Marker for the site of the Boston Massacre near the Old State House

See the Historic Sites web page for an interactive location map.

The infamous Boston Massacre took place outside the Old State House on March 5, 1770. While a sidewalk marker is on the property of the State House, the shootings actually occurred closer to the Bank of America Building across the street, which was the location of a government custom house where taxes were collected and the money was stored until being sent to England. At the time, the road was named King Street, and thus the incident was originally called the Massacre on King Street.

Photo of the Old State House taken from the approximate location of the Boston Massacre

By early 1768, tensions had progressed between anti-British (Patriots) and pro-British (Loyalists) colonists to the point where Royal Governor Francis Bernard sent word to England that troops were needed to help calm the situation. In October, 4,000 British soldiers arrived in Boston. To make matters worse, the Governor enacted the 1765 Quartering Act, which allowed the soldiers to occupy commercial buildings and unoccupied private residences, though most slept in tents on Boston Common. Soldiers also supplemented their meager incomes by taking side jobs, creating competition with the locals and further exasperating the situation.

Prior to the massacre there were a number of violent events that took place. In February 1770, a boy named Christopher Sieder was shot and killed by a panicked Loyalist who was being harassed by members of the anti-British group Sons of Liberty, and there were a number of fights between civilians and soldiers. (Seider is considered the first person to be killed due to fighting between Patriots and Loyalists.)

On the evening of March 5, 1770, a lone British soldier was guarding the custom house when he was confronted by a group of teenagers who insulted one of his officers. This eventually led to the soldier smacking one of the kids in the head with the butt of his riffle. The ruckus drew crowds of civilians and armed soldiers to the scene, many who stumbled out of the taverns that populated this section of town. More people gathered, and tensions grew over the next half hour until the crowd began pelting the soldiers with snowballs and small rocks and daring them to fire. There are various stories about what happened next, but one account has it that a soldier was hit with a club or a big hunk of ice, causing him to fire into the crowd. That triggered the others to fire as well. When all was said and done, three civilians were dead on the spot and two others died at a later time due to injuries.

In the aftermath was America’s first fake news report. The Patriot newspapers reported a dozen civilians were killed or wounded by British troops who happily fired into the crowd for no good reason when systematically order to do so by their commanding officer. Paul Revere, a member of the Sons of Liberty who owned a print shop, made an engraving based on a drawing by Henry Pelham that was subsequently printed in the pro-Patriot newspaper, the Boston Gazette. It was created strictly to drum up support for the Patriot cause.

Print of the Boston Massacre by Paul Revere

In an ensuing trial, eight British soldiers and four civilians accused of murder were defended by John Adams (Patriot and future president) and Josiah Quincy. The jury agreed that the crowd was largely responsible for the incident, and six soldiers and the civilians were acquitted. Two soldiers, the one who fired the first shot and another who stabbed one victim to death with his bayonet, were found guilty of manslaughter, which was punishable by death. However, Adams and Quincy found a loophole in the law that stated that if you could read, instead of death you could be branded on the thumb with the letter M for manslaughter. At the time, the shame of that was worse than death.

There are other Boston Massacre-related sites around Boston, two of which are on the Freedom Trail® and part of Boston National Historical Park. A memorial statue erected in 1888 to the victims is located at Boston Common, and the graves of the victims and the boy killed in the earlier incident are located in the Granary Burying Ground.

Boston Massacre Memorial in Boston Common