ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the most famous contemporaneous newspaper report of the massacre. Business partners for over fifteen years, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, the men behind the paper, printed pamphlets as well, including A Short Narrative; they also sold books. By contrast, the Boston Chronicle ran but a brief notice just three days after the affair and anticipated A Fair Account by referring to the “unfortunate affair” in a barebones summary. Richard Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, published that same day, devoted more space to the affair than did Fleeming. With time, the position taken by the Boston Gazette would appear to have better reflected the prevailing view in the town and around the province than that of the Chronicle or the Massachusetts Gazette. Edes and Gill connected the stationing of troops with foolish, unconstitutional policies designed to raise revenue in the empire.
