Attucks, Crispus 319in Boston that was directly aff ected by the presence of the
soldiers garrisoned in the city. Soldiers competed with lo-
cals for work along the waterfront and in workshops, off er-
ing their labor when off -duty in order to supplement their
income. In the days before the Boston Massacre, locals and
soldiers clashed along the waterfront over this employment
confl ict. An altercation between soldiers and laborers on
March 2 exacerbated an already tense situation, and that
confl ict was revived three nights later.
Th e preponderance of witness accounts places At-
tucks at the front of the mob and the fi rst to be killed by
the soldiers, although his precise role in the mob is unclear.
Some accounts hold that Attucks was a leader of the mob,
brandishing his cordwood staff above his head, exhorting
townspeople to rally behind him, and alternately assault-
ing soldiers and striking at their muskets with his staff be-
fore he was shot. Other accounts maintain that Attucks was
leaning on his staff when he was struck in the chest by two
lead balls.
During the trial of the soldiers in November 1770, At-
tucks was presented by the defense as the soldiers’ chief
antagonist. John Adams, future president and lead defense
counsel, relied on racial stereotypes in his attempt to justify
the soldiers’ actions as legitimate responses to provocation.
Reminding the court of Attucks’s unusual size, Adams took
care to portray Attucks’s behavior as irrational and threat-
ening. Casting most of the blame for the event on Attucks,
Adams claimed that the combination of the man’s size and
his behavior was enough to frighten the soldiers suffi ciently
that they needed to use force in order to defend themselves.
At the same time that John Adams was making his case
in court, however, his second cousin, Samuel Adams, was
busily trying to lionize Attucks in the pages of the Boston
Gazette. Samuel Adams had an agenda of his own in trying
to discredit the witness testimony that Attucks provoked or
attacked the soldiers. Choosing to emphasize the reports in
the Gazette that held that Attucks was resting on his staff
when he was shot, Samuel was using Attucks to try to de-
bunk the argument that the soldiers had any justifi cation for
fi ring and was trying to keep the passions of Boston’s citi-
zenry infl amed against the occupying British regiments.
Th e fact that Attucks was the fi rst to fall in the Bos-
ton Massacre made him a martyr in the minds of many of
his contemporaries, and he was remembered as such. Until
the signing of the Declaration of Independence six years
later, March 5 was known in Boston as “Crispus AttucksDillon, Merton L. Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Th eir
Allies, 1616–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1990.
Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Cul-
ture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks
1700–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1969.
Attucks, Crispus
A runaway slave turned sailor and ropemaker, Crispus At-
tucks (c. 1723–1770) is the best-known victim of the Bos-
ton Massacre and is generally regarded as the fi rst casualty
of the American Revolution.
Little is known about Attucks’s life prior to the mas-
sacre. He probably was part African American and part
American Indian and was likely born near Framingham,
Massachusetts, in Mashpee, a Natick Indian community.
Attucks is presumed descended from a community of
Natick Indians that converted to Christianity in the 17th
century. New Englanders economically and socially mar-
ginalized native peoples in the 18th century, and New Eng-
land’s Christian Indians intermarried frequently with the
comparatively small African American population. Local
Native Americans also frequently were in some form of
bondage, either as long-term indentured servants or as
slaves. Attucks seems to have belonged to the latter cate-
gory, and some accounts relate that he was skilled in cattle
trading. Attucks escaped from slavery sometime before
1750; a bulletin was published that year, off ering a physical
description and seeking his return. From the description
on the poster, we know that Attucks was unusually tall for a
man of his time, described as 6'2".
Men such as Attucks had any number of possible griev-
ances against the British, most connected with their live-
lihood, although, given that he left no written record, his
motivations for participating in the mob on March 5 can
only be surmised. As a sailor, Attucks was constantly in
danger of being impressed, or forcibly conscripted, into the
Royal Navy. Because his livelihood depended on trade, any
British regulations that limited trade necessarily limited his
chances to obtain employment, a situation compounded
by the Boston radicals’ non-importation attempts. Attucks
was also a part-time ropemaker, performing this labor in
between voyages, which made him a part of a laboring class