History of the United States I / Unit 5 USH1 0624 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Boston Massacre
The idea
On March fifth, seventeen seventy, a crowd threw snowballs, rocks and sticks at soldiers guarding the customs house, goading and insulting them as lobster backs. The soldiers fired and five men died. Crispus Attucks, of Wampanoag and African descent, was the first, and the anchor calls him the first official casualty in the war for independence, while noting that nobody recognised the significance at the time. Eight soldiers faced murder charges and John Adams defended them.
In practice
Adams arguing that facts are stubborn things, and that whatever our wishes or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Where people slip
Paul Revere's engraving shows grim redcoats firing ruthlessly into unarmed fleeing civilians, and the anchor states outright that it deliberately misrepresented events. Eyewitnesses said the crowd initiated the confrontation. The Boston Gazette invented dialogue. Six soldiers were acquitted and two convicted of manslaughter. The most reproduced image of the incident is propaganda, and the course teaches it as evidence of how the event was used.
Your place on the trail
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Builds on
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