Does anyone really know who fired the first shot at the Boston Massacre?

Question

I read somewhere in a historical fiction book (The Secret of Sarah Revere by Ann Rinaldi) that Paul Revere knew who fired the first shot, but no one else knows. Is that true to this day, or do some people know?

Answer 1

The Boston Strangler?

Answer 2

If you read the accounts, there is little doubt that the British soldiers fired the first shot(s), but there were only eight of them surrounded by hundreds of angry colonial Americans who were throwing ice balls at them and in one instance - beating a soldier to the ground with a club.  

If you put yourself in the position of these few British soldiers surrounded by a vicious mob, it is easy to see why they fired - with orders or not.  That is why these men were acquitted at the trial - with their lawyer John Adams - second president of the USA.

This site http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects... has the testimonies given at the November trial eight months later.  Of course everyone seemed to see and hear the events of that 20 minutes differently.  Impossible to "know" which to believe.  Much of history is like that.  It is rarely black and white - as historian George Macaulay Trevelyan wrote about a hundred years ago.

This brief event at ~ 9 PM on March 5th, 1770 was spun by newspapers and pamphlets into a monstrous crime - - an early use of the media to incite public opinion by making an event much larger than it was in actuality.  Five men dead - - Hmmmm - -  exactly how many does it take to be called a "massacre?"

Answer 3

Most historians agree that the first shots came from the British as a result of the taunting and violence directed at them by the colonists.

Some historians claim that Private Hugh Montgomery fired the first shot, taking that information from articles written during the trial of the British soldiers. We will probably never know with complete certainty who fired first.

Answer 4

well the colonists were throwing stones at the soldiers and so the british fired first and they had the guns not the colonists, so that it is why it was called the Boston MASSACRE. You might be thinkin o the Battle at Lexington and Concord. (the shot heard around the world). No one knows who fired first.