The Boston Massacre

The Boston "Massacre": When a Bad Haircut Changed History

Here's the thing about the Boston Massacre - it wasn't really a massacre at all. That dramatic name comes from some seriously clever colonial marketing, courtesy of Paul Revere's famous engraving. You know the one - British soldiers lined up like a firing squad, colonists falling dramatically, and for some reason, a random dog watching the whole scene unfold. Talk about artistic license!

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The reality? Think less "organized military violence" and more "18th-century street brawl gone horribly wrong." Boston in 1768 was basically a pressure cooker waiting to explode. The city was handling 40% of British exports to the colonies, making it ground zero for all that tension over taxes and smuggling. The British solution? Send in 4,000 soldiers to "keep the peace" in a city of 16,000 people. Because nothing calms down an angry population like cramming more people into an already crowded city, right?

 

Whenever colonists and redcoats came together, it usually turned ugly. In taverns or on the streets, insults often turned into fist fights which then transformed into a scene from West Side Story. Both sides called for backup from their buddies, and the whole thing became gang brawl. This is exactly what happened on the night of the Boston Massacre when a haircut ended in a deadly shooting. Captain John Goldfinch was walking back to the barracks when a young barber’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, shouted an insult at him. Apparently, the captain had cheated the kid by not paying for his haircut. Another soldier nearby did what any man might have done when a name-calling kid was threatening his captain; he clubbed him in the face with the butt of his musket. Garrick ran off crying.

 

Goldfinch continued making his way back to the barracks when he ran into an angry crowd who were getting into their own fight with a different group of soldiers. Goldfinch ordered the troops back to barracks, and things died down. That is until a second angry mob armed with clubs came marching down the street with the barber’s apprentice leading the way. The crowd grew and began pelting the soldiers and shouting death threats.  More troops arrived to defend their buddies and disperse the crowd. You can imagine the chaos that was unfolding. Then Captain Thomas Preston hit in the head with an ice ball, ordered his troops to fire. When the musket smoke had cleared, a dozen colonists were lying bleeding in the snow. Three died instantly; two would die later from their wounds, and six seriously injured. The soldiers wisely decided to high-tail it out there and locked themselves inside their barracks. The streets of Boston had erupted into open warfare.  

 

The governor, Thomas Hutchinson, raced to the scene to restore order. Hutchinson was never popular, but this time he made the smart move and had Preston and eight other soldiers arrested (probably for their safety) and promised to move the troops out of town to avoid another episode. The soldiers were put on trial and defended by John Adams who argued that the soldiers were provoked by "...a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattoes, Irish Teagues, and outlandish Jack tars". News of the Boston Massacre spread like a BP oil spill. Outrage over the event united the colonists against the British.