The life of Paul Revere -- silversmith and patriot -- is well known; little known, however, is his production of seventy-two copperplate engravings between c. 1762 and 1780. Of these, at least sixteen were political prints, if the total includes portraits of political figures. The vehemence of Revere's patriotism is enhanced by knowledge of these prints and their acid inscriptions. Even such a patently non-political publication as the New- England Psalm-Singer of William Billings (116 engraved pages of music and a frontispiece) was announced to the subscribers in pointed language: "The Author having to his great Loss deferred the Publication of these Sheets for Eighteen Months, to have them put upon American Paper, hopes the Delay will be pardoned. . . ." Billings's Psalm-Singer appeared in the fall of 1770. The Boston Massacre, which led to Revere's most famous print, had occurred on March 5 of the same year.

The affair was in large measure provoked by colonial radicals. The Townshend Acts of 1767 levied duties on a wide range of British imports, including paper, and were a constant annoyance to the colonists. British troops stationed in Boston felt the brunt of public opinion from heckling to beating. On March 5, 1770, a group of men began hurling snowballs at a lone redcoat standing sentry at the custom house on King (now State) Street. He was reinforced by the main guard of some twenty men who stood with fixed bayonets facing a mob of several hundred people who stoned and taunted the troops. Finally, one soldier fired without orders, the others followed suit, and a "bad brawl" had taken a fatal turn. Moderate Bostonians did not fault the British and, in fact, they were defended in court by John Adams and acquitted of murder. But the radical Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams and including Paul Revere, turned the sad event into a massacre of martyrs. Through 1776,the fifth of March became an annual day of anti-British sentiment. Revere's Bloody Massacre was arguably the most important propaganda instrument in the creation of this pre-Revolutionary watershed.

Paul Revere did not invent this image. Henry Pelham, painter, engraver, and half-brother of John Singleton Copley, designed and engraved it. Its title was The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or The Bloody Massacre. Before he sent it to the printer, Edes & Gill, Pelham maintained that he had shown it to Revere. When Revere's plagiarized image was advertised (March 26, 1770) and issued before his own, Pelham wrote an angry letter (March 29):

When I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late Murder, I thought it impossible as I knew you was not capable of doing it unless you coppied it from mine and as I thought I had entrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of Honour and Justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and Trust I reposed in you. But I find I was mistaken and after being at the great Trouble and Expence of making a design paying for paper, printing &c. find myself in the most ungenerous Manner deprived not only of any proposed Advantage but even of the expence I have been at, as truly as if you had plundered me on the highway. If you are insensible of the Dishonour you have brought on yourself by this Act, the World will not be so. H