Boston Massacre 327that had accumulated over a period of months and years
erupted into violence on March 5, 1770, when a small de-
tail of British soldiers fi red on a mob of Bostonian citizens,
killing four, mortally wounding a fi ft h, and wounding six
others. Known as the Boston Massacre, the event helped so-
lidify colonial resistance to British rule. Th e fi rst to be killed
that evening, Crispus Attucks, has since come to be known
as the fi rst casualty of the American Revolution.
At the conclusion of the French and Indian War in
1763, the British Parliament, seeking to repay debts in-
curred during the war and cover the high costs of main-
taining its North American military forces, imposed on the
colonies a series of unpopular taxes, including the Sugar
Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, and the Townsend
Acts of 1767. Protests raged throughout the colonies, and
Boston in particular was an epicenter of protest, such that
Gen. Th omas Gage, commander in chief of British forces
in North America, dispatched two regiments of soldiers to
Boston in 1768. Th e soldiers were to restore order and facil-
itate tax collection, but their presence only caused further
problems. Boston’s citizens took exception to the quarter-
ing of troops in their city during peacetime, and the pro-
tests continued. Th e citizenry regarded the troops as threats
to their homes, families, and livelihoods, given that towns-
people and off -duty troops competed for work. Th ere were
also reports that Captain John Wilson of the 59th regiment
tried to provoke a slave revolt in the city, encouraging slaves
to rise up against their masters and promising safety for any
individual who made it to his barracks. Confrontations be-
tween citizens and soldiers were frequent, and a number of
brawls erupted in the months before the Boston Massacre.
On March 5, 1770, Private Hugh White, a sentry posted
to guard the Customs House, struck with the butt of his
musket a barber’s apprentice when the apprentice accosted
him regarding a failure to pay for a haircut. Th e crowd con-
tinued to grow in size, accosting White with snowballs and
chunks of ice. To protect White, Captain Th omas Preston,
commanding offi cer of the 29th infantry regiment, led
a small detail of men through the assembled crowd and
into a semicircular defense perimeter in front of the Cus-
toms House door. In the midst of the commotion, Private
Hugh Montgomery was struck down by a club thrown at
his head. Regaining his feet, Montgomery urged his com-
rades to fi re on the crowd and, leveling his musket, did so.
Shots staggered out, and 11 bullets in all struck members of
the crowd. Th e shots killed four—Crispus Attucks, Jamesnamed him a vice president. He also published his best-
known antebellum work, Th e American Churches the Bul-
wark of Slavery, in 1840; the volume was reissued in 1842.
Birney’s fi rst wife died in 1839; most of their children
were already becoming active in politics and the military. He
remarried in 1840 to Elizabeth Fitzhugh, a niece of his friend
and fellow abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Th e couple settled in
Bay City, Michigan, a year later. Birney ran unsuccessfully
for the Michigan governorship in 1842 and was again nomi-
nated as the Liberty Party’s 1844 candidate for president.
Th is time, his campaign was much stronger: more 62,000
Northerners voted for him, even though a forged letter (the
“Garland Letter”) that was probably circulated by Whig ac-
tivists purported to off er evidence that Birney was secretly
a Democrat. Some historians have also suggested that Bir-
ney acted as a “spoiler” in the race between Whig Henry
Clay and Democrat James K. Polk. Regardless, Birney came
out of the campaign a major fi gure in American abolition-
ism, though several (including Frederick Douglass, who
was moving more toward political abolitionism) remained
skeptical because of his slaveholding background.
Birney was partially paralyzed when a horse threw
him in the summer of 1845, and he largely withdrew from
public life. He moved to a communal settlement in Eagles-
wood, New Jersey, in late 1853 and lived there for the rest
of his life.
See also: American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS); American
Colonization Society; Douglass, Frederick; Garrison, Wil-
liam Lloyd; Liberty Party; Smith, Gerrit; Tappan, Arthur;
Tappan, Lewis
Eric Scott GardnerBibliography
Dumond, Dwight, ed. Th e Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831–
- New York: D. Appleton, 1938.
Fladeland, Betty. James Gillespie Birney: Slaveholder to Abolition-
ist. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1955.
Sewell, Richard H. Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United
States, 1837–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Boston Massacre
Th e Boston Massacre was a violent clash between Ameri-
can settlers and British soldiers and is usually considered to
be the fi rst confl ict in the American Revolution. Tensions