Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Boston Massacre

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

On March 5, 1770, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution occurred.  A confrontation between Boston civilians and British soldiers resulted in the deaths of five Americans.  While the events of that day helped spur the cause of American independence, the events which happened after helped determine what kind of country it was to be. Learn more about the Boston Massacre, its causes, and its aftermath on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 5th, 1770, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution occurred. A confrontation between Boston civilians and British soldiers resulted in the deaths of five Americans. While the events of that day helped spur the cause of American independence, the events which happened after helped determine what kind of country it was going to be. Learn more about the Boston Massacre, its causes, and its aftermath on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. To understand how and why the Boston massacre happened, you have to understand the climate in Boston in 1770. The years leading up to 1770 were one of increasing consternation amongst the United States. the American colonists. The British government passed a series of laws such as the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, and the Townsend Act, which increased taxes and placed impositions on the colonists without their consent. Boston became a hotbed of anti-British activity in the Americas. To try and control the situation, the British stationed 2,000 soldiers in Boston, which at the time

only had a population of about 16,000 people. These soldiers were quartered in the homes of Bostonians without their consent. And if you ever wanted to know the reason behind the Third Amendment of the Constitution, this is it. Scirmishes, fights, and vandalism became common occurrences between Patriot colonists and the British, as well as between Patriot colonists and loyal colonists. In the weeks leading up to March 5th, things had gotten particularly tense. On February 22nd, a mob of patriots began throwing rocks at the store of a loyalist named Theophilus Lily. His neighbor, a customs official by the name of Ebenezer Richardson, fired, his gun through his window at the crowd, killing an 11-year-old boy named Christopher Cider.

The death of the young boy outraged the people of Boston. His murder was covered extensively in the local newspapers, and an estimated 2,000 people attended his funeral. The largest crowd ever assembled in Boston at that time. A few days later, a large fight broke out between colonists and British soldiers, but no one was killed and there were no major injuries. So heading into the evening of March 5, 1770, the city of Boston was on end. edge. The evening of March 5th in Boston was cold and snowing. The events took place on King Street in front of the Boston Customs House. Today, King Street is known as State Street. The Customs House is where the money was held in the Royal Treasury. The Customs House was guarded outside by a

soldier by the name of Private Hugh White and his commanding officer, Captain Lieutenant John Goldfinch. A 13-year-old boy by the name of Edward Garrick walked up to the Customs House and began berating Captain Lieutenant Goldfinch about not paying a bill from his employer. Private White then told Garrick to respect an officer. White and Garrick began arguing, which escalated until White hit Garik in the head with the butt of his gun. A crowd began to grow around Private White and became belligerent. They started pelting him with snowballs and ice. As the evening continued, the crowd grew larger. Church bells all around Boston rang out, resulting in men all over the city flooding into the streets. As the crowd began to press on Private White, with as many

as 50 people surrounding him, he fell down and eventually called for reinforcements. Captain Thomas Preston arrived with six more soldiers to protect the customs house. Their concern was that the crowd was going to burst inside and steal the money. The informal leader of the crowd was a former slave by the name of Crispus Addox. Adix was a 47-year-old half-African, half-wampanoag Indian, who worked as a dock worker at Boston Harbor. The crowd kept escalating their provocations of the British soldiers. Some in the crowd were pleading with them not to shoot, and others were daring the soldiers to fire on the crowd.

What happened next is unclear, and there are several different versions of the story. Either someone threw an object which hit one of the soldiers, Private Hugh Montgomery, which caused him to accidentally discharge his gun, or someone said fire, which was misunderstood to be a command, or perhaps he fired on purpose because he was hit by an object. To this day, there is no consensus on what really happened. regardless of how or why it happened, a shot was fired. After the first shot was fired, there was a gap of between five to 30 seconds before the rest of the soldiers fired their weapons. The volley killed three men in the crowd instantly, a ropemaker named Samuel Gray, a mariner by the name of James Caldwell, and Crispus Attacks. Because of his role as the leader and being one of the first people killed, Crispus Attics is considered to be the first American casualty of the Revolutionary War.

In addition to three killed instantly, two others died from their wounds later on. A 17-year-old Samuel Maverick was struck in his head by a ricochet and died hours later. A recent immigrant from Ireland, Patrick Carr, was shot in the abdomen and died two weeks later. In addition to the five dead, six others were wounded. While this might be the climax of the story, it is far from the end. The crowd around the customs house dispersed, but people kept flooding into the streets all over Boston, as the news spread like wildfire throughout the city. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Thomas Hutchinson,

arrived on the scene and promised everyone that if they dispersed and went back to their homes, there would be an inquiry into the shootings. All of the soldiers involved in the incident were arrested within hours. Patriot and Loyalist forces both began issuing propaganda to support their side. Captain Preston wrote his side of the story from jail for publication in Loyalist newspapers. Patriots such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams, kept urging the people of Boston to continue to put pressure on the British.

Patriot propaganda began to call the event the Boston Massacre. They positioned the victims as upstanding citizens and the soldiers as bloodthirsty thugs. Loyalist propaganda did just the opposite. They painted the soldiers as being the victims of an ambush and that the crowd in Boston was unruly and didn't respect the law. Perhaps the most compelling piece of propaganda was an etching of the event, which was created by Henry Pelham. The image spread throughout the colonies due to the reprim,

productions by Paul Revere, and it became an 18th century equivalent of a viral video. It took several months, but eventually the soldiers were placed on trial. The Massachusetts government wanted to make sure that the trial was fair and above board. The soldiers were brought up on charges of murder, and if convicted, they would face the death penalty. If it appeared that they were railroaded and found guilty, it would invite more reprisals from the British. If they appear to have been let off the hook, it would inflame patriots in Boston.

The most surprising move of the entire trial came when Captain Preston asked a 35-year-old Boston attorney named John Adams to represent him. Preston had asked several other loyalist attorneys to defend him, but none of them would take the case. Adams was a well-known supporter of the Patriot Cause, and most of you know him as a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a future U.S. president. While he didn't want the British in Boston, he was also a firm believer that everyone deserved a fair trial. Adams made the decision to defend Preston and the other soldiers, knowing that it could cause him and his family a great deal of harm. He also recruited a patriot attorney named Josiah Quincy II to assist him. The prosecutor was another signer of the Declaration of Independence, a local private attorney named Robert Treat Payne. There were two separate trials that took place, one in October where Captain Preston was on trial,

and another in November where the other eight soldiers would be tried. The trial of Captain Preston was relatively straightforward. The prosecution had to prove that he had given the order to fire on the crowd. Adams brought forward multiple witnesses who gave multiple conflicting accounts of the events that night. As there was no consistent story that could be determined by eyewitness accounts, Adams was able to easily establish reasonable doubt, and Captain Preston was acquitted. This was the first time in American judicial history that reasonable doubt was used as a standard to adjudicate a case. The next trial of the eight soldiers was more tricky.

Adams used every advantage he could in the selection of the jury. For starters, he felt that people in Boston were too invested in the outcome, so he had the jury selected from people outside of the city of Boston. He selectively challenged individual jurors and wound up with a jury that was heavily loyalist. And also, for the first time in American history, a jury was sequestered. Adams actually did believe that he had a strong case and that the eight men were not guilty of murder. His argument was that the mob on March 5th was, in fact, A mob. They were violent and unruly, and based on pretty much all eyewitness testimony, they provoked the soldiers.

It also helped that Patrick Carr, the immigrant from Ireland who died two weeks after being shot, had given a deathbed testimony that the soldiers were defending themselves and forgave those who shot him. The soldiers, Adams argued, were legally required to defend their post and were ordered to do so even with the use of lethal force. His closing arguments have gone down in history and have been used by lawyers ever since. He said, quote, facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection. And if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen, that would be the end of security whatsoever." End quote. Six of the eight soldiers were acquitted, and two were found guilty of manslaughter.

Despite the fact that none of the accused were found guilty of murder, the Boston Massacre only served to harden the Patriot Cause and to sour relations with Britain. It was one of the biggest events leading up to the American Revolution. The reputation of John Adams skyrocketed. He was considered a principled man by both patriots and loyalists, and his legal business took off. His defense of the British soldiers who took part in the Boston Massacre became the landmark court case in colonial America and a foundational case for American jurisprudence.

The fame he found from the case allowed him to later be elected to the Continental Congress. Crispus Addox, the black man considered to be the first casualty of the revolution, was upheld as an inspirational example by abolitionist groups in the 19th. century, and by civil rights groups in the 20th century to support their causes. Today, you can visit the site of the Boston Massacre in Boston. There's a memorial in the ground right next to the old state house at the corner of State and Devonshire Streets. However, the actual location of the incident is a few feet away where there's heavy traffic. The Boston Massacre is one of the most important events in American colonial history. It set a path for the future

of American independence and of the American legal system. In the words of John Adams himself, on March 5th, 1770, quote, The Foundation of American Independence was laid. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Sudy Chat over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Great General Knowledge Topics.

Discovered this podcast just a couple months back. I look forward to catching up with the back catalog. The narration is somewhat rushed for an informational genre, making it an a oral sprint for average listeners like me. Thanks, StoDy Chat. Just a reminder, you can adjust the playback speed on most podcast apps. I know of people who listen to this podcast at half speed, and I know of people who listen at double speed.

Whatever works for you is fine with me. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show. Stubborn things. See, whatever our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. You see, the law on the one hand is inexorable

to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners, but on the other hand, it is deaf, deaf as an adult, to the clamors of the populace. Gentlemen of the jury, I submit to your candor and justice, the prisoners and their cause.