---
title: Join or Die to the Boston Massacre:patriot and loyalist print, 1754-1783
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/
description: for three decades both sides of the imperial quarrel used woodcuts, engravings, newspapers and pamphlets to fix a single reading of events, and the…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Join or Die to the Boston Massacre:patriot and loyalist print, 1754-1783

At a glance

For three decades both sides of the imperial quarrel used woodcuts, engravings, newspapers and pamphlets to fix a single reading of events, and the best-known patriot image, Revere's Bloody Massacre…

- **When:** 1754–1783
- **Actor:** Colonial and patriot printers and writers…
- **Target:** Colonial readers in all thirteen colonies, jurors and townspeople in Boston, the British public and…
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Colonial and patriot printers and writers (Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Henry Pelham, Edes and Gill, the Boston Committee of Correspondence, Thomas Paine); loyalist printers and writers (James Rivington, James Chalmers, Charles Inglis, Daniel Leonard); London printsellers and magazines (Sayer and Bennett, the London Magazine)
- **Target:** Colonial readers in all thirteen colonies, jurors and townspeople in Boston, the British public and Parliament

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/american-revolution-prints/#sources)

On this page

**Content note:** this page shows engravings of people being shot, tarred and feathered and forcibly held down, and quotes an eighteenth-century courtroom description of a crowd by race and origin.

**In one line:** for three decades both sides of the imperial quarrel used woodcuts, engravings, newspapers and pamphlets to fix a single reading of events, and the best-known patriot image, Revere's *Bloody Massacre*, differs from the sworn testimony heard at the trials that acquitted most of the soldiers it shows.

![Join, or Die: a woodcut snake cut into eight labelled pieces, S.C., N.C., V., M., P., N.J., N.Y. and N.E., above the words JOIN, or DIE, on a page of the Pennsylvania Gazette](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/join-or-die-franklin-1754.jpg)

*"Join, or Die", woodcut attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette, 9 May 1754. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

## What happened

- **9 May 1754.** Franklin's *Pennsylvania Gazette* reports the French taking of the colonial post at the forks of the Ohio and prints a woodcut of a snake cut into eight segments, labelled for South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and "N.E." (New England). Delaware and Georgia are absent. The text above it warns of "the Destruction of the British Interest, Trade and Plantations in America". The woodcut is reprinted in other colonial papers ahead of the Albany Congress (June to July 1754), whose Plan of Union the colonial assemblies then decline to adopt.
- **1765.** During the Stamp Act crisis the snake returns in the one-issue *Constitutional Courant* (September 1765), which carries a false imprint rather than its printer's name (Davidson 1941; Olson 1991).
- **5 March 1770.** Soldiers of the 29th Regiment under Captain Thomas Preston fire into a crowd on King Street, Boston. Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell and Crispus Attucks die that night; Patrick Carr dies days later.
- **12 March 1770.** The *Boston Gazette* (Edes and Gill) reports the funeral under a row of coffin woodcuts bearing the victims' initials, skulls and crossbones.
- **Late March 1770.** Paul Revere advertises his engraving *The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street*. On 29 March the artist Henry Pelham writes to Revere accusing him of copying Pelham's design before Pelham's own print, *The Fruits of Arbitrary Power*, could appear (Brigham 1954). The town of Boston sends *A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre* with townspeople's depositions to London; a rival *Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance* presents the army's depositions.
- **October to December 1770.** John Adams, Josiah Quincy Jr. and Robert Auchmuty defend Preston and the soldiers. Preston is acquitted in October. Of the eight soldiers, six are acquitted and two, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, are convicted of manslaughter, plead benefit of clergy and are branded on the thumb. Civilians charged with firing from the Custom House are acquitted in December (Zobel 1970; Wroth and Zobel 1965).
- **1771 to 1783.** Boston marks 5 March with annual orations; the *Boston Gazette* of 11 March 1771 prints an anniversary memorial.
- **November 1772.** Boston's town meeting creates a Committee of Correspondence, which circulates a statement of grievances to the province's towns and prints their replies; other colonies set up committees from 1773 (Brown 1970).
- **25 January 1774.** A Boston crowd tars and feathers the customs officer John Malcolm. In London, Sayer and Bennett publish the mezzotint *The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man* (31 October 1774); a French engraving retells the scene in 1784. In May 1774 the *London Magazine* prints *The Able Doctor*, a print sympathetic to the colonists, which Revere re-engraves in Boston.
- **7 July 1774.** The *Massachusetts Spy* runs a masthead of the snake, now joined, facing a griffin, over "Join or Die". A verse in James Rivington's loyalist *New-York Gazetteer* mocks the emblem as a "snake in the grass" (Olson 1991).
- **1774 to 1775.** Daniel Leonard, writing as "Massachusettensis", calls the committees of correspondence "the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition"; John Adams answers as "Novanglus". On 23 November 1775 armed men led by Isaac Sears wreck Rivington's press.
- **10 January 1776.** Robert Bell of Philadelphia publishes Thomas Paine's anonymous *Common Sense*. Bell also prints James Chalmers's reply, *Plain Truth*, by "Candidus"; Charles Inglis publishes *The True Interest of America Impartially Stated*. A New York crowd destroys an edition of an earlier Inglis reply at Samuel Loudon's print shop (Davidson 1941).
- **1777 to 1782.** Forged *Letters from General Washington* are published in London (1777) and reprinted in British-held New York; Washington disowns them in 1797. In 1782 Franklin prints at Passy a fake *Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle* describing scalps supposedly sent to the governor of Canada.

## How it works

- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): the snake in "Join, or Die" carries a common folk belief that a cut snake can rejoin, and the 1774 masthead sets it against a griffin standing for Britain. Pelham prints Psalm 94 under his massacre scene; the London mezzotint puts the Liberty Tree, a noose and the Stamp Act notice nailed upside down behind the crowd; *The Able Doctor* shows America as a Native woman and Britannia turning away in grief. Each borrows the weight of a symbol the viewer already reads.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): Revere shows a straight line of soldiers firing one volley on an officer's raised sword, a calm and orderly crowd, "Butcher's Hall" lettered on the Custom House and a gun firing from its window. Trial testimony described snowballs, ice and clubs thrown at the soldiers, a soldier knocked down before the first shot, a ragged sequence of shots and conflicting evidence on whether Preston ordered fire. The London mezzotint does the reverse: it shows only the crowd's violence, not the assault on George Hewes that witnesses said preceded it.
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): Revere's verse calls the soldiers "fierce Barbarians grinning o'er their Prey"; Paine calls George III "the Royal Brute of Britain"; Leonard calls the committees a "venomous serpent". Loaded labels also appear on the defence side of the massacre trials: Adams described the King Street crowd as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs", setting stigma by race and origin against the prosecution's picture of innocent townsmen.
- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): "Join, or Die" offers a single remedy against a stated threat to the colonies' survival. On the other side, *Plain Truth*'s title page calls independence "Ruinous, Delusive, and Impracticable", and Inglis warned of war, debt and domination by France or Spain; both offer reconciliation as the one safe course.

**Content note:** Soldiers firing into a crowd, with the dead and wounded in blood. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street: a hand-coloured engraving of red-coated soldiers in a line firing into a crowd, with an officer raising his arm behind them, the Old State House in the background and a sign reading Butcher's Hall on the building at right; verses and the victims' names below](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/bloody-massacre-revere-1770.jpg)

*Paul Revere, "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt.", hand-coloured engraving, Boston, 1770. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

**Content note:** Soldiers firing into a crowd, with the dead and wounded. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or the Bloody Massacre: the same street scene in black and white, with a psalm verse printed below](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/fruits-of-arbitrary-power-pelham-1770.jpg)

*Henry Pelham, "The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or the Bloody Massacre", Boston, 1770, the design Revere's print follows. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.*

![Four black coffin woodcuts marked SG, SM, JC and CA with skulls and crossbones, set in a column of newspaper text about the funeral](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/massacre-coffins-boston-gazette-1770.jpg)

*Coffin woodcuts for Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell and Crispus Attucks, Boston Gazette, 12 March 1770, attributed to Paul Revere. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

![The Massachusetts Spy masthead: a segmented snake labelled with colony initials across the page facing a winged griffin, over the words JOIN OR DIE](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/massachusetts-spy-snake-masthead-1774.jpg)

*Masthead of the Massachusetts Spy, 7 July 1774, attributed to Paul Revere, reusing Franklin's snake against a griffin. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

**Content note:** A tarred and feathered man forced to drink tea. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man: a mezzotint of a crowd pouring tea down the throat of a tarred and feathered man beneath the Liberty Tree, with a noose hanging from the branch and ships in the harbour behind](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/bostonians-paying-excise-man-1774.jpg)

*"The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering", mezzotint attributed to Philip Dawe, London: Sayer and Bennett, 31 October 1774. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

**Content note:** A man being tarred and feathered in the street. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![John Malcom: a French engraving of a man standing on a cart being tarred and feathered in a crowded street, with explanatory French text below](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/john-malcom-origine-revolution-1784.jpg)

*"John Malcom", engraving by François Godefroy with French captions tracing the "origin of the American Revolution", Paris, about 1784. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

**Content note:** A bare-breasted woman held down while tea is forced into her mouth, in a scene of assault. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![The Able Doctor: a woman representing America, bare-breasted, held down on the ground while a man pours tea into her mouth, another holds her feet and looks up her skirt, Britannia hides her face, and two onlookers stand at left](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/able-doctor-america-bitter-draught-1774.jpg)

*"The Able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught", London Magazine, 1774. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

## Then and now

![Remember Belgium, Enlist To-Day (1915)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/remember-belgium-1915.jpg)

*[Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/remember-belgium-1915/), Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1915. Public domain.*

Revere's print and the 1915 recruiting poster both start from a real, deadly event and compress it into a single scene that leaves out whatever complicates it: in Revere's case the crowd's missiles and the disputed order, in 1915 everything but the fleeing woman and child. The differences are large. Revere was a private engraver selling a print in one town within weeks of five deaths, while the 1915 poster was a state recruiting product for a world war; Revere's scene was contradicted in open court within the year, while the 1914 killings of Belgian civilians were confirmed by later scholarship (Horne and Kramer 2001). The forged Washington letters and Franklin's fake *Supplement* are earlier cases of falsified sourcing. The gallery's ['Russian Ads on Facebook' (House Intelligence Committee exhibit)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ira-facebook-ads-hpsci-2018/) shows a later version of the same black-propaganda move, content posted under invented American identities, run at far larger scale by an organised agency rather than by individual printers and writers.

## Positions on the record

- **Patriot writers' stated position:** the town's *Short Narrative* and the Revere and Pelham prints present the shooting as an unprovoked massacre by troops quartered in a peaceful town; Paine presents independence as the only remedy for a king he names as the author of the colonies' injuries.
- **Loyalist and British stated position:** the army's depositions and the defence case present the soldiers as surrounded and attacked; Chalmers and Inglis argue that reconciliation would secure trade, protection and liberty and that independence meant ruin; the London mezzotint shows Boston crowds as lawless.
- **British critics of the ministry:** *The Able Doctor* shows the Boston Port Bill forced on America, with Britannia weeping, which shows that sympathy for the colonists was itself printed and sold in London.
- **What historians say:** Zobel (1970) reads the trial record as largely supporting the defence's account of a crowd pressing on the soldiers; Hinderaker (2017) traces how townspeople and army built competing accounts of the same night; Zabin (2020) places soldiers and townspeople in shared families and neighbourhoods. Brigham (1954) documents the Pelham-Revere copying. On *Common Sense*, Paine and later writers gave six-figure sales figures, often repeated as 100,000, 150,000 or 500,000 copies; Loughran (2007) argues these figures cannot be verified from printers' records and are likely inflated, so the book's reach is **contested**, not a settled number.
- **This archive's reading:** documented: the prints and pamphlets as printed, their dates, the trial verdicts, the destruction of Rivington's press and of Loudon's edition, the forged Washington letters and Franklin's fake *Supplement*. **Not shown:** that any one print changed a verdict or a vote; how many people read *Common Sense*; that Revere intended to deceive rather than to mourn and protest. Loyalist material survives in smaller quantity and has been studied less, partly because the losing side's presses were shut or moved; this page gives it the same analysis where it survives.

![Common Sense title page: Common Sense; addressed to the inhabitants of America, Philadelphia, printed and sold by R. Bell, MDCCLXXVI](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/common-sense-paine-title-1776.jpg)

*Title page of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense", Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

![Plain Truth title page: Plain Truth, addressed to the inhabitants of America, containing remarks on a late pamphlet entitled Common Sense, written by Candidus, Philadelphia, R. Bell, 1776](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/plain-truth-chalmers-title-1776.jpg)

*Title page of James Chalmers ("Candidus"), "Plain Truth", Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776, a loyalist reply to "Common Sense" from the same printer. Library of Congress. Public domain.*

## Same-method test

Swap the flags and the score holds. The London mezzotint does to the Boston crowd what Revere's print does to the 29th Regiment: it shows one side's violence, removes the provocation and gives the perpetrators grinning faces. Both are scored [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/). Rivington's "snake in the grass" and Leonard's "venomous serpent" are scored [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) exactly as Paine's "Royal Brute" is. A British forgery in Washington's name and Franklin's forged Boston newspaper are both black propaganda under the same definition.

## How to spot it

- Set a print beside the sworn testimony for the same event: who threw what, who gave which order, and what the picture leaves out.
- Check authorship and imprints. Copied designs (Revere from Pelham), false imprints (the *Constitutional Courant*) and forged letters move a message's source.
- Read the verses and captions as argument. The picture shows a scene; the words beneath tell the viewer what to feel about it.
- Treat circulation claims with care. A repeated sales figure is not a record unless it can be traced to printers' accounts.
- Look for the same symbol on both sides: the snake served Franklin, Revere and the loyalist writers who turned it back on them.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| "Join, or Die", Pennsylvania Gazette, 9 May 1754 | [Library of Congress 2002695523](https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695523/), Benjamin Franklin | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| Revere, *The Bloody Massacre*, 1770 | [Library of Congress 2008661777](https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661777/), Paul Revere | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| Pelham, *The Fruits of Arbitrary Power*, 1770 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Fruits_of_Arbitrary_Power,_or_The_Bloody_Massacre_by_Henry_Pelham.jpg), Henry Pelham | Public domain (PD-Art) |
| Coffin woodcuts, Boston Gazette, 12 March 1770 | [Library of Congress 2004672647](https://www.loc.gov/item/2004672647/), attributed to Paul Revere | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| Massachusetts Spy masthead, 7 July 1774 | [Library of Congress 2002712180](https://www.loc.gov/item/2002712180/), attributed to Paul Revere | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man*, 1774 | [Library of Congress 2004673302](https://www.loc.gov/item/2004673302/), Sayer and Bennett | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *John Malcom*, about 1784 | [Library of Congress 2006675457](https://www.loc.gov/item/2006675457/), François Godefroy | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *The Able Doctor*, 1774 | [Library of Congress 97514782](https://www.loc.gov/item/97514782/), unknown engraver | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *Common Sense* title page, 1776 | [Library of Congress 2006681076](https://www.loc.gov/item/2006681076/), Thomas Paine | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *Plain Truth* title page, 1776 | [Library of Congress 2006681075](https://www.loc.gov/item/2006681075/), James Chalmers | Public domain (no known restrictions) |
| *Remember Belgium* (1915) | FRAME gallery | Public domain |

### Image gaps

- **Rivington's *New-York Gazetteer* and *Royal Gazette* pages**, including the "snake in the grass" verse. The pages are public domain, but no scan with a clear licence statement was found in the Library of Congress or Commons searches. **Fillable** from a digitised newspaper collection.
- **Inglis, *The True Interest of America Impartially Stated*, and Leonard's *Massachusettensis* letters.** Public domain; no licensed title-page scan was found. **Fillable.**
- **The *Constitutional Courant* (1765), the forged Washington letters (1777) and Franklin's *Supplement* (1782).** Public domain; not found in the searches used. **Fillable.**
- **The *Short Narrative* and *Fair Account* (1770).** Public domain; not found. **Fillable.**

## Sources

- *Pennsylvania Gazette*, 9 May 1754; *Boston Gazette*, 12 March 1770 and 11 March 1771; *Massachusetts Spy*, 7 July 1774 (Library of Congress copies above).
- Thomas Paine, *Common Sense* (Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776); "Candidus" [James Chalmers], *Plain Truth* (Philadelphia: R. Bell, 1776); [Charles Inglis], *The True Interest of America Impartially Stated* (Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 1776).
- *A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston* (Boston, 1770); *A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston in New England* (London, 1770).
- L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, eds., *Legal Papers of John Adams*, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965).
- Hiller B. Zobel, *The Boston Massacre* (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970).
- Eric Hinderaker, *Boston's Massacre* (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017).
- Serena Zabin, *The Boston Massacre: A Family History* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).
- Clarence S. Brigham, *Paul Revere's Engravings* (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1954).
- Philip Davidson, *Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783* (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941).
- Lester C. Olson, *Emblems of American Community in the Revolutionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology* (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
- Richard D. Brown, *Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772-1774* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
- Trish Loughran, *The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770-1870* (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
- Eric Foner, *Tom Paine and Revolutionary America* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
- John Horne and Alan Kramer, *German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
- Robert M. Calhoon, *The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781* (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
- Mary Dorothy George, *Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum*, vol. 5 (London: British Museum, 1935).