Paul Revere | Etching of the Boston Massacre, 1770

Published three weeks after the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere’s famous etching of the event stirred anti-British sentiment among the colonists. Revere had produced an earlier sketch that showed the position of Attucks, Caldwell, and the other men killed near the Customs House. The etching that circulated widely, however, was based on an engraving by another artist, Henry Pelham, which depicted an organized line of British soldiers firing into a crowd of unarmed colonists. At the time of the Boston Massacre, Revere was a prominent silversmith and a member of the Sons of Liberty.