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Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770

Propaganda

During the American Revolution, hostilities toward the British were sometimes driven by propaganda --- writings or depictions designed to provoke rage and anger through exaggeration. Below is a woodcut made by famous patriot Paul Revere after the Boston Massacre. View his depiction of this infamous event. If you were viewing this depiction in 1770, what conclusions would you come to about the Boston Massacre? What tone was he trying to convey?

Three weeks after the incident the silversmith and patriot Paul Revere produced and distributed this engraving. Although he knew people who were eyewitnesses he probably was not there himself. It became the official patriot version of the incident.

Record your observations on this page of your Detective's Notebook.

Click HERE for more information on the engraving.

Click HERE for more information on Paul Revere.

Transcript of poem from Paul Revere’s print The Bloody Massacre:

Unhappy Boston! see thy Sons deplore

Thy hallow’d walks besmear’d with guiltless gore

While faithless....... and his savage bands

With murd'rous rancour stretch their bloody hands

Like fierce barbarians grinning o’er their prey

Approve the carnage and enjoy the day.

If scalding drops from rage, from anguish wrung

If speechless sorrow, lab’ring for a tongue

Or if a weeping world can ought appease

The plaintive ghosts of victims such as these

The patriot’s copious tears for each are shed

A glorious tribute which embalms the dead.

But know, Fate summons to that awful goal

Where Justice strips the murd’rer of his soul,

Should venal ......., the scandal of the land,

Snatch the relentless villain from her Hand

Keen execrations on this plate inscrib’d

Shall reach a Judge who never can be brib’d.

The unhappy sufferers were Mesr’s Sam’l Gray,

Sam’l Maverick, James Caldwell

Crispus Attucks, & Patr. Carr Killed

Six wounded; two of them

(Christ’r Monk & John Clark) mortally.

Elements Paul Revere used in his engraving to shape public opinion (Propaganda):

The British are lined up and an officer is giving an order to fire, implying that the British soldiers are the aggressors.
The colonists are shown reacting to the British when in fact they had attacked the soldiers.
British faces are sharp and angular in contrast to the Americans’ softer, more innocent features. This makes the British look more menacing.
The British soldiers look like they are enjoying the violence, particularly the soldier at the far end.
The colonists, who were mostly laborers, are dressed as gentlemen. Elevating their status could affect the way people perceived them.
The only two signs in the image that you can read are “Butcher’s Hall” and “Customs House,” both hanging directly over the British soldiers.
There is a distressed woman in the rear of the crowd. This played on eighteenth-century notions of chivalry.
There appears to be a sniper in the window beneath the “Butcher’s Hall” sign.
Dogs tend to symbolize loyalty and fidelity. The dog in the print is not bothered by the mayhem behind him and is staring out at the viewer.
The sky is illustrated in such a way that it seems to cast light on the British “atrocity.”
Crispus Attucks is visible in the lower left-hand corner. In many other existing copies of this print, he is not portrayed as African American.
The weather conditions depicted do not match the testimony presented at the soldier’s trial (no snow).
The soldiers’ stance indicates an aggressive, military posture.

OTHER INTERESTING FACTS

In the first edition, the time on the clock was incorrect. Revere had it corrected immediately.
The trial of the British soldiers was the first time a judge used the phrase “reasonable doubt.”
One of the British soldiers named Pierce Butler left the army and became a South Carolina plantation owner. In 1787, he was appointed as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

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