Massacre Day

The Boston Massacre, known as the “Incident on King Street” by the British, was an incident on this day in 1770, in which British Army soldiers, fearing for their lives under relentless attack by snowballs thrown by a jeering crowd, shot into said mob and killed people. Nine British regulars were charged; seven were acquitted and the other two were found guilty of manslaughter.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution - Alfred F. Young

In colonial times, George Robert Twelves Hewes worked a Boston shoemaker, a trade that paid little and garnered less respect. The coming of the British troops after 1768 activated his militant leanings. He entered the political arena and participated in the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He was less proud to have been at the tar and feathering of the Britisher who beat him bloody. Rejected by the army because he was too short, he put in service during the war on a privateer, crewed during the capture of several prizes, and got screwed out of the prize money.

After the war Hewes, like many artisans, moved out of Boston, only to fail to find greener pastures. He lived in destitute obscurity in Otsego county, in upstate New York. In the 1830s, however, the national mood had changed from willful forgetting of the revolution and its veterans to celebrating the few remaining vets.

Young builds a persuasive case that in the 1830s radical labor organizers and radical abolitionists portrayed Hewes as a heroic working-class icon. Hewes was feted in Boston to during the Fourth of July celebrations of 1835. The rads appropriated Hewes to make the point that it was not only General Washington and men of property like Hancock who made liberty in America possible. It was humble people, like Hewes, who contributed equally, and by God should be treated equally with shorter work hours and more tolerable work conditions.

Social conservatives, argues Young, had been active in minimizing the radical aspects of the American Revolution. They downplayed the fact that the Tea Party had been a revolutionary act. Men of property developed Boston to the point that places like The Liberty Tree and familiar places and buildings associated with the Revolution were left to rack and ruin or pulled down. The Fourth of July was privileged over all other holidays that once celebrated the prewar events such as the Boston Massacre.

The book is divided into two parts, Hewes’ life and times and an examination of the role that personal and collective memory play in influencing of understanding of history. This book is an interesting and accessible read for general readers who want a deeper insight into how is history is used by conservatives and progressives for their own social and political purposes.