Talk:Boston Massacre

From Academic Kids

Featured on Template:March 5 selected anniversaries (may be in HTML comment)

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David McCullough's John Adams has a completely different take on the event. From this vantage, it appears that the mob was armed, the soldiers were attacked, and that the soldiers did indeed act in self-defense. JSeer

but in the involvement of ordinary working Americans in an important revolutionary event.

I don't see how this chucking of ice at sentries constitutes an important revolutionary event

Well they shot them so yah, go figure. See also: propaganda -- Susan Mason

It was important because Sam Adams used it for propaganda and turned the unruly drunken mob into a band of patriots. --mav

So basically a drunken crowd attacked a small group of soldiers and the soldiers defended themselves?

that depends on whether u think their usage of force was appropriate to the situation. two soldiers were convicted of manslaughter. Susan Mason

I somehow doubt it's possible to get a balanced account of what really happened. But I'm sure Boston police today wouldn't be very pacifistic if attacked by a drunken hard-object-lobbing crowd

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I'd like to remove the Kent State reference. There are a significant number of differences between the events. I know Wiki isn't a Usenet group, but thought I'd ask for objections first since the phrase has been in this article for some time. If there are no objections, I'll remove the reference at the end of the week.

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I hought the debate over Crispus Attucks was wether he was African American, not whether he was the first victim. Rmhermen 17:09 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

That's a different debate. --mav

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Revere incorrectly depicted the event as happening during the day, in close quarters, and with the British commander behind his troops

Unless there's an eclipse going on, it looks like there's a moon in the top left of the engraving...

fvincent 07:10, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

And the moon is only out at night? --mav 07:13, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think fvincent makes a good observation. Artists generally include the moon as an indication that it is night. Artists generally include the sun as an indication that it is -- Nunh-huh 07:18, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

And a bright blue sky is often an indication of day. day.[1] (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/seminar/unit1/images/boston.jpg) --mav

Indeed. This is not a particularly photorealistic rendering, so it's best not to assert that it is "erroneous" because we think the blue sky is a "better" indicator than the moon, especially when we know the event was at night. - Nunh-huh 07:33, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK - the image has been updated and so has the text. --mav

As it works out, Revere did the engraving and the publishing, but not the colorization. This is an early case of Ted-Turner-gone-wrong. Though Revere, as publisher, still must bear a bit of responsibility for the blue. - Nunh-huh 07:46, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

A couple things to keep in mind: the style of the time was not to create large black areas, and colors were generally washed-out-looking compared to to what we expect (not least to save on ink expenses). So the fact that the sky is bright blue rather than pale blue could be the artist's indication that the sky should be seen as really pretty dark. But I doubt that the colorists spent as much time thinking about it as as has been spent writing about it here. :-) Stan 08:09, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• I agree that our "expectation" of a photographically realistic depiction is anachronistic. Besides which, the engraving was propaganda, not journalism! :) - Nunh-huh 08:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm looking at a different coloring of the picture in my American Pageant book, and the sky is a darker blue and actually appears to be depicting night. Also, in this version, the dead/wounded man in the bottom left corner is colored white instead of black.

British troops' defence

The British troops thought they were being pelted by rocks.

POV

Since I can't figure out what the problem is from reading this talk page, I'm removing the POV tag. If anyone feels like reinstating it, please explain what your specific beef with the article is. 82.92.119.11 17:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Where's my beef? What is meant by 'military occupation'? If it is with respect to the indigenous peoples, then that needs to be clarified. If it's with respect to the nonindigenous colonials, then is it really the correct phrase? mat_x 11:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)