websites attribute the Champney/Bufford image to James Well Champney (1843-1903), a more famous American landscape painter—who was only sixteen when that picture was published. Others misspell the lithographer’s name as “Pufford.” (I did that myself in an early draft of this posting.)

And this site puts the label “Pelham Picture” on an even later painting of the Massacre. Okay, that site’s just an elementary-school project. But still, the real lesson here is not to believe everything you see on the internet without checking other reliable sites.

On the Trail of Crispus Attucks

This installment of CSI: Colonial Boston starts with Boston coroner Robert Pierpont summoning a jury on 6 Mar 1770 to investigate the death of a tall man shot by soldiers on King Street. His name, according to their inquest report and that day’s newspapers, was Michael Johnson.

By the following Monday, however, the same man was being identified as Crispus Attucks, and that’s how he’s come down to us in the historical records.

Readex, the company that publishes the Archive of Americana online database that I love to use, has just published my online article “On the Trail of Crispus Attucks: Investigating a Victim of the Boston Massacre.” It describes how students might use the colonial publications and newspaper stories reproduced in that database to learn more about Johnson/Attucks.

I access the Archive of Americana through the Boston Public Library, as can anyone with a card for that system (which any resident of Massachusetts can apply for). Many universities libraries also subscribe. It’s a wonderful way to spend far more time than you expect.

Attucks and the A.P. Exam

Today Boston 1775 salutes all the young scholars taking this year’s Advanced Placement U.S. History exam—particularly those at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science in Boston. Last month I had the honor of speaking to Matthew Kazlauskas’s A.P. history classes there.

I talked about what we know—and don’t know—about Crispus Attucks, based on various primary sources and recollections. I seized the opportunity to share this image; it’s a detail from Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, as reproduced on the poster that hangs on my office wall (purchased from the Old State House gift shop).

The black lines of an engraving are reproduced with a copperplate, but Revere or his artistic partner Christian Remick had to add all the solid blacks and colors by hand. That means every colored copy of this engraving is different. I therefore can’t say that this copy is typical.

Nevertheless, I like to raise the question of whether it shows Attucks, who was usually labeled as a “mulatto” (and once as an “Indian”). This image shows a man with two symmetrical wounds in the chest—Attucks’s wounds, as detailed in an autopsy. He has dark black hair and skin that looks slightly darker than that of surrounding figures. Did Revere and Remick actually depict Attucks as a person of color? Or is that just how the paper has aged?

At least one student smartly pointed out that in this engraving the man with the two chest wounds is the victim farthest from the soldiers’ guns. Eyewitness testimony and an earlier image by Revere tell us that Attucks was struck down at the front of the crowd. So perhaps that figure wasn’t meant to represent Attucks. Or perhaps the artists moved him back, acknowledging his presence but not making him so prominent.

Of course, Revere and Remick could have used their paints to produce different versions of the scene for different customers, or however they chose. As with so many other historical questions, we’re unlikely to find any definite answers, but half the fun is in thinking through the questions.

Recovering the Memory of Crispus Attucks

Yesterday I quoted the inaccurate account of the Boston Massacre that William Tudor, Jr., published in 1823. The following year, a Boston printer advertised a new edition of the transcript of the soldiers’ trial, which was more detailed and accurate, though still incomplete. This had been printed in 1771 and again in 1807, but Tudor had apparently not consulted it.

Every so often ante-bellum printers would reprint other documents related to the Massacre which named its victims. Some newspapers ran John Hancock’s commemorative oration in 1813, 1818, and 1820. Others in 1837 and 1840 reprinted the first reports on the shootings from the New London Gazette. Boston’s official report on the event, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre..., reappeared for the first time in 1849.

However, it looks like a major impetus for recovering and publicizing the details of the Boston Massacre was the Abolitionist movement. Bostonians remembered, however dimly, that one of the shooting victims had some African ancestry. A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Party, published in 1834, quoted nonagenarian George R. T. Hewes identifying one of the dead men as “Attuck, a molatto.”

In 1835, Hewes sat down for more interviews with a Boston attorney and journalist named Benjamin Bussey Thatcher. He was an Abolitionist who advocated colonizing Liberia with newly free black Americans. The year before he had published a Memoir of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave, the first biography of that poet. Thatcher was also interested in Native Americans, writing about their traditions.

The book Thatcher wrote based on the recollections of Hewes and other old men, Traits of the Tea-Party, mentioned Attucks as a mulatto and, probably less accurately, a “Nantucket Indian.” That may have been enough to awaken interest in the Massacre among Thatcher’s fellow Abolitionists.

However, writers had few sources to rely on, especially outside Boston. As a result, it took a while for them to identify Attucks properly. The 21 Aug 1848 issue of the Abolitionist newspaper The North Star, published in Rochester, printed the address of H. W. Johnson at the “First of August Celebration.” (Abolitionists celebrated the date that slavery was ended in the British Empire.) Speaking of a person fleeing slavery, Johnson said:

he may go to Faneuil Hall, that old cradle of liberty, that once rocked with the loud shouts of freedom and equal rights, where once was heard the voice of Adams and Hancock, and their compatriots of revolutionary times—that sacred spot from within whose walls was borne away the mangled form of that brave black man, Benjamin Attucks, from whose veins flowed the first drop of blood that mingled with American soil, in defence of American liberty—even there he finds no protection.

On 5 Feb 1852, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, also published in Rochester, reported:

On the 5th of March, 1851, a petition was presented to the Massachusetts Legislature; asking an appropriation of $1,500 for erecting a monument to the memory of Christopher Attucks, the first martyr in the Boston massacre of 5th March, 1770.

This petition was denied, but not on the grounds that the man was really named Crispus.

Probably the most prominent reference to Attucks by the wrong name came in the Rev. Theodore Parker’s 12 Apr 1852 address “The Boston Kidnapping,” about the arrest and rendition of a man fleeing slavery:

The chief kidnappers surround Mr. Simms with a troop of policemen, armed with naked words; that troop was attended by a larger crew of some two hundred policemen, armed with clubs.

They conducted him, weeping as he went, toward the water-side; they passed under the eaves of the old State House, which had rocked with the eloquence of James Otis, and shaken beneath the manly tread of both the Adamses, whom the cannon at the door could not terrify, and whose steps awakened the nation.

They took him on the spot where, eighty-one years before, the ground had drunk in the African blood of Christopher Attucks, shed by white men on the fifth of March; brother’s blood which did not cry in vain.

They took him by the spot where the citizens of Massachusetts—some of their descendants were again at the place—scattered the taxed tea of Great Britain to the waters and the winds...

Although Johnson, Parker, and other Abolitionists didn’t have all the facts about Crispus Attucks, they knew that invoking him tied their cause to the hallowed fight for American independence.

What We Know About Crispus Attucks

Aside from legal documents and newspaper reports surrounding the Boston Massacre, the only information we have about Crispus Attucks from the eighteenth century is an advertisement that ran in the Boston Gazette on 2 Oct 1750.

It reads:

RAN-away from his Master William Brown of Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees nearer together than common; had on a light colour’d Bearskin Coat, plain brown Fustian Jacket, or brown all-Wool one, new Buckskin Breeches, blue Yarn Stockings, and a check’d woollen Shirt.

Whoever shall take up said Run-away, and convey him to his abovesaid Master, shall have ten Pounds, old Tenor Reward, and all necessary Charges paid. And all Masters of Vessels and others, are hereby caution’d against concealing or carrying off said Servant on Penalty of the Law. Boston, October 2, 1750.

On 13 and 20 November, Brown bought space in the Gazette again, shortening the ad by four lines. He dropped the pro forma warning to sea captions, as well as a few more words here and there. He added that Crispas was “well set.”

Of course, in the middle of the 1700s the Boston newspaper ran many notices for runaway slaves, apprentices, and indentured servants. Why do most historians accept that this ad referred to Crispus Attucks, killed on 5 Mar 1770? Because that dead man was also said to be an unusually tall, husky “mulatto” from Framingham, and Crispas/Crispus was not a common name. The odds that two men met that description seems small. Of course, we also want more information about Attucks.

Researchers spotted this ad in the mid-1800s, part of a burst of new interest in Attucks as the nation fought over rights for African-Americans. As writers noted right away, Brown’s estimate of his enslaved worker’s age meant that Attucks was in his mid-forties when he was killed, and not a rowdy young man.

The Mysteries of Crispus Attucks

As we look ahead to this year’s anniversary and reenactment of the Boston Massacre (announcements to come), today’s Boston Globe ran an article headlined “Two towns claim Crispus Attucks.” Its main point is how very little we know about Crispus Attucks, the best known victim of the Massacre. We can’t even be sure whether he lived in what is now Framingham or Natick.

In fact, I think we know even less than the article states. Michele Morgan Bolton reported:

historians continue to debate the historic role of this son of an African slave father and Natick Praying Indian mother in the bloody skirmish with the British.

I don’t believe we have any solid evidence about Attucks’s parents. Because he was apparently enslaved as a young man, he was probably born into slavery. That would mean that his mother was enslaved, but his father may have been free. If young Crispus inherited the surname Attucks from his father, the man was likely a Natick Indian—the word means “little deer” in the native language. However, some enslaved children with surnames inherited them from their mothers, as in the case of Sally Hemings’s children.

It seems significant that this description of Attucks’s parents—African father, Native Christian mother—matches what’s in Dharathula Millender’s biography of Crispus Attucks. Many eager readers have taken that book as genealogically reliable, but it’s fictionalized biography for young readers.

The article continues:

A 1972 “Negro History Bulletin” stated that Attucks was believed to have been a slave in Framingham who lived with his family in a cellar hole on what is now Route 9, near Route 30.

This refers to Bill Belton’s article “The Indian Heritage of Crispus Attucks,” which in turn cites J. H. Temple’s 1887 History of Framingham. That book states:

Crispus Attucks...was a mulatto, born near the Framingham town line, a short distance to the eastward of the state Arsenal. The old cellar-hole where the Attucks family lived is still visible. He was probably a descendant of John Auttuck, an Indian, who was taken prisoner and executed at the same time with Capt. Tom, in June, 1676. Probably the family had intermarried with negroes who were slaves, and as the offspring of such marriages were held to be slaves, he inherited their condition, although it seems likely that the blood of three races coursed through his veins. He had been bought by Dea. William Brown of Framingham, as early as 1747.

Note the repeated use of “probably.” Temple felt Attucks was “probably” descended from John Auttuck. But can we assume his family used surnames the same way English colonists did, passing them down along male lines? Was Attucks a rare name in the community? (There were people in Framingham surnamed “Peterattucks” in the early 1700s.) Why assume Crispus was a direct descendant of John, except that both were recorded by the authorities?

As for Temple’s date of 1747, The Negro in the American Rebellion, published in Boston in 1867 by William Wells Brown (no relation to the Framingham deacon), also said that Brown owned Attucks in that year. But neither book offered documentation. We do have clear evidence that Brown claimed Attucks in 1750, when he placed an advertisement in the Boston Gazette reporting that his enslaved worker “Crispas” had freed himself.

The Globe article continues:

All accounts agree Attucks excelled as a cattle and horse trader and was a valued employee of William Brown, a grist-mill owner. But after attempts to buy his freedom failed, Attucks, at 27, is believed to have fled to sea in 1750. Some believe he sailed on a whaler off Nantucket. Or was it the China trade, by way of the Bahamas?

According to lore, Attucks reappeared just before the massacre, likely finding dock work as a rope maker. But trouble was already flaring between the British “lobster backs” and colonists, culminating in the deadly confrontation outside the Customs House on March 5, 1770, that kicked off the American Revolution.

Our only account of Attucks’s skill as a livestock trader comes from an unidentified descendant of William Brown whom Temple questioned in 1887. There’s no record of him trying to buy his freedom or working in Boston’s rope-making industry. The “China trade” didn’t exist until after the Revolution, when American merchants needed to find markets outside the British Empire. The term “lobster backs” appears to be an anachronism.

There is one indication that Attucks worked on a New Bedford whaling ship, but that account raises as many questions about the man as it answers. Traits of the Tea-Party (1835) credits a Boston barber named William Pierce with this information:

Attucks..., he says, was a Nantucket Indian, belonging on board a whale-ship of Mr. Folger’s, then in the harbor...

Pierce also told the author that he had never seen Attucks before the night of the Massacre, so he was recalling secondhand information. In 1770, Boston’s newspapers reported that Attucks was “lately belonging to New-Providence, and was here in order to go for North-Carolina”—nothing about Nantucket. So Pierce might have heard the wrong facts or become confused over sixty-five years.

American culture has come to see Crispus Attucks as a hero, martyr, and very important person. But he had to live his life in the shadows—as a slave, a runaway, and a hard-working sailor. Now we’re almost desperate for information about him, and grasp at almost any statement as if it were reliable. But we still know very little.

Comics and Crispus Attucks

I learned about an upcoming Revolutionary War comic book from Publishers Weekly today. It’s part of a push at Simon & Schuster’s Aladdin paperbacks imprint into comics, led by editors Ginee Seo and Liesa Abrams.

My hopes weren’t raised by the news that one wing of this advance will be “fictionalized” comics-style adaptations of the Childhood of Famous Americans series. I devoured those books when I was in third grade, but at the time I was living in Bakersfield, California, and there really was nothing else to do. All the volumes have about ten chapters on their subjects’ childhood, the various episodes prefiguring their adult careers, and a final chapter showing them doing whatever has made them famous. The series includes volumes about Abigail Adams, Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Benjamin Franklin, Molly Pitcher, &c.

Dharathula Millender’s biography of Crispus Attucks is a most interesting example from the C.O.F.A. series. Millender was a teacher and librarian active in the civil rights movement in Indiana, the home state of Bobbs-Merrill, which then published the series. In 1965 she convinced the firm to add a book about Attucks, one of the first (if not the first) about an African-American.

Like all the other authors contributing to the series at the time, Millender filled out the historical record with anecdotes, conversations, and other details that have no basis in documented history. She had to describe Attucks’s childhood, of course, so she described his mother and father and gave them the names of Prince and Nancy. Her final chapter cast Attucks as a political activist, orating from a platform before the Boston Massacre. (He was at the head of the crowd that approached the soldiers at the height of the confrontation, but there were no public speeches of that sort.)

Because there’s so little solid information about Attucks, and the C.O.F.A. books weren’t labeled as “fictionalized” until about a decade ago, some people have taken Millender’s story as factual. The Wikipedia entry on Attucks puts those details in a section headed “Folklore,” but NNDB.com treats them as accurate. The statements have even shown up in a recent Dublin Seminar volume. So far as I can find, those details go back no earlier than 1965.

Alongside the new C.O.F.A. books, Simon & Schuster plans another series of comics called Turning Points, “placing fictional kids in adventure stories set in the midst of important and well-researched historical events.” The idea for the series came from agent Bob Mecoy. [Peek inside.] “It’s historical fiction that places kids in the center of big events,” editor Liesa Abrams told Publishers Weekly.

That series will launch with Sons of Liberty, “a story introducing the reader to the major battles of the Revolutionary War”—which was a span of seven years, longer than most children’s stories cover. The writer of record is historian Marshall Poe, who wrote some interesting articles for The Atlantic but, as far as I can tell, nothing about the Revolutionary War. The art is by Leland Purvis. The book hits the shelves in June.

Scoundrel, Lobster, Bloody Back’d Dog!

A few weeks back, an email from a colleague made me consider what nasty phrases colonial Bostonians used for the British soldiers stationed in their midst in 1768-70 and 1774-76. And who better to record those insults than the men who were their targets? All the following phrases come from depositions that those soldiers dictated to sympathetic ministers or magistrates in mid-1770, as friends of the royal government built a case that the locals had brought the shootings known as the Boston Massacre upon themselves.

• Capt. Thomas Preston: “you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels.”
• Sgt. Thomas Smilie: “the most scurrilous & abusive Language..., Such as Blood back Rascal, Red Herring &ca. . . . ‘Damn You Bloody Back Rascals our Town is free, We will have no Soldiers in it but our Selves, which we think better Soldiers than You’.”
• Sgt. Thomas Light: “Bloody Back Thieving Dogs.”
• Sgt. Thomas Thornley: “Lobster scoundrels, what business had they there”
• Sgt. John Ridings: “Lobster and other abusive Names.”
• Sgt. John Norfolk: “one [John] Ruddock, who said he was a justice of the peace, and expressed the words, Go fetch my broad sword and Fusee and Damn the Scoundrels, let us drive the Bloody backs to their Quarters, Send for my Company of men, for I think we are men enough for them.”
  
• Sgt. William Henderson et al.: “there should be no Bloody backs permitted to walk on the Common.”
  
• Cpl. Henry Cullen: “Bloody back, Lobster, and Many other provoking Speeches.”
• Cpl. John Arnold: “go through the dirt like other Lobsters and Scoundrels.”
• Cpl. John Shelton et al.: “those bloody back’d rascals.”
• Cpl. Samuel Heale: “offered to shake hands, which Winship insultingly refused to do, saying he would not shake hands with any dirty Rascals like us for fear of Catching the Itch.”
  
• Pvt. Richard Ratcliff: “a Lobster Scoundrel Bloodyback dog.”
• Pvt. John Care: “Lobster and bloody back,...bloody back’d Dogs.”
• Pvt. Jacob Moor: “Damn’d Lobstering scoundrels,” “lobster and bloody back’d Scoundrel.”
• Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse: “Scoundrel, Lobster, bloody back’d dog.”
• Pvt. Cornelius Murphy: “the Common Appelations of Bloodybacks Red Herrings &c.”

To be sure, British soldiers had developed their own talents for invective. Their insults show up in testimony, depositions, and newspaper articles collected and published by the Whigs. But even American sources, given enough distance, acknowledged that locals often insulted the British soldiers. For example, Traits of the Tea-Party (published in Boston in 1835) says:

Mr. [William] Pierce...remembers [Crispus] Attucks...had a large stick in his hand, and that he saw him early in this tumult harassing and abusing the sentry, poking him rather severely with the stick, and calling him a “lobster”—a popular reproach—and swearing that he would have off one of his claws.

But the big mystery here is the son-of-a-bitch that didn’t bark. What insulting word for British soldiers would we expect to find on this list, given how closely it’s identified with this conflict in our history books, but is nowhere to be seen? (And I don’t mean “redcoats,” which isn’t really an insult.)

TOMORROW: A guest blogger explores that mystery.

Thumbnail image above from Jacqamoe’s nice Flickr set of historical reenactors in Britain.

The Autopsy of Crispus Attucks

CSI: Colonial Boston continues with the sworn report of Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., about his examination of the body of Crispus Attucks after the Boston Massacre:

I, Benjamin Church, Jun., of lawful age, testify and say, that being requested by Mr. Robert Pierpont, the Coroner, to assist in examining the body of Crispus Attucks, who was supposed to be murdered by the soldiers on Monday evening the 5th instant, 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; from the oblique direction of the wounds, I apprehend the gun must have been discharged from some elevation, and further the deponent saith not.

BENJ. CHURCH, Jun.

This deposition was dated 22 Mar 1770, and published in Boston’s official report on the shootings, titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. More than two weeks had passed since the event, and the British soldiers who had been on King Street on the 5th of March were already jailed and indicted.

Church’s autopsy report was significant because it pointed the finger at other suspects as well. The fact that the two musket balls “passed obliquely downward” through Attucks’s body implied that they had entered his chest on a slant. But how could that be if they had come from guns held by men of the same size (or possibly a bit smaller), standing no more than a few feet in front of Attucks on King Street?

To Boston’s Whigs, this autopsy helped to confirm an accusation that people employed by the Customs service had fired down on the crowd from the upper storey of their office behind the soldiers. “From some elevation,” as Church said. Four days after the doctor wrote out his deposition, a Suffolk County jury indicted four Customs employees for murder.

Eventually those suspects were all acquitted, and their main accuser convicted of perjury. So how did the musket balls travel “obliquely downward” through Attucks’s torso? One explanation I’ve seen connects this detail with some testimony that Attucks was leaning on a piece of firewood when he was shot. If he was somewhat crouched, and perhaps ducking after Pvt. Edward Montgomery’s opening shot, then one of the next shots could have sent two balls through his chest on a slant—but it was his chest that was oblique, not the trajectory of the balls.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 3

The published transcript of the trial of soldiers for the Boston Massacre, possibly the first ever attempted in America, doesn’t indicate when the questioning of witnesses switched from prosecution to defense. So I’m guessing at that point in blockmaker James Brewer’s testimony, based on when the questions double back to the beginning of his account and start reviewing the same points.

The soldiers’ legal team—Robert Auchmuty, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy, Jr.—were trying to make a case for self-defense. So they started by homing in on why Brewer had thought sentry Hugh White seemed scared before turning to what else he might have seen. Quincy, as junior member of the team, probably handled the questioning; Adams was taking detailed notes on Brewer’s remarks, which survive.

Q: How came you to to speak to the Sentry, and tell him not to be afraid?

B: Because he was swinging his gun in that manner.

Q: Did you come up Royal-exchange-lane?

B: Yes. I saw Doctor [Thomas] Young there, and several others coming up to know where the fire was; Doctor Young said it was not fire, but the soldiers had made a rumpus, but were gone to their barracks again. [This was the fight at Murray’s barracks.] Then said I let every man go to his own home.

Q: Did you see any thing thrown at the soldiers?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear any body call them names?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear any threatning speeches?

B: No; except that the people cryed fire!—fire!—the word fire was in every body’s mouth.

Q: Just before the firing, when [Pvt. Mathew] Killroy struck you, was there any thing thrown at the soldiers then?

B: I saw nothing.

Q: Was there a number of people betwixt you and the soldiers?

B: Not many.

Q: Did you see [merchant Richard] Palmes talking with Capt. [Thomas] Preston?

B: No; I saw the molatto fellow [Crispus Attucks] there, and saw him fall.

Q: Did you see a party of people like sailors, coming down from the Jackson’s corner, with sticks?

B: No, I saw none.

Q: Where did you first see the molatto?

B: He was just before me by the gutter.

Q: Did you see any people coming from Quaker-lane with sticks?

B: I saw several inhabitants coming through that lane, but I saw no sticks.

Q: Were there any coming up Royal Exchange lane?

B: Yes, numbers, but I saw no sticks.

Q: When you first saw the molatto, did you hear him say any thing to the soldiers, or strike at them?

B: No.

Q: Had he a stick or club?

B: I did not take notice.

Many other witnesses had testified and would testify to seeing civilians, including Crispus Attucks, carrying cordwood sticks. Even though Brewer recalled Attucks standing “just before me,” he recalled nothing of the sort. Many people testified that the crowd yelled insults at the soldiers (and vice versa). Several people said that others threw snowballs and harder objects at the soldiers. Brewer, however, had developed an Alberto Gonzales-like ability to not see or remember any bad behavior by his comrades.

COMING UP: The end of the questioning—and a loose thread.

The First Newspaper Reports on the Massacre

In colonial Boston, some newspapers published each Monday, and some each Thursday. Because the Boston Massacre occurred on a Monday evening, the first press reports appeared on Thursday the 8th—237 years ago today. The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter listed the casualties this way:

Mr. Samuel Gray, Ropemaker, killed on the Spot, the Ball entred his Head broke the Skull.

A Mollatto Man, named Johnson, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonging to New-Providence, and was here in order to go for North-Carolina, killed on the Spot, two Balls entering his Breast.

Mr. James Caldwell, Mate of Capt. Morton’s Vessel, killed on the Spot, two balls entering his Breast.

Mr. Samuel Maverick, a promising Youth of 17 Years of Age, Son of the Widow Maverick, and an Apprentice to Mr. Greenwood, Joiner, mortally wounded, a Ball went through his Belly, and came out at his Back: He died the next Morning.

A Lad named Christopher Monk, about 17 Years of Age, an Apprentice to Mr. Walker, Shipwright; Mortally wounded, a Ball entered his Side and came out of his Back; apprehended he will die.

A Lad named John Clark, about 17 Years of Age, whose Parents live at Medford, and an Apprentice to Capt. Samuel Howard of this Town; Mortally wounded, a Ball entered just above his Groin and came out at his Hip, on the opposite side, apprehended he will die.

Mr. Edward Payne, of this Town, Merchant, standing at his Entry Door, received a Ball in his Arm, and shattered some of the Bones.

Mr. John Green, Taylor, coming up Leverett’s Lane, received a Ball just under his Hip, and lodged in the under Part of his Thigh, which was extracted.

Mr. Robert Patterson, a Seafaring Man, who was the Person that had his Trowsers shot thro’ in [Ebenezer] Richardson’s affair, wounded; a Ball went thro’ his right Arm.

Mr. Patrick Cole, about 30 Years of Age, who work’d with Mr. Field Leather- Breeches-maker in Queen-Street, wounded, a Ball entered near his Hip and went out at his Side.

A Lad named David Parker, an Apprentice to Mr. Eddy the Wheelwright, wounded, a Ball entered his Thigh.

What seems off about this list? Well, for one thing, though people expected apprentices Christopher Monk and John Clark to die shortly, neither did. Monk remained disabled by his wound for several years before dying, so he’s not memorialized among the standard five Massacre victims.

The Boston Gazette, published the same day, ran a similar list, emphasizing the three wounded apprentices ahead the working-men. The Gazette also gave different names for two men. The first was Patrick Carr, an Irish-born laborer I’ll have more to say about soon. While the two apprentices survived, Carr turned out to have been mortally wounded.

The Gazette also reported the one name people today are most likely to connect to the Boston Massacre: Crispus Attucks. Apparently he was living in Boston under the alias “Michael Johnson,” the name on the coroner’s report on his death (now in the collections of the Old State House Museum). Both the News-Letter and the Boston Chronicle reported the mulatto sailor’s name as Johnson. But the Boston Gazette had the name that appeared on all the subsequent legal proceedings, the name that’s come down in history.

Oddly enough, however, the News-Letter and Gazette had the same description of the man’s history: born in Framingham, working as a sailor out of the Bahamas, in Boston between voyages. Both identified him as mulatto, and therefore didn’t grant him the honorific title of “Mr.” In the 1850s historians found a newspaper ad that implied Attucks had escaped from slavery in Framingham twenty years before, which would explain why he used an alias while back in his home province. But how Bostonians discovered the history of that dead man, and how details reached one newspaper before the others, is still a gnawing mystery.