How the Boston Massacre Fanned the Flames of a Revolution

"The Boston Massacre," says Katie Drescher, the gallery supervisor and senior educator at the Bostonian Society and the Old State House, "was something like 10 years in the making. This didn't happen out of nowhere. There was so much happening."

To understand that night, you have to get a feel for the tensions between those loyal to England and those who were tired of it. You have to understand what the residents of Boston and their families, some of them going back more than 100 years to the city's founding, had been through; smallpox outbreaks, a huge earthquake in 1755, a "great fire" in 1760.

Shopkeepers were refusing to pay taxes imposed under the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Acts two years later. The whole idea of "no taxation without representation" was taking hold. Colonists were not represented in England's Parliament, and many felt their rights as Englishmen were being stripped away. Throughout the colonies, a resistance grew.

The British sent more soldiers to Boston — redcoats, "lobster backs" — to restore order and enforce the law. Scuffles ensued. Protests broke out. And then, 11 days before the incident in front of the Old State House (the seat of Royal Government and the Massachusetts Assembly), an 11-year-old boy was killed by a British customs service employee who fired into an unruly crowd on the North End of Boston.

Hundreds of people, maybe more than 1,000, attended the boy's funeral. An angry Boston was ripe for something bad to happen. And that's how things stood on the night of March 5.

"It wasn't a surprising event," Drescher says of the Boston Massacre. "I think it was a pretty inevitable thing."

For one of the most well-known, well-researched incidents of Boston's pre-Revolutionary War Era, it's still unclear as to exactly what triggered the Boston Massacre.

"One of the big things about the Boston Massacre is that we still don't really know why those soldiers fired into the crowd, what really happened to cause that first shot to be fired," Drescher says. "We have an understanding that a soldier fired into the crowd, and it kind of causes a chain reaction, the other soldiers fired. But what was his motive? Was it accidental? Of course, the soldiers all said they were defending themselves against the crowd. But what was that moment that causes this man to fire? Was he hit with something? Does he trip and fall — someone said he slips on ice and falls down and his musket fires? There are trial records, but there isn't one, general consensus."

This much we do know: An angry mob, hundreds strong, faced off against some soldiers in front of the Custom House, near the Old State House on State Street. From Capt. Thomas Preston's deposition at the ensuing trial:

Preston ordered several men and an officer to back up the sentry, but things only got worse. Some in the crowd had clubs, including fugitive slave-turned sailor Crispus Attucks, who is said to have been leading the angry mob. Others reportedly threw snowballs, rocks, chunks of coal or shells. In the confusion, a soldier — often identified as private Hugh Montgomery — was struck by someone in the mob (some say it was Attucks who struck him). Montgomery reportedly rose from the blow and fired, killing Attucks. Others followed. More from Preston:

This, too, we know for sure: Five men in the crowd died, including Attucks, who eventually became known as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Preston, eight British soldiers and four civilians were arrested and charged with the deaths. In October 1770, they faced trial. Preston was acquitted, as were six of his soldiers and the four civilians. Two soldiers were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

The defense team was led by John Adams — who eventually became the second president of the United States — in an effort that he later described as "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country."

Still, the "Bloody Massacre" proved to be a rallying point for those looking for independence from Britain, made so in large part by Revere's propagandist engraving that shows a tightly formed line of red-coated soldiers firing on a well-dressed contingent of unarmed colonists.

"Most of the misconceptions about the Boston Massacre come from Paul Revere's image, which I think was the intent of the image in the 1770s," Drescher says. "He wanted people to think that's what happened. And it has hung around for hundreds of years. People still see it and say, 'Oh, yeah, I know what happened.'"

At least once a year, a re-enactment of the night of March 5, 1770, takes place on the spot of the Boston Massacre. A six-minute multimedia exhibit in one of the Old State House's second-floor antechambers is held six times a day. A marker, made of 13 sections of cobblestone, with a cobblestone in the center emblazoned with a star, is laid in the street near the site where the five men were shot.

Local students, beginning around the third grade, are told a watered-down version of the Boston Massacre. Tour guides regularly regale tourists with stories of one of the most infamous events in the history of the history-rich city.

"It's snowing pretty good outside right now, and there's people out there, so ...," Drescher, a native of the Boston area, says on a recent early December afternoon. "It doesn't matter what kind of weather. Every single day people are out there taking a picture."