The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British solders. On the cold, snowy night of March 5, 1770, a mob of American colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building.
The commanding officer at the Customs House, ordered his men to fix their bayonets and join the guard outside the building.The colonists responded by throwing snowballs and other objects at the British regulars, and Private Hugh Montgomery was hit, leading him to discharge his rifle at the crowd. Boston , the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and an important shipping town, was a major center of resistance to unpopular acts of taxation customs officials seized the Liberty , a sloop owned by leading Boston merchant John Hancock , on allegations that the ship had been involved in smuggling. The crowd continued to press around the soldiers, taunting them by yelling, "Fire!", by spitting at and throwing snowballs and other small objects at them. [ 23 ] Richard Palmes, a local innkeeper who was carrying a cudgel (ie, club), came up to Preston and asked if the soldiers' weapons were loaded. He recovered his weapon, and was thought to angrily shout "Damn you, fire!", then discharged it into the crowd though no command was actually given. Palmes swung his cudgel first at Montgomery, hitting his arm, and then at Preston. He narrowly missed Preston's head, striking him on the arm instead. In the days and weeks following the incident, a propaganda battle was waged between Boston's radicals and supporters of the government. Anonymous pamphlets were published describing the event from significantly different perspectives. A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, published under the auspices of the Boston town meeting, was principally written by James Bowdoin, a member of the governor's council and a vocal opponent of British colonial policy, along with Samuel Pemberton, and Joseph Warren.It described the shooting and other lesser incidents that took place in the days before as unprovoked attacks on peaceful, law-abiding inhabitants, and was, according to historian Neal Langley York, probably the most influential description of the event. The account it provided was drawn from more than 90 depositions taken after the event, and it included accusations that the soldiers sent by Captain Preston had been deployed with the intention of causing harm.[48] In the interest of minimizing impact on the jury pool, city leaders held back local distribution of the pamphlet, but sent copies to other colonies and to London, where they knew depositions collected by Governor Hutchinson were en route. A second pamphlet, Additional Observations on the Short Narrative, furthered the attack on crown officials by complaining that customs officials (one of whom had left Boston to carry Hutchinson's gathered depositions to London) were abandoning their posts under the pretense that it was too dangerous for them to do their duties.
（sorry, i don’t know how to do this essay.. Little bit hard to me ..so i do the research on the web... ）