American history

Was the Boston Massacre really a massacre?

 

Monday, March 2, 2015 - 05:00

Paul Revere made this engraving and sold it to stir up anti-British sentiment. Drawn by Henry Pelham, it was powerful colonial propaganda -- but inaccurate.

    On March 5, 1770, British soldiers shot into a rowdy crowd and killed five colonists, a tragedy that became known as the Boston Massacre. The shooting has been studied and debated over and again in history books. But was it, strictly speaking, a massacre?