All of a sudden, the Boston Massacre is in the news.
Journalists and historians such as Josh Marshall, Radley Balko and Ted Widmer have all written essays in recent days arguing that the uprising against thuggish federal agents in Minneapolis has similarities to the events of Monday, March 5, 1770. That’s when a company of British soldiers who were occupying Boston fired on an angry mob, killing five people.
Follow my Bluesky newsfeed for additional news and commentary. And please join my Patreon for just $6 a month. You’ll receive a supporters-only newsletter every Thursday.
In 1983, while I was an American history student at Boston University, I wrote my master’s thesis on “The Boston Massacre and the Press.” In it, I documented how the local newspapers covered “the Horrid Massacre in Boston.” It was a one-sided affair, as the Patriots had driven out Loyalist printers in the years leading up to the Massacre.
One example: In 1769, John Mein of the Boston Chronicle published the names of Patriot merchants who were secretly violating an agreement not to important British goods. Among those merchants was John Hancock. A Patriot gang descended on Mein, and he was forced to flee to England. The Chronicle continued to publish under Mein’s more cautious business partner, John Fleeming, but it lost readers and influence, shutting down a few months after the Massacre.
For some time I’ve wanted to make my thesis available, but I also wanted to convert it into text and do some editing. I didn’t get around to it, but I did scan it as a PDF, and the text is searchable. And here’s a technical note: I wrote it on a Radio Shack Color Computer using a word-processing program called VIP Writer, which was a WordStar clone. I printed it on a daisy-wheel printer. Those were the days.
You can download my thesis here.
