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The Victim In Captain Thomas Preston's The Boston Massacre

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Screams erupt throughout the crowd as a warm red liquid sprays across the snow-covered square. As smoke arises from the muskets, five bodies buckle to the ground. It is March 5, 1770, infamously known as The Boston Massacre. While the events in March 1770 were embellished on both the British and Colonists sides, the facts still remain. The accounts of the Boston Massacre, according to British officer Captain Thomas Preston, engender him as an innocent victim. Preston embellishes his account of events by depicting the colonists as savages, portraying himself as the victim, and hiding his shame of losing control of the situation
Preston gives true accounts of the events of March 1770; however, he warps the events to rationalize his actions. In his version, he often describes the colonists as uncivilized and “insolent.” The colonists used “the most cruel and horrid Threats against the Troops” Preston illustrates the colonist as wild people, rioting, chanting, and beyond any means of control. Undergoing daily fist fights with the colonists, not once does he cite the actions of his soldiers for the brawls. He, in fact, states that every aggressive …show more content…
In the heat of the riot Preston insists that, “some well-behaved Persons asked me if the Guns were charged: I replied, yes. They then asked me if I intended to order the men to fire; I answered no, by no Means; observing to them, that I was advanced before the Muzzles of the Men’s pieces, and must fall a Sacrifice they fired.” Preston interprets the well-behaved persons perspective by stating that he was not advanced. However, if Preston was not intending to fire, or appear as if he were to fire, then the we;;-behaved persons would not have reason to question his motives to begin with. Preston ultimately tries to justify his actions as self defense, thus creating the façade as him the victim, in the

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