The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (46 page)

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group was responsible for fomenting action against him, the usual measures taken suggest it was they who were behind it. They waited until the morning of February 22, when a crowd composed primarily of adolescent boys carried a sign to Lillie's shop that identified him as "IMPORTER," a violator of the agreement. The crowd that gathered resembled others that had been turning out in similar instances over the preceding month. They had gone after other IMPORTERS in that period, and now they had got around to Lillie.
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A neighbor of Lillie, Ebenezer Richardson, soon diverted the crowd by trying to tear down the sign. Richardson had provided information to the Customs office about Boston's merchants and in the process had earned the tag, "Knight of the Post," a term often applied to informers. He now behaved bravely or recklessly; his efforts on Lillie's behalf failed and the crowd followed him home, where curses were exchanged, including this one from the crowd -- "come out you damn Son of a Bitch, I'll have your Heart out your Liver out." Richardson did not come out, but after windows of his house were broken, he fired a gun loaded with swanshot at the crowd, killing an eleven-year-old boy, Christopher Seider, and wounding another. The crowd then poured in on him. Only the intervention of William Molineux, a well-known Son of Liberty, saved his life. Later in the year Richardson was convicted of murder; after a second trial the king pardoned him.
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Christopher Seider served the Adams group well. At Seider's funeral they did not simply mourn the death of a child and bury him; they made the occasion an act of defiance of British measures. A large crowd marched in the funeral procession -- it may have numbered several thousand -- including what John Adams called a "vast Number of Boys" walking before the coffin and a vast number of women and men following it. The size of this gathering revealed more than the horror felt at a boy's death; it testified to the extent of popular revulsion from the British measures.
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This feeling took several forms in the next two weeks and helped produce further violence. In the clamor against the Townshend acts and in the effort to secure nonimportation agreements, the town had not forgotten that it was occupied by regiments of a standing army.
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could not forget with the daily struggles between soldiers and civilians grinding away before its eyes.

In the week following Seider's burial the fights picked up. Although no one planned or orchestrated these battles, they were not accidental. Boston's citizens had many reasons to resent the soldiers, chief among them was the fact that the soldiers occupied the town, and in the black moods occasioned by the length of the occupation and by events such as Seider's death, townsmen may have been even more open than usual about expressing their feelings.

Perhaps the most resentful among Boston's citizens were semiskilled workers and ordinary laborers. They included a rough lot in their number, young men with considerable animal energy, the sort who looked forward to fistfights after drinking rum of an evening in a tavern. They did not take to soldiers, and they did not mind saying so, particularly since those in Boston sometimes took work and pay away from them. British soldiers in Boston took advantage of army regulations that permitted them to work at civilian jobs when they were not on duty. The worst of this eighteenth-century moonlighting was the soldiers' willingness to work at less than the going rate of pay, sometimes as much as 20 percent below what civilian laborers expected. Laborers, then, had more than the usual reasons for hating the British army.

In the days following Seider's burial, those young men adept at using their fists may have been even more eager than usual for the opportunity. On March 2 they got their chance when an off-duty soldier walked into John Gray's ropewalk looking for a job. A ropemaker asked him if he wanted work. The soldier answered that he did, and the ropemaker then invited him to "clean my shithouse." The soldier struck the ropemaker, but then absorbed a beating and retreated. He returned with friends, and a great brawl followed. The next day more fights occurred, several saw clubs and cutlasses employed, and more and more men were drawn in. March 4th was a Sunday -- and relatively quiet. The next day came with rumors on both sides of further fights to come.
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What followed that night does not seem to have been the result of a plot or plan on either side, but rather the consequences of deep hatreds and bad luck. The hatreds brought out roving bands of civilians and soldiers, all apparently in search of one another.
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A small encounter near the customshouse on King Street about 8:00 P.M. helped bring the civilians together -- a good many more than had been looking for a fight. Edward Gerrish, an apprentice, began the night's activities by insulting an army officer he happened to encounter on King Street. There were no gentlemen among the officers of the 29th Regiment, Gerrish cried. Private Hugh White, the sentry standing guard near the customshouse, heard Gerrish's taunt and gave him a blow under the ear for his audacity. There seem to have been other off-duty soldiers at the corner of King Street and Royal Exchange Lane at that time, and at least one of them also struck Gerrish.
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Although Boston's streets had no lamps in 1770, they were sufficiently well lighted by the moon and by reflection from a heavy coat of snow and ice to allow soldiers and civilians to see one another. Off-duty soldiers now pretty well left the scene, perhaps because they were heavily outnumbered by a crowd that gathered around Private White and perhaps because they had other fights in nearby streets to attend to. Word of what had happened to Gerrish had spread -- no doubt extravagantly embroidered-and within a few minutes twenty or more men and boys gathered. They lost no time in telling White that they did not like him -- "you Centinel, damned rascally Scoundrel Lobster Son of a Bitch."
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White did not take this abuse quietly, threatening to run them through if they kept after him. The threat brought fresh oaths and with them snowballs and pieces of ice. White then retreated to the door of the customshouse where he placed his back and tried to stand off the growing crowd.

Up the block at the main guard and within sight of White's station and the customsbouse, Captain Thomas Preston, the officer in charge during the night, watched uneasily. Preston, an Irishman, was forty years of age and an experienced officer. No experience is ever completely adequate to prepare one to deal with an angry crowd. Preston watched and waited, apparently in hope that the crowd might disperse on its own. But, far from dispersing, the crowd grew, swelled in part by wellmeaning citizens who came into the streets prepared to put out a fire. For someone, surely not well meaning, had either called out "fire" or sent messages to nearby churches that there was a fire on King Street. In any case church bells began tolling, the signal that help was needed

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to put out a blaze. Some who joined the crowd at the customshouse carried bags and buckets, the first to help victims of the fire to save their belongings, the second for carrying water. Others carried clubs, swords, and even catsticks, bats used in playing tipeat, a boys' game popular in England and America.
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Watching these new arrivals, Captain Preston decided around nine o'clock that the time had come to rescue Private White. He then ordered out the guard, six privates and a corporal at its head, apparently with the intention of marching down to White and returning with him to the safety of the main guard. Reaching White does not seem to have been too difficult. The guard in a column of twos, with muskets -- bayonets attached -- pushed through the crowd. Once it arrived the crowd filled in behind it and in a sense made it prisoner with White. Bad luck now made its play -- both the crowd and the guard included men who had fought at Gray's ropewalk. Surrounded, Preston made two mistakes, entirely understandable mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless. He did not immediately order the guard to march back up the street with White; instead he shifted its alignment from a column of twos to a single line, a rough semi-circle, facing out from the customshouse. And he ordered his men to load their muskets.

During the next fifteen minutes there was an ugly standoff. More men entered the street and the crowd pressed against the small ring of soldiers. Shouts of "kill them" came from the crowd along with snowballs and ice. The soldiers seem to have shouted back and held their muskets half-cocked with muzzles low but pointed in the crowd's direction. A few reckless spirits ran along the line of the soldiers lightly touching each musket with a stick and daring them to fire.

While he was marching the soldiers to White's aid, Preston had been warned to "take care of your Men for if they fire your life must be answerable." Preston had replied, I am sensible of it."
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Now with the crowd pressing against the line, Preston took his place near one end in front of the muzzles. As the noise increased and the crowd gave signs of some further action, a merchant, Richard Palmes, stepped forward to deliver another warning to Captain Preston.

As the two spoke a piece of ice struck Private Hugh Montgomery standing near the end of the line. The blow may have knocked him down, or more likely, the pain of it caused him to step back and then

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slip on the icy footing. When he regained his feet he fired. There was a short pause after this first shot, and then the remaining soldiers pulled their triggers. Their uneven bursts hit eleven men; three died instantly, one a few hours later, and a fifth several days later. Six wounded survived.

For the next twenty-four hours, public order threatened to break down completely. A crowd estimated at at least a thousand swirled through the streets almost immediately after the killings. So far as a crowd is capable of expression, this one called for vengeance against Preston, the guard, and the army. The governor showed courage and judgment in facing these people. Jailing Preston and the soldiers siphoned off some anger, but the presence of the 14th and 29th Regiments kept popular emotion near rage. Hutchinson did not want to order these troops out of town; a few hours of watching and listening to the town the next day told him he would have to give the order.