The Boston Massacre

An Account of the Trial of the British Soldiers Who Participated in It

EDMUND PEARSON

ARLIAMENT, in 1761, looked upon the American colonists as men largely engaged in smuggling and other evasions of the revenue laws. Special treatment was needed to enable the King's officers to enforce the King's decrees. Out of this supposed need came the "writs of assistance", a species of general search warrant to empower revenue officers to enter any building at any time in search of smuggled goods.

A few of the extremists, among the prohibitionists, would like to exercise power of legal prying and meddling today. One of its difficulties was that it gave government agents the opportunity to wreak private vengeance. And from the quarrels beginning in that year, came the seven musket shots, nine years later, in 1770, that we call the Boston Massacre.

In Massachusetts, as elsewhere, the writs of assistance caused frequent conflicts between the people and the officers. Next, in 1765, came the Stamp Act,—a form of minor taxation, which annoyed the Americans because it was imposed by men whom they had never authorized to tax them: the British Parliament. There were riots in New York, Boston and other places, and in one of these riots the people of Boston were put very badly in the wrong by a drunken mob which sacked the house of an innocent official, Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. This action was promptly condemned by the decent citizens and reparation was made to the injured man, but that night's work gave British writers the excuse for years to come, for using the word Bostonian as if it were synonymous with what we now call gunman, desperado, and outlaw.

A YEAR or two later there were passed some more tactless revenue laws—one of which, the tax on tea, led finally to the celebrated tea-party. Before that, however, came the fifty-gun frigate Romney, to mount guard in Boston, to overawe the citizens, and incidentally to impress a few of them, and to seize John Hancock's sloop Liberty for an alleged violation of law. Relations between the King's officers and the people of Boston were certainly not cordial. There were constant bickerings and quarrels, reported to London as grave disorders engineered by a town full of cut-throats. Although there had been no bloodshed whatever, the King and his friends grew purpld with rage at thought of the rebellious town of Boston. It was possible for Dr. Johnson to storm out:

"Sir, they arc a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging."

The unfortunate plan of London was to put down these pestilent rogues by a display of force, and in October, 1768, the Fourteenth and Twenty-ninth Regiments arrived. By act

of Parliament these troops should have been quartered in the regular barracks at Castle William in the harbour, before the town could be required to provide quarters for them. As the night was cool they were allowed to sleep in Fancuil Hall, and afterwards they went into tents cn the Common. Finally, their Colonel hired some buildings for barracks, and when the Sixtv-fourth and Sixty-fifth Regiments arrived, they were quartered in some storehouses on a wharf. Detachments were posted here and there about the town, and two cannon were trained on the Town House. It was in opposition to such actions as these, on the part of a legislature overseas, that the Revolutionary War was fought: there is no Englishman of today who would not fight against such a policy.

The BOSTON MASSACRE, perpetrated on March the 5th, 1770.

WHILE BRITONS this Scene with confcious dead, And pay the laft fad uribute to the dead;

What though the chaftt of juaice faintly gleam,

And ermin'd mifereants ridicule the feene; Ne'er let one bread the generious figh difclaim,

Or ceaft to bow at FREEDOM's hallow'd fane;

Still with the thought let Fame's loud Clarion (Well,

And Fate to diflant time the MURDER tell.

In the spring, the King was petitioned to remove the troops, and early in the summer two of the regiments were ordered away. The others remained, however, and there was no love between them and the civil population. To the English regulars, the New Englanders were a set of pious, canting rascals, who set themselves up as superior to the King's religion, and the King's law. To the Massachusetts men, in addition to the insult of their presence, the soldiers seemed a godless crew, who had brought with them scores of women as scarlet as their own coats. They raced horses on Sunday on the Common, and took pains to play Yankee Doodle outside church doors during service. There were constant fights between soldiers and citizens.

In February, 1770, it came to a small battle between men of the Twenty-ninth Regiment and workmen in a rope-walk, clubs and cutlasses were used and some blood was drawn, although nobody was killed. Individually, the soldiers had, without doubt, many a grievance. Ordered there by stupid law-makers, they had to endure insults and threats from the town hoodlums. The favourite term of abuse was to call them "Lobsters", in allusion to the colour of their coats, although this was varied with "Bloody-back", referring to the brutal floggings which were a means of discipline in the Army. Some of the soldiers announced openly that they intended to give their bayonets a bath in the blood of these accursed New England people. Everything was leading up to the fracas, trifling in its casualties, but important in its result, which took place early in the evening of March 5.

AT about eight o'clock a small crowd had .collected near the barracks in Brattle Street. A tall Negro, or Indian, seemed to be acting as leader. After the pleasantries about "Lobsters" and "Bloody-backs" had been emphasized by pelting the soldiers with snow-balls and oyster-shells, and after the soldiers had defended themselves with the butts of their guns, a Captain Goldfinch came by, and ordered his men into the barracks. This might have stopped all trouble had not some idiot gone into a meeting house and rung the bell, which, taken as an alarm of fire, brought more citizens into the streets. There were soon small groups of soldiers and townsfolk hurrying here and there; one part of them crying: "Townborn, turn out! The red-coats arc going to kill us!" while the soldiers replied: "Damn you, we will walk a lane through you all!" The crowd moved from one street to another, some of them led by the tall Negro (or half-breed Indian) whose name was Crispus Attucks. A sentry in front of the Custom House was pelted with snow-balls, and finally surrounded by such a crowd that he called for help. Then the cry came: "They arc killing the sentinel; turn out the guard!" Captain Preston and seven or eight privates of the Twenty-ninth came up the street at double-time, prodding people out of the way with their bayonets. The soldiers surrounded the sentry box, for the reasonable purpose of defending their comrade. The Captain ordered them to prime and load. The scene of this was only a few yards from the old State House. A stout Boston bookseller—stout in both senses—seized the officer by the coat, and warned him not to fire. The book dealer was a remarkable person: Henry Knox, afterwards Washington's chief of artillery. Captain Preston assured him, and others, that he had no intention of ordering his men to fire. But the crowd pressed up to the muzzles of the muskets, threw snow in the soldiers' faces, and dared them to fire. In the noise and confusion, with the frequent repetition of the word "Fire", the soldiers may well have believed that they heard the orders. At all events, seven of the muskets were discharged, one after the other. There were two bullets in each gun. A soldier named Montgomery killed Crispus Attucks, who at the moment was merely standing by, leaning on a stick. Another shot, fired by Private Kilroy, caused the death of Samuel Gray. The other victims were perfectly innocent bystanders, James Caldwell, a sailor, and two persons who had just come outdoors to see the supposed fire: Samuel Maverick, a youth of seventeen, and one Patrick Carr. The two latter died of their wounds during the following days. Six other men were badly, but not fatally wounded. Thus, five men were killed. This was the Boston "Massacre".

Continued on page 110

Continued from page 66

Now the church bells were ringing everywhere} the drums beat to arms, and the Twenty-ninth Regiment was called out and drawn up for platoon firing. Hundreds of citizens poured into the streets, and there was every prospect of a veritable massacre. But the Lieutenant-governor arrived, pacified the crowd, ordered the arrest of Captain Preston and his squad, and, in general, saved the situation. It was on the following day, after a great town-meeting at Faneuil Hall, that its delegate, Samuel Adams, confronted the Royal officers in the council chamber, and standing before the Lieutenant-governor, the Colonel and the Council, demanded the instant removal of both regiments. "Both regiments or none!" was the cry, and both of them went, to be known derisively in Parliament for years afterwards, as the "Sam Adams regiments". It was the subordination of the military to the civil power, and as such is not lightly to be considered in the history of either of the English speaking countries. The dead men were given a great public funeral as they were carried to their graves in the Old Granary burying ground.

Months after the funeral of Attucks and the others, followed a strange event, and one highly creditable to the law-respecting spirit of both English and Americans. After a wait until November, to allow everybody to cool off, Captain Preston and eight soldiers were put on trial in Boston

for murder. The prosecution for the Crown was conducted by Robert Treat Paine, afterwards a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Samuel Quincy, who was a loyalist, adhering to the King's party. Quincy subsequently left the country at the time of the Revolution and died at Antigua. But now he prosecuted the King's soldiers for killing the King's subjects. The English captain and soldiers, on the other hand, were defended by John Adams, afterwards second President of the United States, and Josiah Quincy, Jr., younger brother of the Counsel for the Crown.

Captain Preston was tried first. The hearing lasted six days, but as soon as the jury had the case the Captain was immediately acquitted. Then the eight soldiers, headed by one William Wemms, and including both Kilroy and Montgomery, were given a trial lasting more than a week. Fifty witnesses appeared for the soldiers, whose plea was self-defense. The jury acquitted them all of murder, but found Kilroy and Montgomery guilty of manslaughter.

"They prayed the benefit of clergy, which was allowed them." This does not mean, as it seems to be understood to mean, that they asked for a priest to shrive them. Nor does it refer to any ceremony of the church. The title of Mr. Kipling's story, Without Benefit of Clergy, has made many of its readers think that the "benefit" was the marriage service,—a ceremony with which the two chief characters of that tale had dispensed. The two soldiers asked for a privilege allowed by an old provision of English law, soon repealed in America, and finally in England. Persons able to read (and therefore "clerks" in the archaic sense) were, on their first conviction for certain offenses, entitled to exemption from punishment. What the punishment for manslaughter in Massachusetts in 1770 may have been, I do not know, but it must have been severe, when we consider what was done to these two soldiers as a merciful reduction of the penalty which they would have suffered, had they been illiterate.

Continued on page 122

Continued from page 110

All the accounts of the trial, and all the historians dismiss the incident curtly. Having prayed and having been allowed "the benefit of clergy" they were "branded in the hand, in open court, and were discharged."

I would like to know more about it than that. Some of the versions say "burnt in the hand". Was it a farce, and done with a cold iron? Probably not; punishments were severe in the eighteenth century. Were they seriously disabled, and unfitted for military duty? Was the brand in the form of a letter, like the T sometimes marked on a thief? What happened to them afterwards? There is no authentic record. I can believe that they left, as we know Captain Preston did, with no warm feelings of regard for the town of Boston.