Boston Massacre

In commemoration of what came to be called the Boston Massacre, the city of Boston set aside a day to commemorate the event, on or near its anniversary, and popularly known as Massacre Day. The Massacre Day commemorations featured an oration, ostensibly to honor those who died, but more importantly to stir the sentiments of the Boston Patriots and stoke the revolutionary spirit. Each year the text of the orations was printed and distributed throughout the colonies.

In April 1771, James Lovell delivered the first oration. “Make the bloody 5th of March the era of the resurrection of your birthrights, which have been murdered by the very strength that nursed them in their infancy,” he declared.

The following year’s oration was one of the most memorable. Dr. Joseph Warren, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, decried taxation without representation and the maintenance of a standing army among a civilian population. “The voice of your fathers’ blood cries to you from the ground: ‘My sons scorn to be slaves!’ In vain we met the frowns of tyrants; in vain, we crossed the boisterous ocean, found a new world, and prepared it for the happy residence of liberty; in vain, we toiled; in vain, we fought; we bled in vain, if you, our offspring, want valour to repel the assaults of her invaders! Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors; but like them resolve, never to part with your birthright.”

John Hancock delivered the oration in 1774. “Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny….I have the most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America.”

On Massacre Day in 1775, the atmosphere in Boston was tense and explosive. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were only a month away. After a rumor swept through the city that British officers had vowed to kill any man who spoke at the commemoration, Joseph Warren insisted that he be given the honor. The Old South Meeting House was packed that day, standing room only. Warren climbed in through a window in the back of the building and took his place behind the pulpit, with armed British soldiers stationed throughout the crowd. Warren was not intimidated. “Our streets are again filled with armed men; our harbour is crowded with ships of war; but these cannot intimidate us; our liberty must be preserved; it is far dearer than life, we hold it even dear as our allegiance; we must defend it against the attacks of friends as well as enemies; we cannot suffer even Britons to ravish it from us….. The man who meanly will submit to wear a shackle, contemns the noblest gift of heaven, and impiously affronts the God that made him free.” Three months later, Warren was dead; killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The Massacre Day commemorations continued in Boston throughout the Revolutionary War. But in 1783, with the war won, the city ceased the event, substituting instead a celebration on July 4—Independence Day.

Twelve of the thirteen Massacre Day orations were delivered on or about March 5, the anniversary of the event. But the first Massacre Day oration was delivered in Boston on April 2, 1771.

The image is Paul Revere’s famous engraving, which has been the subject of a previous Dose.