United States History Student Edition

Tension in the Streets On March 5, 1770, violence erupted. A fight broke out between some Bostonians and soldiers. As British officers tried to calm the crowd, the colonists erupted in angry shouting. The furious townspeople surged forward. They began throwing sticks and stones at the soldiers. “Come on, you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire, if you dare,” someone in the crowd shouted. After one soldier was knocked down, the nervous redcoats did fire. They killed five

colonists. Among the dead was Crispus Attucks, a dockworker of African and Native American descent. One Bostonian cried: “Are the inhabitants to be knocked down in the streets? Are they to be murdered . . . ?” The colonists called the tragic event the Boston Massacre. Spreading the News Colonial leaders used the killings as propaganda —information designed to influence opinion. Samuel Adams put up posters that described the Boston Massacre as a slaughter of innocent

propaganda ideas or information intentionally spread to harm or help a cause; information used to influence opinion

This 1770 lithograph by colonist Paul Revere depicts the event known as the Boston Massacre. Crispus Attucks (inset) was the first colonist killed by the British in the Boston Massacre. This portrait of Attucks was drawn in the late 1800s. 118

PHOTOS: (b)Everett Historical/Shutterstock, (inset)Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo. TEXT: (l)Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent, Vol. 4. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1879. (r) Adams, John. “Adams’ Minutes of Defense Evidence, Continued. 30 November 1770.” Legal Papers of John Adams, volume 3, edited by L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (1965). Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, accessed via Massachusetts Historical Society at www.masshist.org.