Boston Massacre Quotes

I want a place. It has to do with the kind of person I want to be. And how I fit in to everything. I want people to listen when I open my mouth. And know I'm worth listening to." She stared at me. "That's all?" To me it was not all, it was everything.

Are all American girls as daft as you, Rachel?" "I hope so," I said.

Because that’s how intelligent people conduct themselves. They allow for each other’s differences.

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.

I don't know what this Liberty thing is all about, Rachel. None of us do, yet. I pray that if we ever achieve it, we will know how to control it. And not let it control us.

The first school shooting that attracted the attention of a horrified nation occurred on March 24, 1998, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Two boys opened fire on a schoolyard full of girls, killing four and one female teacher. In the wake of what came to be called the Jonesboro massacre, violence experts in media and academia sought to explain what others called “inexplicable.” For example, in a front-page Boston Globe story three days after the tragedy, David Kennedy from Harvard University was quoted as saying that these were “peculiar, horrible acts that can’t easily be explained.” Perhaps not. But there is a framework of explanation that goes much further than most of those routinely offered. It does not involve some incomprehensible, mysterious force. It is so straightforward that some might (incorrectly) dismiss it as unworthy of mention. Even after a string of school shootings by (mostly white) boys over the past decade, few Americans seem willing to face the fact that interpersonal violence—whether the victims are female or male—is a deeply gendered phenomenon. Obviously both sexes are victimized. But one sex is the perpetrator in the overwhelming majority of cases. So while the mainstream media provided us with tortured explanations for the Jonesboro tragedy that ranged from supernatural “evil” to the presence of guns in the southern tradition, arguably the most important story was overlooked. The Jonesboro massacre was in fact a gender crime. The shooters were boys, the victims girls. With the exception of a handful of op-ed pieces and a smattering of quotes from feminist academics in mainstream publications, most of the coverage of Jonesboro omitted in-depth discussion of one of the crucial facts of the tragedy. The older of the two boys reportedly acknowledged that the killings were an act of revenge he had dreamed up after having been rejected by a girl. This is the prototypical reason why adult men murder their wives. If a woman is going to be murdered by her male partner, the time she is most vulnerable is after she leaves him. Why wasn’t all of this widely discussed on television and in print in the days and weeks after the horrific shooting? The gender crime aspect of the Jonesboro tragedy was discussed in feminist publications and on the Internet, but was largely absent from mainstream media conversation. If it had been part of the discussion, average Americans might have been forced to acknowledge what people in the battered women’s movement have known for years—that our high rates of domestic and sexual violence are caused not by something in the water (or the gene pool), but by some of the contradictory and dysfunctional ways our culture defines “manhood.” For decades, battered women’s advocates and people who work with men who batter have warned us about the alarming number of boys who continue to use controlling and abusive behaviors in their relations with girls and women. Jonesboro was not so much a radical deviation from the norm—although the shooters were very young—as it was melodramatic evidence of the depth of the problem. It was not something about being kids in today’s society that caused a couple of young teenagers to put on camouflage outfits, go into the woods with loaded .22 rifles, pull a fire alarm, and then open fire on a crowd of helpless girls (and a few boys) who came running out into the playground. This was an act of premeditated mass murder. Kids didn’t do it. Boys did.

The historian A.  J.  P.  Taylor calls the massacre ‘the decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule’. No other ‘punishment’ in the name of law and order had similar casualties: ‘The Peterloo Massacre had claimed about eleven lives. Across the Atlantic, British soldiers provoked into firing on Boston Commons had killed five men and were accused of deliberate massacre. In response to the self-proclaimed Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin, the British had executed sixteen Irishmen.’ Jallianwala confirmed how little the British valued Indian lives.

Almost all our historical teaching was on this level. History was a series of unrelated, unintelligible but—in some way that was never explained to us—important facts with resounding phrases tied to them. Disraeli brought peace with honour. Clive was astonished at his moderation. Pitt called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. And the dates, and the mnemonic devices! (Did you know, for example, that the initial letters of “A black Negress was my aunt: there’s her house behind the barn” are also the initial letters of the battles in the Wars of the Roses?) Bingo, who “took” the higher forms in history, revelled in this kind of thing. I recall positive orgies of dates, with the keener boys leaping up and down in their places in their eagerness to shout out the right answers, and at the same time not feeling the faintest interest in the meaning of the mysterious events they were naming. “1587?” “Massacre of St. Bartholomew!” “1707?” “Death of Aurangzeeb!” “1713?” “Treaty of Utrecht!” “1773?” “The Boston Tea Party!” “1520?” “Oo, Mum, please, Mum—” “Please, Mum, please, Mum! Let me tell him, Mum!” “Well; 1520?” “Field of the Cloth of Gold!” And so on.

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

Samuel Adams, author of the following editorial, argued: For it is certainly beyond human art and sophistry, to prove the British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights, and, who live in a province where the law requires them to be equip'd with arms, &c. are guilty of an illegal act, in calling upon one another to be provided with them, as the law directs . . . . One man has as good reason to affirm, that a few, in calling for a military force under pretence of supporting civil authority, secretly intended to introduce a general massacre, as another has to assert, that a number of loyal subjects, by calling upon one another to provided with arms, according to law, intended to bring on an insurrection. It will be equally difficult to prove it illegal, for a number of British subjects, to invite as many of their fellow subjects as they please, to convene and consult together, on the most prudent and constitutional measures for the redress of their grievances . . . .52 Adams thus appealed, as had the Boston resolution passed the previous September, to the right to have arms as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights as well as the duty under Massachusetts law to be armed.

I understood now that you could be as soft as the silken draperies, shine like the copper candle holders, and have something tick quietly inside you and never miss a beat, even if you lived in a rude sod hut in the wilderness.

delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments) published in Milan in 1764, and had copied no less than twenty-six extracts of it into his 1776 Commonplace Book. John Adams had quoted from Beccaria in his celebrated defense of the British soldiers unjustly accused during the Boston Massacre. Benjamin Franklin admired Beccaria hugely. Indeed, one of the great reproaches of the eighteenth-century radicals and liberals against the hereditary despotisms of the day was the lavish use that monarchy made of torture and of capital punishment. Beccaria’s treatise had exposed the futility and stupidity, as well as the sadism, of these practices—condemned as “cruel and unusual” in the language of the Eighth Amendment to the federal Constitution.

Maybe you’re thinking this is where the Declaration of Independence comes into the story. Time to split from England, right? Time to become a new nation! Nope. Not yet. The so-called Boston Massacre changed the way some colonists thought about their mother country, but they weren’t

John Hancock averred in his oration on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre: "From a well regulated militia we have nothing to fear . . . . They fight for their houses, their lands, for their wives, their children, for all who claim the tenderest names, and are held dearest in their hearts, they fight pro aris & focis, for their liberty, and for themselves, and for their God." Hancock added that "no militia ever appear'd in more flourishing condition, than that of this province now doth

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

McAuly,

Faced with having to explain away the threats uttered by the prisoners, the young lawyer made a claim that hence became a staple of lawyers faced with foul words uttered by their client: “Words are often misrepresented, whether through ignorance, inattention or malice...for the tone of voice, the gesture, all that proceeds, accompanies and follows the different ideas which men annex to the same word, may so alter or modify a man’s discourse that it is almost impossible to repeat them precisely in the manner in which they were spoken. Besides, violent and uncommon actions...leave a trace in the multitude of circumstances that attend them, but words remain only in the memory of the hearers, who are commonly negligent or prejudiced.

In his diligence he had developed an almost unrestrained passion for the law, now feeling its power, and its potential. “To what higher object, to what greater character,” he told the lawyer Jonathan Sewall, “can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready to command, to

these criminals, charged with murder, are not yet legally proved guilty, and therefore, however criminal, are entitled, by the laws of God and man, to all legal counsel and aid; that my duty as a man obliged me to undertake; that my duty as a lawyer strengthened the obligation;

Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson "doubted his authority to order the soldiers to fire upon the populace." [A] These boys had shown several times in the vicinity of this same so-called Liberty Hall of what acts they were capable, and there was not one of them but that looked forward to the time when it should be possible to do something more than simply vent his displeasure in words. They had been among the throng who, in open defiance of the law, had made prisoner of Giles Hendricks; tarred and feathered, and then carried him in a cart through the principal streets of the city to the Liberty

You will perhaps have heard something of a disreputable Brawl occurring in Boston in March of three Years past, which I have often seen in Newspaper and Broadside called a “Massacre,” most irresponsibly—and most inaccurately, to one who has been privy to the actual Occurrence. I was not present myself, but have spoken to numerous of the Officers and Soldiers who were. If they speak truly, and I believe they do, such a View as is given by the Boston Press of the Matter has been monstrous. Boston is by all Accounts a perfect Hellhole of republican Sentiment, with so-called “Marching Societies” at large in the Streets in every Weather, these being no more than an Excuse for the Assembly of Mobs, whose chief Sport is the tormenting of the Troops quartered there. Higgins tells me that no Man would dare go out alone in Uniform, for fear of these Mobs, and that even when in greater Numbers, harassment from the public soon drove them back to their Quarters, save when compelled by Duty to persist. A Patrol of five Soldiers was so beset one Evening, pursued not only by insults of the grossest Nature, but by hurled Stones, Clods of Earth and Dung, and other such Rubbish. Such was the Press of the Mob around them that the Men feared for their Safety, and thus presented their Weapons, in hopes of discouraging the raucous Attentions rained upon them. So far from accomplishing this Aim, the Action provoked still greater Outrages from the Crowd, and at some Point, a Gun was fired. No one can say for sure whether the Shot was discharged from the Crowd, or from one of the Soldier’s Weapons, let alone whether it were by Accident or in Deliberation, but the Effect of it … well, you will have sufficient Knowledge of such Matters to imagine the Confusion of subsequent Events. In the End, five of the Mob were killed, and while the Soldiers were buffeted and badly handled, they escaped alive, only to be made Scapegoats by the malicious Rantings of the mob’s Leaders in the Press, these so styled as to make it seem a wanton and unprovoked Slaughter of Innocents, rather than a Matter of Self-defense against a Mob inflamed by Drink and Sloganeering. I confess that my Sympathies must lie altogether with the Soldiers; I am sure so much is obvious to you. They were brought to Trial, where the Judge discovered Three to be Innocent, but no Doubt felt it would be Dangerous to his own Situation to free them all.

outhouse,