Late-Humanism and Revolutionary Eloquence: James Lovell and His 1771 Boston Massacre Oration

This article reconstructs the context of the first Boston Massacre Oration delivered by James Lovell. It argues that Lovell's rhetorical education and oratorical practice were primarily an offshoot of a classicizing renaissance tradition transmitted by the colonial colleges that faded, blurred and was repurposed in the eighteenth century.

A Newfound Empathy

The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770. Following the death of five Bostonians, both the American colonists and the royal officials in Boston took testimonies and sent them to London. Elected colonial agents issued motions to open debate on Parliament’s accountability in creating an imbalanced relationship between the military and civil authorities in the colonies. Unfortunately, the motions from these colonial agents were voted in the negative, leading to disappointment on both sides of the Atlantic. Two years prior, a similar tragedy happened in England: The Massacre of St. George’s Fields. Scottish soldiers accosted a British mob that had gathered to protest the arrest of MP John Wilkes. From 1768 to 1771, Parliament rejected motions that sought to reconcile the grievances that led to the Massacre of St. George’s Fields. After years of Parliament silencing colonial agents and liberal politicians, the British public began to express a stronger sense of understanding and empathy towards the American colonists, as evident by the outpouring of public support in the months following the Boston Massacre.

The silence of the ellipses: Why history can’t be about telling our children lies

History textbooks are less likely to be complete renderings of the truth than a series of stories textbook authors (and the many stakeholders who influence them) consider beneficial. Sam Wineburg describes how the process of writing history textbooks often leads to sanitized and inaccurate versions of history. As an example, he describes how the story of Crispus Attucks and the Boston massacre has evolved over time. The goal of historical study, he explains, is not to cultivate love or hate of the country. Rather, it should provide us with the courage needed to look ourselves unflinching in the face, so that we may understand who we were and who we might aspire to become.

Patriots in the Court of Pandæmonium: People, Paradox, and the Making of American Zealots

Political theorists often interrogate the constitution of “the people” as a formal theoretical problem. They have paid less attention, however, to how this problem confronts actors directly engaged in political crises, not as a problem of formal theory, but as an urgent problem of practice. Between 1771 and 1783, prominent Bostonians delivered passionate orations to memorialize the Boston Massacre on the annual observance of “Massacre Day.” Rather than focusing abstractly on the people as a formal problem, I turn to this neglected political holiday, examining it through the lenses of affect, performance, and narrative, to demonstrate how orators confronted the pressing problem of making a people. Using public rituals and speech to promote an identity that united powerful emotions with political principles, orators negotiated the paradoxical nature of the people by constructing a model of subjectivity, the patriotic zealot, that intensified political differences and motivated extreme political action.

Cities and Towns

This chapter enters the cities and towns where British soldiers quartered and asks how the presence of the army affected urban locales. It posits that before 1768, soldiers and civilians learned to live together in the American colonies through the careful division of urban places and the joint police efforts of civilian and military officials; however, the army dominated cities in Canada and Florida. The sharing of urban spaces ended with the garrisoning of Boston in 1768 as Bostonians refused to quarter troops. Disputes over quartering in Boston helped to discredit the Quartering Act throughout the colonies, while the violence of the Battle of Golden Hill and the Boston Massacre helped usher in a new ideal of the city as a place without military geography.