The Long Fuse - The Boston Massacre

American Political History · Oct 9, 2023 · 25m

On the night of March 5th, 1770, 8 terrified British soldiers, pelted with ice and clubs by a Boston crowd screaming at them to fire, fired. 5 colonists died. Samuel Adams called it a massacre, and Paul Revere engraved a picture of it that was a masterpiece and a lie. This is the story of the killing on King Street, and of the trial that followed, where a young patriot lawyer named John Adams stood up to defend the redcoats who had shot his neighbors, because he believed even hated men were owed the law.

It is a story of a town learning to be two things at once: a people who could turn 5 dead…