The Massacre
In the snowy winter of 1770, many residents of Boston harbored deep resentment against the presence of British military in their city. Two regiments of regulars had been quartered in Boston since September of 1768, when they had landed in response to a call by the Governor to restore order and respect for British law. Trouble had arisen earlier that summer when Boston importers refused to pay required custom duties. Some Bostonians disliked soldiers because they competed for jobs, often willing to take part-time work during their off-duty hours for lower wages. Seamen saw the soldiers as enforcers of the detested impressment laws, which authorized persons to be seized and forced to serve in the British navy.
Clashes between soldiers and civilians were on the rise in early March. On March 2, a fist fight broke about between soldiers and employees of John Gray's Ropewalk after one of the employees insulted a soldier. A cable-making employee reportedly asked a passing soldier, "Do you want work?" When the soldier replied that he did, the employee told the soldier, "Wee then, go and clean my shithouse." The angry soldier returned later with about a dozen fellow soldiers, and the fight ensued.
The tragedy of March 5 began with a simple dispute over whether a British officer had paid a bill to a local wig-maker. The officer was walking down King Street when Edward Garrick, the wig-maker's apprentice, called out, "There goes the fellow who hath not paid my master for dressing his hair." The officer with the new haircut, Captain John Goldfinch, passed on without acknowledging Garrick. But Garrick persisted, telling three passers-by that Goldfinch owed him money. A lone sentry named Hugh White overheard Garrick's remarks. White told the apprentice, "He is a gentleman, and if he owes you anything he will pay for it." Garrick's answer--that there were no gentlemen left in the regiment--caused White to leave his post and confront Garrick. After a brief, heated exchange of words, the sentry struck Garrick with his musket, knocking him down.
Soon a small crowd, attracted by the ruckus between White and Garrick, gathered around the lone guard and began taunting him. "Bloody lobster back! Lousy rascal! Lobster son of a bitch!" they yelled. The crowd grew to about fifty. Some in the mob of mostly young men threw pieces of ice at White, and he grew fearful. As the crowd continued to increase in size and hostility, White retreated from his sentry box to the Custom House steps, loaded his gun, and began to wave it about. White knocked on the door and banged the butt of his gun against the steps. Desperate, White yelled, "Turn out, Main Guard!"
Meanwhile, a few blocks north, another confrontation between civilians and Redcoats broke out. Under a barrage of snowballs, a group of soldiers was hustled into its barracks. A third mob, this one about two hundred strong and carrying clubs, gathered in Dock Square. A tall man with a white wig and a red coat did his best to rile up the crowd. Trouble seemed to be erupting all over the city. "Let's away to the Main Guard!" someone shouted, and the crowd began streaming down an alley toward King Street. Someone pulled the fire bell rope at the Brick Meeting House, bringing dozens of more residents out into the restless streets.
In front of the Main Guard, officer for the day, Captain Thomas Preston, paced back in front for nearly thirty minutes, worrying about what to do. If he did nothing, he thought, White might be killed by the mob. But trying to rescue White carried its own risks, as the soldiers would be vastly outnumbered by the frightening mob. Moreover, Preston knew well that Province law forbid the military from firing on civilians without the order of a magistrate. Finally, Preston made his decision. "Turn out, damn your bloods, turn out!" he barked at his men.
Preston and seven other men, lined up in columns of twos, began moving briskly across King Street with empty muskets and fixed bayonets. They pushed on through the thick crowd near the Custom House. Managing to make it to the beleaguered Private White, Preston ordered the sentry to fall in. Preston tried to march the men back to the Main Guard, but the mob began pressing in. Hemmed in, the soldiers lined up--about a body length apart--in a sort of semi-circle facing the crowd that had grown to over three hundred. Many in the crowd threw missiles of various sorts--chunks of coal, snowballs, oyster shells, sticks--at the soldiers. Preston shouted for them to disperse. A large club-wielding man named Crispus Attucks--a forty-seven-year-old mullato--moved forward, grabbed one of the soldier's (Hugh Montgomery's) bayonets, and knocked him to the ground. Montgomery rose, shouting "Damn you, fire!" and unloading his musket in the direction of the crowd. Soon after --estimates varied from six seconds to two minutes--Montgomery shouted "Fire!", the other soldiers also began firing. A blast from the gun of Matthew Killroy hit Samuel Gray as he stood with his hands in his pockets, blowing a hole in his head "as big as a hand." From another gun, two bullets hit Crispus Attucks in the chest. As the mob moved toward the soldiers, more guns fired. Five civilians lay dying in the streets; another half dozen lay injured. The soldiers loaded their weapons and prepared to fire again when Captain Preston (according to his own statement) yelled, "Stop firing! Do not fire!"
An Account of the Boston Massacre of 1770 and Subsequent Trials, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/bostonmassacre/bostonaccount.html, 12/04/02