Boston Massacre
Painted engraving
1770
Paul Revere Jr. after Henry Pelham

On March 5, 1770, tensions were high in Boston, a city of 15,000 inhabitants and 4,000 British soldiers. A crowd began to throw snowballs and insults at a small group of soldiers. Amid the chaos, shots were fired at the crowd and 2 musket balls ripped through the chest of Crispus Attucks, a soldier of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry, killing him instantly.

His death and that of the four other men became known as the Boston Massacre and fueled the American Revolution. Attucks became its first hero and is remembered in Boston each March 5.

Henry Pelham, a Boston engraver made a print of the shooting. After showing it to his brother-in-law, Paul Revere, a silversmith and engraver, Revere copied the print, added a poem, and on March 26 flooded the market with his prints without crediting Pelham. On March 27, 1770, Pelham wrote Revere “When I heard you was cutting a plate of the late Murder, I thought it impossible as I knew you was not capable unless you copied it from mine.”