A Reflection on the 256th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre
It is that unhappy anniversary of the Boston Massacre today. Perhaps that is why I found myself picking up Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre: A Family History (2020) at the bookshop on Monday. My intent had been to do some digging into the local town history, but while that is still on the top of my to-do list, it is March, and I often find myself coming back here. Why? I can have my guesses. The first being that I spent so much time working just outside of the site, giving daily tours discussing what had happened on 5 March 1770. The longer you spend with a subject, the more you wonder about how it happened.
Last year, I discussed how Dr. Joseph Warren gave a speech on the anniversary in 1775. Sadly, 250 years ago today, Dr. Joseph Warren is no longer with us, having been killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of 1775. It is now 1776. And in some respects, this will be a good thing: On 17 March 1776, the British will evacuate Boston.
I’m going to take a side-step here, and I think it’s an important one: Historical fiction can often be an excellent teaching tool. Why this side-step? Because last year, Laurie Halse Anderson published a fantastic middle grade book called Rebellion 1776. It starts right in on occupied Boston on 4 March 1776. (The paperback will be out on 26 May this year, if you want to wait.) However, it is important to note that one of the things that Laurie Halse Anderson included in this book, and part of the reason I am including it in this write up, is a quote from George Washington: “It was the 5th of March, which I recalled to [the soldiers’] remembrance as a day never to be forgotten—an engagement was fully expected and I never saw spirits higher, or more ardor prevailing.” Laurie explains in the citation that Washington was writing about the significance of the “Dorchester Heights success” falling on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre.1 Dorchester Heights was the bombardment of Boston by the Continental Army in March 1776, which would not have been possible without the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, thusly delivered by General Henry Knox.
It being March of 1776, there is still so much of the war in the years ahead. The Declaration of Independence will be signed in July, but the war will not officially end until 1783. The last battle – the decisive victory at Yorktown – will be in 1781. We will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Yorktown in September of 2031, which makes one wonder where we will be by then? But without that success on Dorchester Heights, on the sixth anniversary of the Boston Massacre no less, who knows where to war would have gone?
This month, I decided to put (almost) the full post in both places. If you’d like to receive my research ramblings in your inbox, you can go to the post on Substack to subscribe: Boston 1776 – by Robin Donovan Bocchiaro
In addition, I put a link to 2025’s post on the Boston Massacre at the end of the post on Substack because I did an overview of the events of 1770 in last year’s post commemorating the anniversary. If you’d like to skip straight there, you can click here: The Boston Massacre – by Robin Donovan Bocchiaro