Attucks, Crispus

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 African American National Biography

Attucks, Crispus

(c. 1723–5 Mar. 1770)

, probably a sailor, was the first to be killed in the Boston Massacre of 5 March 1770. Generally regarded to have been of mixed ancestry (African, Indian, and white), Attucks seems to have hailed from a Natick Indian settlement, Mashpee (incorporated as a district in 1763, near Framingham, Massachusetts).

The Boston Massacre. “The massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770, in which Messrs Saml. Gray, Saml. Maverick, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr were killed, six other wounded, two of them mortally.” Engraving by Paul Revere, 1770. (Library of Congress.)

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While Attucks's life and background before the tragic event are uncertain, two reasonable conjectures stand out. First, he was a descendant of those Natick Indians converted to Christianity in the seventeenth century. One tribesman, John Attuck, was hanged on 22 June 1676 for allegedly conspiring with the Indian insurrection of that year. Second, it appears that Attucks may have once been a slave. The Boston Gazette of 2 October 1750 printed this notice: “Ran away from his Master, William Brown of Framingham on the 30th of September last, a mulatto Fellow, about twenty‐seven years of age, named Crispus, 6 feet 2 inches high, short curled hair, his knees nearer together than common.”

J. B. Fisher, who argues that Attucks had Indian blood, also claims that he became a crewman on a Nantucket whaler, owned by a Captain Folger, which was docked at the time of the Massacre in Boston harbor. A sailor, James Bailey, testified that the assaulting group, which Attucks headed, “appeared to be sailors.” John Adams (1735–1826) said that Attucks “was seen about eight minutes before the firing at the head of twenty or thirty sailors in Cornhill…. He was a stout fellow, whose very looks were enough to terrify any person…. He was about forty‐seven years old.”

The Bostonians' wrath had long been building against the stationing of the Fourteenth and Twenty‐ninth British regiments in the town. On the evening of 5 March, Attucks dined at Thomas Symmonds's victualing house and, learning of the commotion taking place at the customshouse on King Street, joined a group headed in that direction. It is said that he and others had earlier threatened British soldiers at Murray's barracks. Attucks and his gang gathered cordwood sticks and wooden pieces from butchers' stalls, carrying these makeshift weapons over their heads as they approached the scene of the disturbance. John Adams, in remarks before the jury that tried the British soldiers for their role in the Massacre, stated that “Attucks appears to have undertaken to be the hero of the night, and to lead this army with banners.” In his summation, Adams also said that “it is in this manner, this town has been often treated; a Carr from Ireland, and an Attucks from Framingham, happening to be here” to “sally out upon their thoughtless enterprises, at the head of such a rabble of negroes, &c., as they can collect together.” Testimony at the soldiers' trial differed over whether Attucks had grabbed for the bayonet of Private Hugh Montgomery, causing a struggle that resulted in the shooting. John Adams tried to portray Attucks as the instigator, “to whose mad behavior, in all probability, the dreadful carnage of that night is chiefly ascribed.” Adams added that Attucks's group was a “mob whistling, screaming, and rending like an Indian yell.” Some witnesses, however, testified that Attucks was killed while leaning on his cordwood stick. Two shots to his breast caused the fatality.

After the massacre, the bodies of Attucks and James Caldwell, the two nonresident victims, were brought to Faneuil Hall. On 8 March a funeral procession of ten to twelve thousand people and numerous coaches accompanied the hearses of Attucks and three other victims to Granary burial ground, where all four coffins were buried in one grave.

Captain Thomas Preston, the British officer of the day who commanded the squad that fired upon the civilians, and eight soldiers were tried before the Suffolk Superior Court in Boston from 27 November to 5 December 1770. Preston and six of his men were acquitted, including William Warren, who was charged specifically with killing Attucks; two others were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded on the thumb after pleading benefit of clergy.

Crispus Attucks, apparently of African and Indian ancestry, was the first martyr of the American Revolution. Years later, in response to adoption of a new Federal Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Attucks became a powerful symbol of black resistance to slavery and racism. His name was repeatedly invoked during the Civil War to recruit soldiers for the famed 54^th Massachusetts Regiment. Other black military companies were named for him. In 1888 the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts erected on Boston Common a memorial to Attucks and the other massacre victims.

This entry is taken from the American National Biography and is published here with the permission of the American Council of Learned Societies.

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