The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or the Bloody Massacre

This engraving depicts Crispus Attucks (left) felled in the confrontation with British soldiers now known as the Boston Massacre. Attucks—a formerly enslaved man of African and Native American descent—was whitewashed in this print, and in many other 18th-century illustrations of the clash as well. Thanks to abolitionists, depictions of the event in the 19th century restored Attucks’s place in the narrative by picturing him as a Black man. Black abolitionists argued that these more accurate descriptions provided evidence that African descendants had always contributed to the freedoms put forth in the Declaration of Independence, and therefore they deserved to enjoy the full privileges of American citizenship.