Brett Higley Chad Ostler HIST 1700 Dueling Doc 1 September 8, 2013 Who was to blame for the

Boston Massacre? In this document, Captain Thomas Preston and Robert Goddard are presenting the facts of the Boston Massacre as they say they saw it. The two men are in a court setting and are trying to win over the jury. Captain Preston is on the side of the soldiers, and Robert Goddard is on the side of the mob. In Captain Prestons account, he says that the mob is to blame for the massacre. He claims that he tried to disperse the mob peacefully and that the soldiers had no intention of firing. However, the mob started to hit the soldiers bayonets and rifles, which caused one of the soldiers to accidently fire. Once this happened, the mob broke out and started attacking the soldiers. The soldiers had no choice but to defend themselves. Robert Goddard claims that the Captain ordered the soldiers to fire. A townsman responded by hitting the Captain in the arm. The Captain then retaliated by telling all the soldiers to open fire, prime, load, and fire again. It is difficult to decide which man is telling the truth; or if both are twisting facts to make is seem as if they are the victim, and the other is fully to blame. However, they may both be telling the truth as they see it. When there is that much confusion, in any situation; accounts of the same moment will vary just based on where one man is standing vs. another perspective.

Goddard claims that the Captain gave the order to fire. The Captain claims he gave the order to hold fire. The one small word hold can be lost so easily in the shouting of the mob, the din of boots stomping, or the blood pumping in their ears from adrenaline. The soldier who fired the first shot may have heard fire instead of hold fire; Or he may have been hit with a stick that made his rifle go off. Either way, his rifle did go off and that made everything get crazy. To a soldier in a tense situation like this, a rifle going off means that its time to engage the enemy. After that, it was just like a dam breaking loose. There was no stopping it. A big difference in both accounts is the position of the Captain. Captain Preston says that he was in front of his soldiers, between the mob and his men, trying to keep the situation peaceful; this proving that he never gave the order to fire. He wouldnt be safe standing in front of guns that are going off, so it makes sense that he never gave that order. In Goddards account though, he says that Preston was behind his men the whole time. (This would make sense if the Captain was intending for his soldiers to fire on the mob). The problem with this statement is that Goddard said something that doesnt fit with the Captain standing behind his men. I was so near the officer when he gave the word fire that I could touch him. How could Goddard be that close, when there was a half-moon line of soldiers between the mob and the Captain? I think that Goddard was just making up evidence to support his claim that the Captain did indeed give the order to fire. If he had heard the order from 30 feet away, during the middle of a riot, his account wouldnt be very reliable. Its much more believable for a man to hear something if he was close instead of far. As for who is to blame for the massacre, you can take it as far up as you want to go. Is it the man who fired the first shot? Or the man that hit the rifle, making it go off? Or perhaps, is the

mob to blame for harassing a soldier, making more soldiers come to his aide? We could even blame the entire massacre on the British army for being stationed in Boston, which prompted aggressive action from the civilians. I feel bad for the jury. Trying to decipher the facts of a crazy situation, in which there are multiple accounts, would be extremely difficult. I think the only way to win this case would have been to have more skill at swaying people to their side than the other man.