The Boston Massacre

Rating:
Summary: A disturbingly slanted viewpoint
Review: Hiller B. Zobel's The Boston Massacre has, for a few decades, been available as an example of American history as opposed to American mythology. The author is clear about the misrepresentations on both sides of the tension but it is his look at the ways in which the radicals controlled the town, the politics and the media through the use of the mob and terror tactics that is refreshing. Boston merchants and politicos, such as Samuel Adams, manipulated a situation for their own ends and began writing their own version right from the start. After the success of the American Revolution , this version would be enshrined as official history. The book starts slow and is a little dry and often confusing for those with with little previous knowledge of pre-Revolutionary Boston politics but it picks up speed and energy as it races toward the day of the Massacre itself. A refreshing look at an event that was small in historical impact but large in legend.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Misnamed Event in American History
Review: Hiller B. Zobel's The Boston Massacre has, for a few decades, been available as an example of American history as opposed to American mythology. The author is clear about the misrepresentations on both sides of the tension but it is his look at the ways in which the radicals controlled the town, the politics and the media through the use of the mob and terror tactics that is refreshing. Boston merchants and politicos, such as Samuel Adams, manipulated a situation for their own ends and began writing their own version right from the start. After the success of the American Revolution , this version would be enshrined as official history. The book starts slow and is a little dry and often confusing for those with with little previous knowledge of pre-Revolutionary Boston politics but it picks up speed and energy as it races toward the day of the Massacre itself. A refreshing look at an event that was small in historical impact but large in legend.

Rating:
Summary: Very Well Written
Review: This is a very readable account of the situation in Boston at the beggining of the revolutionary war. The various insurrections which lead to the Boston massacre are examined in a light which shows the revolutionaries as the drunken, violent mob that it indeed was. A very well written and balanced account of what is a very misunderstood and propagandized event.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating History Replacing Legend and Propaganda
Review: With his book The Boston Massacre, Hiller B. Zobel presents a masterful piece of reasoned, historical research to dispel one of the great myths surrounding the beginnings of the American Revolution. Zobel writes, "The Boston Massacre, in short, is a part, not only of our national history, but of our national mythology. ...Not the least of the Massacre's attractions as an object of historic contemplation is the speed with which the men of 1770 (on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the political fence) recognized the mythological value of what happened in King Street." Layer by layer, Zoble peels away myth and propaganda surrounding that infamous event of March fifth, 1770, so that we can view it clearly, apart from any partisan spin. What remains is an incident with little resemblance to the legend most of us learned in school.
Zobel carefully and exhaustively explains the events that led up to the violence on King Street, and introduces us to all the principle players who influenced the drama. He details the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Customs Duties, all of which stirred up anger and resentment in Boston, and he tells of the violence and the threat of violence that was used by Boston's radical elements to try to counter these acts. Most importantly, he explains why the British soldiers were in Boston in the first place. (The Massachusetts Colony had no provision for an armed civil police force, and when mob violence threatened the laws and the peace as they did during the protests of the Stamp Act and Custom Duties, the only legal recourse to counter it was a military presence.)
The picture of the Boston Massacre that emerges from Zobel's book is not the classic one of ruthless British soldiers callously firing on a peaceably gathered crowd of citizens as the legend has it. Rather, he paints a picture of frightened and confused troops, backed into a corner by an angry mob that already had a reputation for perpetuating violence, and firing in confusion rather than on order. The fact that the story came down to us in the form of the legend of righteous citizens attacked by evil soldiers owes much to the propaganda abilities of Samuel Adams, and little to facts as they happened.
Just as carefully as he explained the events leading up to the massacre, Zobel details its aftermath, most notably the trial of the soldiers who fired on the mob. As an Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, Zobel is well qualified to understand and dissect this chapter of the drama, and he explains it clearly and concisely. He shows us why John Adams took on the defense of the British soldiers, and why he won his case. Through detailing the records of the trial, he leaves the popular legend of the massacre in shreds.
The Boston Massacre is an important book for understanding the events that ultimately brought the colonies to revolt. It is well researched, with a good bibliography. Zobel's writing is clear, and he has a knack for holding the reader's interest even through long and detailed passages. I would recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in America's late colonial period and revolution - it will not disappoint them.


Rating:
Summary: A disturbingly slanted viewpoint
Review: Zobel is a lawyer, which might partly explain his thoroughly negative slant on this subject. It is, otherwise, solidly factual, both in the integrity of the sources and the density of the details.
Indeed, the style of the writing is determined by Zobel's seeming primary concern to bring to the page these details, in a way that belies a lack of writing ability. For example, one of many minor character's name (e.g. Matchett, John Codman, Elias Depree,all on one page) is brought to the page without explanation of who this person is, of what significance, mentioned often again in the same way, so that one is left without a clue as to the proportionate importance of these many names. Other times, he introduces a person with a brief biography, only to leave it for 50 pages or more before returning to him in his significant context. He has no sense of persepective for the larger events of the day - for instance, that the activities of the so-called "mob" of American radicals was hardly violent in comparison to the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, or indeed, just about any other revolution in the history of the world. He makes no distinction between a minor act of resistance and a major one.
But what is most negative is his interpretation of these events. He forever gives the worst motives to the American rebels, especially a devious and manipulative Samuel Adams, whom he also couples with drunken "mobs", failing to point out that Adams was a non-drinker himself. While Samuel Adams is a ruthless demagogue, who is intent upon brutishly moving Boston to the brink of civil war with mob action, he at the same time admits that the "mobs" were very well controlled, and fails to point out that in almost all cases property damage occured, and that physical violence almost always amounted to harsh pranks (tar and feathering, for instance), as if property damage and the threat of violence equals murderous action. He even goes to the ridiculous extent of accusing Adams' INaction of dire motives: "Sam Adams, by his very inaction, unmistakably conveyed the threat of violence", a case of damned-if-he-does-damned-if-he-doesn't. By not pointing out that James Otis was probably manic depressive, he makes this brilliant but emotionally fragile man seem like an idiot. At the same time, he interprets British actions as merely incompetent, indeed goes out of his way to point to their lack of evil intent or even sympathy towards Boston's citizens. Failing to point out that Britain was sucking America dry, and had a thoroughly abrasive condescension towards Americans that amounted to repression. John Adams is seen as, however brilliant in only one of his trial speeches (reluctantly acknowledged by Zobel) is in cahoots with the rebels, and is mostly after a lawyer's fees. Zobel will revert to the most outlandishly convoluted motives to make a negative point about these - to him - vicious Americans, as when NOT killing Richardson and Wilmot in the Seider incident: "If the mob let them live long enough to be convicted, they both could hang." Time and again, one rebel after another, is seen in this light by Zobel, within an environment which Zobel refuses to see in any but a modern context, and even then disallowing civil disobedience which he considers oh-so-uncivil, rather than in any way sincere or justified.

Both as a work of literature, and as a work of history, Zobel fails - to be entertaining, or to be in the least fair-minded. At the time of its publication, a large number of vastly more credible historians voiced strong criticism of this book, including the pre-eminent historian of the period,Bernard Bailyn.