Paul Revere is best known for his “midnight ride” celebrated in the 1860 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But Revere’s role in the American Revolution extended far beyond that famous 1775 mission to warn the towns of Lexington and Concord that British troops were on the move from Boston.
A silversmith by trade, Revere also produced copperplate prints for book and magazine illustrations, portraits and political drawings that supported the nascent Patriot movement. Revere’s most effective anti-British propaganda piece was “The Bloody Massacre,” a color rendition of the 1770 melee known as the Boston Massacre.
Printed just weeks after British troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd of enthusiastic Bostonians, Revere’s one-sided portrayal of the Boston Massacre likely lit a flame under the Patriots’ cause and stoked anti-British sentiment in restless colonies.
Paul Revere: goldsmith and son of freedom
Paul Revere apprenticed as a goldsmith and silversmith in Boston with his father, a French Huegenot immigrant named Apollos Rivoire, who died when Revere was 19, leaving him the sole means of sustaining the family. Revere became a hardworking, middle-class craftsman who leveraged his skills to create new business opportunities.
One of those new markets was printmaking, which Revere began working around 1765, says Robert Shimp, director of research and the adult program at Paul Revere House in Boston.
Revere was hired for all types of day-to-day printmaking jobs – graduation certificates, publicity trading cards, business receipts – but he also produced overtly political prints in support of his membership in the Sons of Liberty, the popular agitators who would later plan the Boston Tea Party. .
To celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, for example, the proud Patriots erected an obelisk in Boston Common, but it burned down in a noisy celebration the night of its unveiling. Fortunately, Revere had an excellent memory and produced a detailed engraving of all four sides of the obelisk.
Engraving by Paul Revere of the four sides of the obelisk erected on Boston Common to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act.
Library of Congress
“This is a very important political first impression of Revere,” says Shimp. In a patriotic fashion, Revere dedicated the print “[t]o every freedom lover… by his real sons born in Boston, New England. “
Two years later, Revere created an even more iconic political piece known as the Liberty Bowl, a solid silver bowl commissioned by the Sons of Liberty to honor “the glorious 92,” members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. who refused to cancel a letter of protest. the Townshend Acts which taxed British imports such as tea, paper and glass.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which exhibits the Liberty Bowl, claims Revere’s Bowl is one of the nation’s “three most treasured historical treasures”, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The “bloody massacre” as timely propaganda
On March 5, 1770, a mob of Bostonians harassed a lone British soldier on guard at customs, and when seven other British soldiers came under his protection, they were bombarded with snowballs and stones. In the skirmish, one of the British soldiers opened fire on the unarmed crowd without order and further shots were fired in the chaos.
When the smoke cleared, three Bostonians were lying dead on the street – including a former black slave docker named Crispus Attucks – and two more later died from their injuries. They would later be hailed as the first victims of the American Revolution.
As British soldiers awaited trial in prison, both sides of the clash, pro-British patriots and conservatives, rushed to share their conflicting accounts of what happened on March 5. Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston ”to counter British military depositions later published under the title“ A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston in New England ”.
But none of these posts would have the visceral impact of a large hand-colored print sold by Paul Revere on March 26, just three weeks after the violent clash, titled “The Bloody King Street Massacre.”
Designed to serve as patriotic propaganda, Revere’s engraving was a grossly biased depiction of the event. Instead of a chaotic melee with violence on both sides, it showed an organized, sneering line of British soldiers shooting at innocent unarmed people in response to obvious orders from Captain Thomas Preston. The engraving even added the fictitious name “Butcher’s Hall” above the customs to further evoke the carnage in the streets.
What is clear from the historical records is that Revere was not the original creator of this now iconic print. It was copied almost blow for blow from a print made by a young artist named Henry Pelham and entrusted to Revere. As Revere did not keep a diary, we do not know his side of the story, but in a letter to Revere dated March 29, 1770, Pelham accused the goldsmith of “the most dishonorable deeds of which you could well be. guilty “. basically stealing Pelham’s print and selling it as his own.
Shimp of the House of Paul Revere says that “borrowing” ideas from another artist or printmaker was common in the 18th century, when copyright laws weren’t so strict, but he sees a different motive in it. Revere’s appropriation of the powerful image.
“As the Revolution progressed, it became more and more an information battle, allowing your side of history to be known as quickly as possible,” says Shimp. “This is how I read Revere’s reaction. “We have to get this thing out right away!” And that’s exactly what he did. Revere had 200 copies for sale at the end of March.
Lasting impact of the “bloody massacre”
Today, Revere’s “Bloody Massacre” print is included in nearly every American history textbook and is indelibly linked to the events of the Boston Massacre, with or without precision.
But what would the violent image have meant for Revere’s contemporaries? Revere certainly hoped he would enrage the American public and instigate colonial resistance to British military occupation. To get his point across, Revere included a poem with the print, which begins:
Unhappy Boston! See your sons lament,
Your sacred walks are stained with innocent blood;
While unfaithful Preston and his savage gangs,
With murderous grudge stretch out their bloody hands;
Like ferocious barbarians smiling in front of their prey,
Approve of the carnage and enjoy the day.
Shimp says there is little evidence of how Bostonians or other settlers immediately reacted to Revere’s imprint, but there is a tantalizing clue of exactly one year later.
On March 5, 1771, to commemorate the first anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere created a “striking exhibit” in his home. He made new prints of some of his best pieces of propaganda, including the “Bloody Massacre,” and placed them in his windows to be lit from within. Passers-by were presented with almost cinematic images depicting the tragic events of the previous March.
According to newspaper accounts, Revere’s bright display drew massive crowds.
“The whole was so well executed,” writes the Boston Gazette, “that the spectators, who numbered several thousand, were struck with solemn silence, and their faces covered with melancholy.”
Maison Paul Revere recently hosted a re-enactment of the Revere exhibit to commemorate the event’s 250th anniversary.
“If you go by the newspaper account, thousands of Bostonians saw this in a city of only 15,000 people at the time,” says Shimp, “so it certainly had a visual impact a year after the massacre. himself.
