Unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Thank you for joining us this evening. Im gavin, the director of programs exhibitions and Community Partnerships for the massachusetts historical society. Tonight on the very eve of the 250th anniversary of the boston massacre we will hear from professor on her great new book, the boston massacre, Family History. As our regular guests know we very frequently pulled together a small exhibition from our collection that highlights some material that we have within our holdings. That helps with evening discussions. Today we have an entire exhibition. We did not need a small exhibition this time. Not only that but our exhibition actually features our speaker this evening. So if you didnt see it shes on a video monitor upstairs and was also very generous with her time helping us plan the exhibition and sitting for an interview. We certainly cannot have done our current exhibition without her help. We owe her a debt of gratitude. Is a professor of Early American History and director of the program of american studies at carleton college. She received her undergraduate from bowden and her phd from rutgers university. Her new book, let people get settled in here, i guess we get started a little early. , her new bird delves deeply into boston 1770. Looking at the soldiers who wears station to hear from the fall of 1768 not just seen as nighttime force but as neighbors, and competitors and another was come as people. And an often repeated narrative for increasing tensions caused by the presence of the soldiers that reached a boiling. On marc march 5. Some soldiers traveled with their wives and boston residents became godparents of their children. Other soldiers married women from the community which suggests that not all interactions were negative. Professor did Extensive Research for her book that better . Professor did Extensive Research for her book, we may close to 14 million close to 14 million manuscript pages available and its all free of charge. And we host programs for both public and academic audiences. If you enjoy access to all of these resources are not a member, i hope you will join us in supporting our work. Thank you and please join me in welcoming the professor. Mike hello, can people hear me come i know you dont know who i am. The feedback is bad. That help . It does . Huge, people can hear me . Thank you for coming, all for coming, i am used to sitting in this room where i have spent many, many hours in years with about four other people and about eight tables. So this is a little shocking to me but such a pleasure that people came out to hear something about my new book about the boston massacre itself. Tonight, im going to talk a little and read a little bit so that in the end i hope you can see why i called the boston massacre a Family History and i just want to say in case any of your work, this is not actually my Family History. Not doing genealogy. So, many of you are here because you are fans of history and i think that many of us, all of us have come to love history because its full of stories, stories about People Like Us and people who in some ways not at all like us. So one of the most important things i think for storytelling is setting the scene. Gavin told us, and we are on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the boston massacre which happens not that far from here, but if any of you looked upstairs where we are right now with presently underwater, 250 years ago here but we should think of our boston that was really just a square mile, pretty much a peninsula that little entrance to charleston was a tiny little neck they called it a town not a city, town of about 16000 people. So, not a big place and come i want to start with the story that actually we have to unlearn in order to move forward. So, the very basic story, the little bit that we actually feel sure that we know absolutely about what happened of march 5, 1770 is this, in what passes for the center of boston right in front of what is now the old statehouse, kitty corner from it was a building that was being used as the opposites for the Customs Officials. So, theres a century in the night of march 5 who is standing there keeping guard. It is in the years before global warming, there was snow on the ground, snow that had melted some odds and refrozen in the way that march used to be for those of you who used to remember cometh like hard and nasty, and, not a pleasant evening, cold. And, group of start as frequently happens when there is a captive guy standing and people are walking by, and he gets anxious and calls for backup which comes in the form of a handful of soldiers led by a single captain, they calm, they surround the century, more bostonians come, we dont really know how many and the captain asks them to go home and they dont come in when they dont disperse come at some. , someone, we dont know who, yells fire. Nobody can see anything. Boston doesnt have streetlights at this. So, there may be some candlelight coming out of windows or doorways of the dirty snow, but its quite dark, no one knows who yells fire, but the soldiers fire and when the smoke clears what they find are for people bleeding out on the snow, dead, a fifth dying of his wounds, several others injured. And that is the moment we come to know as the boston massacre. So, most people have some vague idea of this event largely because of this picture. So, paul reveres extraordinarily famous. What we see here are on the one side helpless bostonians been mowed down by disciplined soldiers who are by their captain and theres lots of got gore. Theres one woman right in the center in her presence to the viewer is this little hint that she is surrounded by a group of respectable bostonians, not a mob of hooligans and of course, we shouldnt ignore the dog, the symbol of loyalty who is looking very lost here indeed. The pictures clearly meant to be propaganda. As the remaining of the custom house butcher hall playing sent from the arrow come its obvious this picture is meant to blame the army in the administration for what happened and somehow come if you missed this in the picture let me attempt to reach you and all of its glory the poem, ill try to do it some justice. At least part of it, unhappy boston deplore the hired works and be smeared with gutless gore while baseless in its savage bands with murderous rank versus stretch their blooded hands, like fierce barbarians creatinine over their prey, approved the carnage and enjoy the day. So, come on with poetry like that in this kind of minted patients, the obvious bias of this image is obvious and obvious i think for all of us to dismiss, but theres a different part of reviewer story that is embedded in this engraving that we have to unlearn, is so obvious that i think we dont even see it anymore. Its what i might call the story of the two sides, so come if you look, the very center of this image is a thick white line of gun smoke. Visually, this line separates the road disciplined red hooded soldiers from the crowd of terrified civilians that they are slaughtering. The smoke marks the split between inhabitants on one side and soldiers on the other. In this picture of two opposing sides, americans and british has always seemed so obvious that no one before really thought to question this part of reviewer story. But, the truth of the matter is that civilians and soldiers were not on opposite sides of the street at all. Neither actually or figuratively. And, once we stop letting reviewer tell us what we can see, once we start seeing all our boston, not just a little bit that reviewer shows us, theres a different story a boston just lying there in plain sight. So, to get to this different story i want to back up to the beginning of my book and relate to a different beginning. I just went to read to a few paragraphs from the beginning of chapter one. June 7, 1765, a young irish woman made her way through the crowded streets of cork to the harbor following the red coat of her husband to the dog, jean chambers approached a man in uniform and gave her her name. To her relief he let her pass, the name of her husband, matthew, had also been checked off the list but the uniformed man did not bother to note the name of the couples child. At last, after weeks of waiting, jane and Matthew Chambers along with their child boarded the where they join matthews face in the 29th afoot. Three days later they set sail for america. It may seems rage to begin an account of the boston massacre with a woman in ireland coming yet she come in women like her are the threads that tie together the range of people and the complexity of the forces that led to that dramatic moment. The complete story of the death of bostonians at the hands of british troops is more than the political upheaval that followed the shooting. It is also the story of personal connections between men and women, and civilians and soldiers, over time, the women and Children Associated with the 18th Century British Army had been forgotten. In the american imagination, most of the men had been reduced to an anonymous troops rather considered as individuals. Jean chambers was not tennis not famous, her early life is lost to historians. We know neither when she was born nor in what year she married, because she read or write . With matt was Matthew Chambers her first love . Had she ever dreamed of a life beyond ireland . The sources are silent on these questions but other parts of her life, including the choices she made, the family she created and the voyages she took have left traces. In the everyday life of an ordinary woman would become part of an extraordinary moment. So, when jane and Matthew Chambers are boarding that ship, they are part of a peacetime deployment. So for those of you who are a little rusty on your 18th mid century history, ill give you 32 seconds summary. I know i have a least one former student in this crowd thats at least rolling his eyes. Two years earlier, 1763, britain had won the seven years war and in north america that war had been fought primarily against the french and the native allies. As a result, the french withdrew all of the claims to Eastern North America including the whole area we are now noise canada. Their native allies unsurprisingly did not see their land and thats worth noting. So now the British Crown had to figure out how to manage their new empire including these people who are not their allies and how to pay for the war. Among the many policies that the British Parliament pursued after 1763 were several schemes to centralize the administration of this huge empire and to raise money on imported goods. In these decisions to put it mildly were unpopular. At least in north america. Actually there are popular everywhere. So, in boston there were riots against both these custom duties on imports and also against those who were supposed to collect them. So in 1768 after an enormous protest the Massachusetts Governor decided he needed backup essentially, he thinks he needs some troops and they are going to help keep order in boston because theres no police force yet, so, people are using troops as police force and thats one of the three things i would like to tell you about the 18th Century British Army that i think you need to know. First, i want to start and the image tells us a little bit of this, the whole idea that there should even be an army in peacetime, what was known now as a Standing Army seemed wrong to most britons. The general idea was not that the government should have an army that it can turn. In fact, britain did have a peacetime force, although everyone was very clear it was subject to civilian authority. Which brings me to my second. Which is about civilian authority, governors and magistrates often use the war office to send troops to use for police. And, this is as true in england as it is in the colonies. All over england, smugglers are trying to evade import taxes. Their different taxes but there still import taxes. Theres lots of smuggling happening there. And magistrates are trying to catch the medic. And in fact, the same year the Massachusetts Governor asked richardson 1768 the manage charge of distributing regiments around the empire complains with so many magistrates had asked for troops to support Customs Officials and to suppress riots that he was running out of regiments to hand out around england. So, i think its important for us to realize that no one is singling out boston for particularly rebellious behavior, there some handset might be happening but boston is not extraordinary and having troops come. And then, theres the third thing, maybe the most important that you need to know about the 18th century army. We often think of the 18th century army as much as we think about it is not that different from a contemporary army thats pretty much single people, often men who are going to war zones. But, in fact, they are significant different. Eighteenth century armies were family institutions that traveled with women and children. As we can see in this watercol watercolor, this is from the end of Matthew Chambers phone enlistment, hundreds of military families flooded into boston in 1768 in their presence in the town has an enormous impact on future events. So when the governor of massachusetts said he needed troops to help support the work that he tried to do for the government, the war office says thats fine, but, he creates other problems. So when the first to come i hope and bring in the right one. When the first two regiments sail into Boston Harbor and which is another image we get from revere in the fall of 1768, what we see our troops marching into the heart of boston. In fact, this is only kind of what happened. Right, because when they come to Boston Harbor, the governor and his counsel are still squabbling with them about where all of these troops are going to live, so let me just remind you a little of what Boston Harbor look like at the time. So, this is an 18th century map of Boston Harbor but selectmen thought that the troops should go to Castle Island which you can see has which has a beautifully refurbished set of barracks, massachusetts had just raised a lot of money during the seven years war to update the barracks out there and they thought they should be used, but more than that, the quarter act of the 18th century was pretty pretty clear that if there are available barracks, troops have to go there first. If theyre not available barracks, then, they should be put in public houses which are indeed public but which we think of as pubs or bars or something which magistrates did not love, and only then, only if those two places are not available could they be in private houses. So, they say there are barracks, they should go there. This is not what the governor had in mind at all. As you can see from the wine and as you may know, especially before it gets filled in any canal drive to Castle Island, 3 miles on that narrow Little Channel to get into boston and that was not attractive. So, this is boston in 1769. This map you can see and hear it is stretched over a contemporary map of boston if you want to have a little sense of where we are. We are out there now and the water, but, what the governor really wanted was to have troops right in the middle like boston, dan, so, he is not willing to put them out in the harbor and the selectmen say, you know, if you insist on putting them in homes in boston and on the harbor we will actually bring you up, so to compromise the army comes up with is they are going to rent space, not requisition, but rents space from bostonians. So, they end up renting has many empty warehouses that they can but thats not nearly enough. So the income they are putting people everywhere. So, if you take a look at this map, the blue scares are warehouses which even though theyre being used as semi barracks you can see there being scattered all over the town, and the red dots or places just right feel completely positive there were soldiers living. You can see also that they are scattered throughout the entire town. So what has happened then is bostonians become the landlords and land ladies for thousands of soldiers and their families. You can imagine, 2000 troops alone plus probably a minimum of 500 women and children and probably more than that, move into a city that 16000 people, theyre going to find each other a little annoying. Not a surprise. Men like revere who are part of the liberty or other Political Group saw the presence of troops as a military occupation. So the clerk at the town meeting starts complaining, boston has become a garrison town and he and other men walking at night get annoyed that they are being stopped in the street by soldiers on patrols and meanwhile the constables who are making up the nightwatch are complaining about drunken officers. So, they come of those men are all fairly unhappy. But i think their complaints are not the only way that we should think about the presence of troops in boston. Instead, i would like us to think about a very different place when we think about the term, garrison town. We should all take a minute to recall merited in jane austins pride and prejudice. So, think of the excitement that having a regiment quartered a few miles away created for that family. Fathers might be anxious but young women were delighted. So, if you think of bennett and matching herself at an in car cant make, she saw all of the glories of the camp. Its ten stretched forth in beauty and uniformity of lines crowded with a young and dazzling with garlic and to complete the view she saw herself seated beneath the tenth tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once. [laughter] the soldiers that beguiled the young woman during were not so different from those red coated men who came to boston and caught the eye of bostons young women in the years before the revolution. So, pride and prejudice i think helps us notice that the arrival of troops in 1768 was pretty exciting for local women. The arrival of nearly 2000 men, many