After the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, British troops were pulled out of Boston within days, patriot leaders launched an aggressive campaign to shape the public story, and the soldiers who fired on the crowd stood trial that fall. Most were acquitted. The aftermath stretched out over years: annual commemorations, a running political argument about British authority, and a chain of events that ran through the Boston Tea Party and the Coercive Acts to the opening shots of the Revolution.
Troops Out, Funerals, and the First Week
The morning after the shooting, Samuel Adams was chosen to chair a committee of fifteen citizens at Faneuil Hall. He confronted Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson with a demand for the “total evacuation of the town, by all regular troops,” warning that surrounding towns might send armed men if Hutchinson refused.1National Park Service. Samuel Adams, Boston Revolutionary Hutchinson first claimed he lacked the authority, then asked the local army commander to move the men. Two British regiments were relocated to Castle William, a fortified island in the harbor, where they remained for six years.2National Park Service. Fort Independence, Castle William
On March 8, Adams organized a mass funeral for four of the five victims: Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and James Caldwell. An estimated 10,000 people attended, roughly two-thirds of Boston’s population.3National Park Service. Boston Massacre The bodies of Attucks and Caldwell, who had no family in the city, lay in state at Faneuil Hall. Hearses converged on King Street, the site of the shooting, before the procession moved on to the Granary Burying Ground, where the four were interred in a single vault.4History of Massachusetts. The Boston Massacre Victims Patrick Carr, the fifth victim, died of his wounds days later and was buried in the same plot. Shops closed, bells tolled, and mourners followed in ranks of six. Adams meant it as a political statement.
The Propaganda War
Before the trials began, patriot leaders moved to control the narrative. A Boston town meeting appointed James Bowdoin, Samuel Pemberton, and Joseph Warren to compile an official account. The result was a pamphlet titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, built from depositions by ninety-six witnesses and presenting the shooting as a calculated act of British aggression.5Britannica. Boston Massacre – Aftermath and Agitprop The town meeting prohibited sale of the pamphlet in Boston to avoid tainting the jury pool, but shipped copies to England and other colonies, where it established the patriot version of events before any competing account could take hold.6Journal of the American Revolution. Hyping the Boston Massacre
Paul Revere’s engraving, The Bloody Massacre in King-Street, appeared about three weeks after the event.7Gilder Lehrman Institute. Paul Revere’s Engraving of the Boston Massacre The print showed a disciplined line of British soldiers firing on command into a defenseless crowd. A sign reading “Butcher’s Hall” hung above the soldiers; the snow that blanketed King Street that night was absent; and the version of events the image presented was sharply at odds with what trial testimony would show. Revere based his work on an earlier illustration by Henry Pelham, who was never credited or compensated. The image was widely reproduced across Massachusetts and in London, and it continued to be adapted into new artwork well into the nineteenth century.8Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston Massacre – Visual Representations
Samuel Adams gave the event its name, christening it the “Boston Massacre” almost immediately.9PBS. Adams and the Boston Massacre In the Boston Gazette, he defended Crispus Attucks against portrayals of the crowd as a violent mob, arguing that Attucks had as much right to carry a stick for self-defense as a soldier had to carry a musket.10Famous Trials. Boston Massacre Key Figures
The Trials
Governor Hutchinson delayed the trials for months, insisting the people needed “time to cool.”10Famous Trials. Boston Massacre Key Figures The decision was unpopular, but it meant the proceedings opened in a less inflamed atmosphere. Captain Thomas Preston was tried separately from his men, and a different jury heard each case.
Captain Thomas Preston
Preston’s trial began on October 24, 1770, with Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy prosecuting. The town of Boston voted to fund the prosecution’s expenses.11Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Trial of the British Soldiers Preston was charged with murder on the theory that even though he did not fire a weapon, he bore responsibility for the deaths if he had ordered his soldiers to shoot.12National Park Service. Boston Massacre Trial
The case collapsed on that question. Witnesses contradicted one another, some disagreeing about what Preston had been wearing that night, which damaged the overall credibility of the testimony. The defense, led by John Adams with Robert Auchmuty and Josiah Quincy Jr., argued that Preston had been standing in front of his soldiers, a position he would never have taken if he intended them to fire. Preston himself insisted he never ordered his men to load or shoot, testifying that he shouted “Don’t fire, stop your firing” when the shooting began.13Gilder Lehrman Institute. The Case of Capt. Thomas Preston After a six-day trial, the jury acquitted Preston on October 30, 1770. He was sent to Castle William for his safety.
The Eight Soldiers
The trial of the eight enlisted soldiers began on November 27, 1770, under the case name Rex v. Wemms et al. The jury was composed entirely of non-Boston residents, reflecting the difficulty of finding impartial jurors in the city.14Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston Massacre Trials
John Adams led the defense, assisted by Josiah Quincy Jr. and Sampson Salter Blowers. His strategy shifted from the Preston trial. Rather than arguing the soldiers never fired, Adams acknowledged that they had shot into the crowd and argued they acted in self-defense. He contended that they faced a hostile mob armed with snowballs, oyster shells, chunks of ice, and clubs, and that if they believed their lives were in danger, they had a legal right to defend themselves. If the provocation fell short of a mortal threat, Adams argued, the law reduced the offense to manslaughter rather than murder.12National Park Service. Boston Massacre Trial
A critical piece of evidence came from the deathbed statement of Patrick Carr, the fifth victim, relayed by his surgeon. Carr reportedly said he did not blame the soldiers for defending themselves. The prosecution, which relied almost entirely on eyewitness testimony, argued the soldiers could have retreated instead of using deadly force. Samuel Quincy told the jury, “A person cannot justify killing, if he can by any means make his escape.” Carr’s dying declaration proved devastating to that argument.
After nine days of testimony and two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted six of the eight soldiers. Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Both invoked “benefit of clergy,” an old English legal provision that had become a loophole for literate first-time offenders, to avoid the death penalty. Their sentences were commuted to branding: each was marked on the hand, where the thumb meets the palm, with the letter “M” for manslaughter. The brand was placed so it would be visible during a handshake or when raising a hand to take an oath, ensuring the commutation could never be claimed a second time.14Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston Massacre Trials
Why John Adams Took the Case
Adams took the defense at significant personal risk, at a time when no other attorney in Boston would accept it. He later wrote that defending the soldiers was “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country,” adding that a “judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently.”15University of Notre Dame. The Rule of Law Prevails Samuel Adams, who wanted the soldiers punished, nonetheless helped ensure they received competent counsel, recognizing that the movement’s moral authority depended on due process.1National Park Service. Samuel Adams, Boston Revolutionary
Historians and legal scholars cite the trials as a foundational moment for American law. Adams’s insistence that every accused person deserves representation influenced the eventual adoption of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to the assistance of counsel.12National Park Service. Boston Massacre Trial
Annual Orations and Continued Agitation
The acquittals did not end the political fallout. Writing under the pseudonym “Vindex” in the Boston Gazette between December 1770 and January 1771, Samuel Adams published a series of articles condemning the verdicts and criticizing the handling of evidence at trial. The newspaper campaign failed to reignite the fury he had hoped for, and a period of relative quiet settled over Boston. The annual commemorations he helped establish proved more durable.
Beginning in 1771, Boston held a public oration each year on or near March 5. James Lovell delivered the first on April 2, 1771, declaring Parliament’s claim to sovereignty “illegal in itself” and “a usurpation.”16Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Boston Massacre Oration Later speakers included Joseph Warren in 1772 and 1775, Benjamin Church in 1773, and John Hancock in 1774.17Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston Massacre Anniversaries Governor Hutchinson told the British ministry that if these public avowals of colonial independence were tolerated, the colonies could eventually be reduced to submission only by force.
The orations shifted from backward-looking memorials to forward-looking calls to action. By 1774, Hancock used his address to advocate for colonial militias and a Continental Congress, framing the British soldiers as mercenaries and urging the colonies to act as a single American entity.18EBSCO Research Starters. Analysis of John Hancock’s Boston Massacre Oration Massacre Day continued as a public holiday in Boston until 1783, when it was replaced by Independence Day celebrations on July 4.19FCIT. The Boston Massacre
From Aftermath to Revolution
The removal of troops and the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts, which Parliament voted on the same day as the massacre though colonists would not learn of it for weeks, created a stretch of relative calm.20Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum. The Townshend Acts Parliament dropped duties on glass, lead, paint, and paper but kept the tax on tea to assert its right to tax the colonies. That single remaining tax became the fuse for the next crisis.
In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, granting the East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in North America. When company ships arrived in Boston Harbor that November, Governor Hutchinson refused to let them leave without unloading their cargo and paying the duty. On December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships and destroyed 340 chests of tea.21The National Archives (UK). Boston Tea Party The same networks of activists and the same capacity for coordinated public action that had formed around the massacre were at work.
Britain’s response pushed the colonies past the point of return. In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts. The laws closed Boston’s harbor, replaced Massachusetts’ elected government with crown appointees, limited town meetings to once a year, and authorized the quartering of troops in civilian buildings.22Mount Vernon. The Coercive (Intolerable) Acts of 1774 One provision tied directly back to the massacre trials. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the governor to transfer trials of royal officials to other colonies or to Britain, a measure born partly from royal authorities’ belief that the massacre trials had been skewed against the soldiers.23American Battlefield Trust. Colonial Responses to the Intolerable Acts The Coercive Acts unified colonies from Massachusetts to Virginia. The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in September 1774, and within months fighting began at Lexington and Concord.
The Victims and Crispus Attucks
The five men killed came from different walks of life. Crispus Attucks was a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous descent; Samuel Gray was a rope maker; James Caldwell a young mariner; Samuel Maverick a teenage apprentice; and Patrick Carr an Irish immigrant.4History of Massachusetts. The Boston Massacre Victims They share a burial vault at the Granary Burying Ground and a common headstone that still stands.
Attucks became the most historically significant of the five. During the trials, John Adams dismissed the crowd as a “motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattos, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.” Paul Revere’s engraving did not identify Attucks’s race.24National Park Service. Crispus Attucks In the 1850s, abolitionists reclaimed him. William Cooper Nell called Attucks the “first martyr of the American Revolution” in his book The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, and Frederick Douglass invoked his name in the fight to end slavery.25American Battlefield Trust. Crispus Attucks New artwork from that era, such as John H. Bufford’s lithograph, placed Attucks at the center of the scene.26American Revolution Museum. Boston Massacre and Propaganda – Changing Depictions of Crispus Attucks
In 1888, after decades of advocacy begun in 1861 by the Black activist Lewis Hayden, a 25-foot bronze monument to the massacre victims was dedicated on Boston Common. Designed by Robert Kraus, it features a figure representing the Spirit of the Revolution holding a broken chain and an American flag while crushing the British crown underfoot.27Crispus Attucks Museum. Boston Massacre Crispus Attucks Monument Some officials and members of the Massachusetts Historical Society objected on grounds of historical distortion, but the project was fully funded by public money.28Westfield State University Historical Journal. The Crispus Attucks Monument Frederick Douglass, unable to attend, praised Massachusetts for the “noble concession to justice and patriotism.” Black Bostonians had commemorated the anniversary of Attucks’s death since at least the 1850s, and in the early twentieth century, activists successfully lobbied the city to officially recognize March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day.24National Park Service. Crispus Attucks
John Adams said of the massacre that “on that night, the foundation of American Independence was laid,” calling it more important than the battles of Lexington, Bunker Hill, or the British surrenders that followed.29National Constitution Center. On This Day – The Boston Massacre Lights the Fuse of Revolution Some historians have cautioned that memorials and commemorations exaggerate the massacre’s role in causing the revolution, noting that it was one catalytic event among several across a decade of escalating grievances.30Origins (Ohio State University). Boston Massacre and the American Revolutionary War What followed those five deaths on King Street, the trials and the propaganda and the annual orations, gave the independence movement a narrative it would use for the next half century.