Crispus Attucks - First Casualty of American Revolution

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Crispus Attucks

On March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks, a 47-year-old sailor and rope-maker of African and Native American descent, became the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and is traditionally regarded as the first American killed in the American Revolution. Attucks, who had escaped slavery twenty years earlier, led a crowd of colonists in a confrontation with British soldiers near the Custom House on King Street. According to trial testimony, Attucks brandished a wooden club and struck at Captain Thomas Preston before knocking away a soldier's gun and hitting him in the face. Two musket balls ripped through Attucks's chest, killing him instantly. Four other colonists—Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr—also died that night. Attucks's body lay in state at Faneuil Hall, and an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people—over half of Boston's population—attended the public funeral organized by Samuel Adams. The five victims were buried together in the Granary Burying Ground. In the nineteenth century, abolitionists including Frederick Douglass and William Cooper Nell championed Attucks as the first martyr for American liberty, using his memory to advance the cause of ending slavery and securing equal rights for African Americans. Crispus Attucks was born around 1723 near Framingham, Massachusetts, possibly in Natick, a "praying Indian town" established for Native Americans who had converted to Christianity. His father was Prince Yonger, an enslaved African, and his mother was Nancy Attucks, a Natick (Wampanoag) Indian. His surname derives from the Natick Indigenous word for "deer," while "Crispus" reflects the colonial practice of giving enslaved people Ancient Roman names. On October 2, 1750, William Brown (sometimes recorded as William Browne) of Framingham placed an advertisement in the *Boston Gazette* for the recovery of a runaway slave named "Crispas," described as 27 years old and exceptionally tall at six feet two inches—significantly taller than the average man of that era. In the twenty years between his escape and death, Attucks likely worked aboard whaling ships and as a rope-maker in Boston. He reportedly used the alias "Michael Johnson" to protect himself from recapture. At the time of the massacre, he was said to be residing in New Providence, the Bahamas, with his ship headed to North Carolina. On the evening of March 5, 1770, Attucks was drinking with other seamen at a local tavern when a British soldier came in seeking part-time work. The sailors harassed and cursed the soldier until he left. Tensions between Boston colonists and British troops had been escalating since the 1765 Stamp Act and the subsequent military occupation. That evening, a crowd gathered near the Custom House on King Street and began pelting a British sentry with stones, snowballs, chunks of ice, and wood. The sentry called for reinforcements, and Captain Thomas Preston arrived with seven soldiers. Attucks led an angry crowd toward the confrontation, brandishing wooden sticks and giving one to witness Patrick Keaton. An enslaved man named Andrew testified at the trial that Attucks swung his stick at Captain Preston and knocked away a soldier's gun, striking the soldier in the face. When one of the soldiers was struck by a projectile, he fired his musket into the crowd, and the remaining soldiers discharged their weapons in a chaotic volley. Attucks was the first to fall, struck by two musket balls in the chest. The British soldiers were tried for murder. John Adams, who later became the second President of the United States, served as their defense attorney. Adams characterized the crowd as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattos, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars," appealing to the jury's racial and class prejudices. He used Attucks's tall, robust physique to portray him as particularly intimidating and threatening. The strategy worked: Captain Preston and most soldiers were acquitted of murder. Two soldiers—Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery—were convicted of manslaughter and branded on their hands as punishment. Attucks was the only victim of the Boston Massacre whose name was widely remembered. Samuel Adams organized a massive funeral procession to Faneuil Hall, where the five victims' bodies lay in state before burial in a common grave at the Granary Burying Ground. In the nineteenth century, Attucks became a powerful symbol for the abolitionist movement. William Cooper Nell, a Black abolitionist and historian, and Frederick Douglass extolled Attucks as the first martyr in the cause of American liberty, using his memory to garner support for ending slavery and attaining equal rights for African Americans. Black Bostonians have commemorated the anniversary of Attucks's death since at least the 1850s. In 1888, a monument honoring Attucks and the other victims of the Boston Massacre was erected on Boston Common. In the early twentieth century, activists including William Monroe Trotter pushed the city of Boston to officially recognize March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day, a tradition that continues to the present day. Attucks was commemorated with a U.S. postage stamp during the American Revolution Bicentennial.