The Boston Gazette presented the events of the 6th of March as a political drama that moves, through an elegant dialectical exchange, from bloodly tragedy to political vindication. The Gazette coverage closely tracks the documentary record of the exchange between the town meeting and the Governor as it is transcribed into the minute book of the town meeting. While this account is not exactly wrong, it is serioiusly incomplete. The private accounts of the Council deliberations written by Governor Hutchinson, Secretary Andrew Oliver, and Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple make clear the decisive effect of actions and speech that the Gazette account keeps out of view: the mobilization of the militia by the towns surrounding Boston, and the highly seditious speech given by Councilor Royall Tyler that turned the tide in Council against the Governor. Here is the speech as reported by Secretary Oliver to his superiors in Whitehall:

"Mr Tyler said that it was not such people as had formerly pulled down the lieutenant-governor's house who conducted the present measures, but that they were people of the best characters among us, men of estates and men of religion; that they had formed their plan and that this was a part of it to remove the troops out of the town, and after that the Commissioners; that it was impossible the troops should remain in town, that the people would come in from the neighboring towns, and that there would be ten thousand men to effect the removal of the troops, and that they would properly be destroyed by the people, should it be called rebellion, should it incur the loss of our charter, or be the consequences what it would." (Documents of the American Revolution, II: 53-54)

View the full page of the 12 March 1770 Boston Gazettee from which this column is excerpted.