ABSTRACT
The presence of troops in Boston from October 1768, after the Liberty Riot, was seen by some as proof of a design to strip colonists of their liberties. Also, offduty soldiers took work in the city, as they had in New York, depriving locals of employment and undercutting wages, uniting colonists of all classes against the British, even slaves who worked in their spare time to buy themselves or family members out of bondage. John Lathrop was the Congregationalist minister of Boston’s Second Church from 1768. His sermon was part of a concerted effort to portray these events in a certain way. The most famous part of that effort was the much reproduced engraving by Boston silversmith Paul Revere of hard-faced soldiers firing on innocents entitled ‘The Boston Massacre’, which remains perhaps the most vivid and recognized image of the American Revolution.
