The Liberty Archive FREECAPITALISTS.ORG

Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 67 · 6 March 1775

Fields of blood, and a hiss

In a tall packed meeting house, a young man in a black coat stands in a high pulpit with one arm flung out, while scarlet-coated officers on the pulpit stairs lean forward hissing and a plainly dressed man sits below facing them.
Old South Meeting House, Boston, March 1775. At the annual oration on the Massacre, Dr. Joseph Warren tells a town meeting moderated by Sam Adams that Bostonians will press forward through fields of blood if they must. As he finishes, the British officers crowded on the pulpit stairs begin to hiss. Rothbard calls it an attempt to provoke the Americans into attack. Chapter 67 of Conceived in Liberty.

Download the painting, full size (JPEG)CC BY 4.0

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit freecapitalists.org. How to credit.

Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Boston in March 1775 lived under the guns of the army that had occupied it since 1768. Every 5 March the town marked the anniversary of the Massacre with an oration, and this year the day fell on a Sunday, so on Monday the 6th a huge crowd filled Old South Meeting House. The meeting was illegal under the new law that limited town meetings, and Sam Adams moderated it. British officers had been courteously let in and crowded the pulpit stairs. Dr. Joseph Warren, thirty-three, a physician and one of the town's radical leaders, gave the oration. He told them that independence was not the aim, but that if the only way to safety ran through fields of blood, he knew they would press forward until tyranny was trodden under foot (CiL, p. 1086). As he ended, the officers hissed. Rothbard reads that as a plan to goad the Americans into an attack that might not carry the other colonies with it. The next day the troops arrested a man for buying a musket from a soldier, and the day after that they tarred and feathered him and marched him through Boston behind a band. Warren died at Breed's Hill a little over three months later.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 67, 'Massachusetts: Nearing the Final Conflict', pp. 1082-1086. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Joseph Warren, An Oration; Delivered March Sixth, 1775, at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770 (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1775), Evans N11558; the hour (half past eleven) read through summaries of the notice. Primary source
  3. Lt. Frederick Mackenzie, Diary, entry for 6 March 1775 ('an immense concourse of people'; soldiers on 'the stairs'), read through a quotation in 'Dr. Warren's Ciceronian Toga', Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life. The diary itself was not read. Secondary source
  4. '250 Years Ago: The Boston Massacre Oration: March 6, 1775', Emerging Revolutionary War (6 March 2025): scarlet-coated men seated and standing around the pulpit; officers shouted 'Fie! Fie!', some hearers mistook it for 'Fire!'; Samuel Adams rose to appoint the next year's speaker. Secondary source
  5. 'Joseph Warren's 1775 Boston Massacre Oration at Old South Meeting House', Hear About Here (read 2026-09-30 through a search summary): the oration at Old South Meeting House before British officers and thousands of townspeople. Secondary source
  6. Salina B. Baker, 'Dr. Joseph Warren's 1775 Boston Massacre Oration' (5 March 2018), read through a search summary: Old South Meeting House, British officers present, Warren climbing through the window behind the pulpit. Secondary source
  7. Boston Landmarks Commission, Old South Meeting House Study Report (boston.gov, 2025), read through a search summary: box pews, high pulpit with suspended sounding board on the long north wall, balustraded galleries on three sides on Doric columns, two tiers of round-arched multi-pane windows. Secondary source
  8. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Joseph Warren (black coat with white silk lining, pearl-gray silk waistcoat), read 2026-09-30 through a search summary; see registry/figures/joseph-warren. Secondary source
  9. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Samuel Adams, about 1772 (plain reddish-brown suit), read 2026-09-30 through a search summary; see registry/figures/samuel-adams. Secondary source
  10. Era registry entry urban-colonial-1760-1775 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress and architecture for Boston; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source
  11. Place registry entry old-south-meeting-house-1775 (data/cil/registry/places/); its own sources are listed there. Secondary source