“Fire if you dare, G-d damn you, fire and be damned!” the crowd of hundreds of Bostonians yelled as they pressed in around the nine British soldiers guarding the Custom House in Boston on the evening of March 5, 1770. The violence that was about to erupt in downtown Boston had been brewing for almost two years when British regular soldiers first entered Boston in 1768. It had gotten especially bad after February 22, 1770, when Christopher Seider, an 11-year-old boy, was killed while protesting with a group in front of the home of a loyalist. Thousands of Bostonians turned out for the boy’s funeral and the tension and distrust between the civilians and the British soldiers grew larger.

The presence of British regular troops in the streets of Boston enraged colonists, who now felt they were being occupied by a foreign army. It was just eleven days after Seider’s death, on March 5, 1770 when Private Hugh White of the 29th Regiment of Foot took up a sentry post outside of the Custom House on King Street in downtown Boston. The Custom House had taken on symbolic meaning as the center of British taxation. As a young wigmaker’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, passed the sentry, he yelled at a British officer that he had not paid his bill for a wig. The sentry, White, reprimanded the young man. The two engaged in a heated conversation when Private White swung his musket at Garrick, hitting him on the side of the head.

Word traveled through the streets about the altercation and a large mob began to descend on the lone British sentry at the Custom House. As the mob of people began to grow larger and larger, the sentry called for reinforcements. Seven British soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot, under the command of Captain Thomas Preston, marched to the sentry’s defense with fixed bayonets. As the nine British soldiers stood guard near the steps to the Custom House, passions enflamed and dozens more people joined the crowd surrounding the soldiers. Bells began ringing in the city and more people came out of their homes and into the streets. The crowd was estimated to have grown to as many as 300 or 400 people. They were yelling at the soldiers, shouting profanities and insults at the soldiers. Others threw rocks, paddles, and snowballs at the besieged men. One of those protestors near the soldiers was a former slave named Crispus Attucks. The crowd continued to hurl verbal abuse and challenged the soldiers repeatedly to fire their weapons. Preston’s men loaded their muskets in front of the crowd.