Boston Massacre Research Paper

Was the Boston Massacre an accident? Based off of the sources available for my use I believe that the Boston Massacre was not an accident at all. The events earlier that day may have been forgotten during the trial, how two boys were beaten with guns and how the man that tried to help them was stabbed in the shoulder all the way to the bone. Below is my response to why the Boston Massacre was not an accident.

At this point, there was a man by the name of Benjamin Burdick. In his court testimony he claimed to have been walking on king street at around 9 o’clock, he then saw soldiers and asked one of them “ Are you loaded” and the british soldier responded with “yes” and “I would fire by the power of the eternal god” and then he was prodded at with the soldier's bayonet. Benjamin claims to have seen a stick thrown towards the guards which then led to the word “fire” being commanded from the back of the crowd where the soldiers stood.

According to the Deposition of Newton Prince, he heard the shout of “fire” and then went outside where he asked two men where the fire was,the two men responded with” it’s something better than a fire”.

While Newton Prince was on his way through the town he met some people(who later turned out to be rope maker’s) with clubs used for hitting things, he also said that he met some other people in the town with buckets and bags ( presumably because they wanted to help to extinguish the fire which they may have also heard when they left their homes).Newton Said that some men suggested to attack the main guard while others pleaded with them to not cause

trouble.

Another source contradicts the others, Source B states that the mob was steadily increasing in size while the soldiers were standing in the midst of it all. Captain Thomas Preston, British Officer said that the rebels were saying “Come on you rascals, you bloody backs” and “ You lobster scoundrels, fire upon us if you dare, we know that you dare not”. He also says that a lot more language was used at the time of these events.Captain Thomas said, in his testimony, that the civilian people of the mob decided to come to the point of the bayonets which the soldiers held fixed to the end of their weapons. Some of the people even hit the guns and the muzzle of them. One of the soldiers was struck with a large stick and was talking to him about it when he then stepped to the side, drew his weapon, and fired at one of the men which cause a sudden outbreak of violence aimed at the soldiers, people threw snowballs and hit the soldiers with heavy clubs and snowballs. After a few moments of this some men said “ why don’t you fire”, so three or four soldiers went ahead and did so. Captain Thomas Preston confronted the men and asked them why they had fired without orders and they said that they” supposed it came from him”.

In essence, i believe that based on the evidence in the four sources, that the boston massacre wasn’t an accident. Whether the soldiers actually thought that their captain told them to fire may never be known, but i know that you can’t accidently shoot a crowd of people. I also believe that the acts of the british soldiers weren’t all justified.