Phillis Wheatley: The Enslaved Girl Who Put America On Trial

Before America declared its independence, before the ink dried on any founding document, a young girl from West Africa arrived in Boston on a slave ship called Phillis. She was about seven or eight years old. On the auction block, she was purchased by the Wheatley family and given their name. In a town that prided itself on liberty, Phillis Wheatley entered as property. What makes her story so startling is what happened next. Instead of being kept from books, Phillis was taught to read and write in the Wheatley household. She learned Latin and the classics, studied the Bible, and began composing verse. Her poetry soon drew attention on both sides of the Atlantic. But as her talent became undeniable, so did the discomfort of the world around her: could an enslaved Black girl really have written such sophisticated work?

Phillis Wheatley on trial in Boston

Boston’s answer was to put her voice on trial.

In 1772, a group of prominent men; governors, merchants, ministers, leaders of this “cradle of liberty” gathered to question her. They examined her, her manuscripts, her learning. Their signed statement, printed at the front of her 1773 book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was essentially a legal affidavit: yes, Phillis Wheatley is, in fact, the author. Her words had to be certified before they could be believed. She lived at the heart of a revolution that shouted “liberty!” while keeping her in bondage. She praised “freedom” in verse while her own freedom was precarious. If anyone understood what it meant to have her voice tested, doubted, and weighed against the comfort of those in power, it was Phillis Wheatley.

Phillis Wheatley posting a Broadside to close the show

Why Phillis Wheatley Opens and Closes Broadside the Musical

In Broadside the Musical, we open our show with a nod to John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, a rough-and-tumble piece of theatre that stole familiar tunes and slipped new words beneath them. It was popular, subversive, and a little bit dangerous: songs you already knew, carrying ideas you might not be ready to hear. That’s exactly the energy we want for Broadside. So we imagine Phillis Wheatley as our “Beggar,” the one who steps out first, talks directly to the actor, and teaches the audience how to listen. She explains that this is not opera for dukes and chandeliers, but for streets, taverns, and taprooms. She reminds us that you can muzzle a sermon, but not a song. And she quietly tells her own truth: she came to Boston in chains, learned her letters, and then watched as powerful men literally sat in judgment over her ability to write. In other words, she knows what it is to have your voice put on trial.

That’s why she is the perfect figure to frame a story about broadsides, pamphlets, and the noisy birth of American public opinion. Broadside the Musical is about how ideas were printed, sung, argued, and nailed to tavern doors. It’s about who gets to speak and who has to fight to be heard. Placing Phillis Wheatley at the threshold of the show, as the Beggar who opens and closes our tale, feels deeply apropos. She embodies the contradictions of the era: a young Black woman, enslaved in a city shouting about freedom, using poetry to insist on her humanity. As she guides us into this “beggar’s opera” of American beginnings, she reminds us that liberty and equality are measured not just in laws and battles, but in whose words make it to the page, the stage, and the public square. In Broadside, Phillis Wheatley gets the first word, and the last, because the fight for freedom of speech and the right to be heard didn’t start with the Founders. It started with voices like hers, refusing to stay silent.

The Boston Gazette: Broadsides of Resistance

If you wandered into Boston in the 1770s, you wouldn’t need to ask which way the political wind was blowing, you could read it. It was nailed to every tavern door, posted on meeting houses, pasted crookedly to brick walls: broadsides from the Boston Gazette, fresh from the press of Edes & Gill. Two of the sharpest minds behind those sheets weren’t generals or governors. They were a playwright-poet named Mercy Otis Warren and a restless organizer named Samuel Adams, both waging their own quiet revolution in ink.

Mercy Otis Warren and Sam Adams reading their work on a broadside

Mercy Otis Warren, A Poet With a Masked Name

Mercy Otis Warren wrote in a world that did not expect women to speak publicly on politics, let alone criticize the British Empire. So she did something ingenious: she wrote anyway and often under pen names. Through poems and satirical plays, she skewered royal officials, mocked abuses of power, and whispered the word liberty between the lines. Her “anonymous” verses would appear as broadsides, pinned up where passersby could read them aloud. People might not know her name, but they knew her voice: sharp, witty, and utterly unafraid. Those pen names were more than a disguise. They were a kind of armor, allowing her to step onto the public stage without invitation, and to join a political conversation that tried very hard to exclude her.

Samuel Adams and the Art of the Article

If Mercy’s lines were the sparks, Samuel Adams supplied the steady flame. Adams also loved a good pseudonym. Under a rotating cast of pen names, he wrote article after article for the Boston Gazette, laying out the case against taxation without representation, standing armies in peacetime, and the creeping reach of imperial power. He understood that politics was persuasion, and persuasion needed stories: victims and villains, dangers and possibilities. In his hands, the Gazette became more than a newspaper, it was a rehearsal hall for revolution, where readers learned to see themselves as something new: Americans, not just British subjects. His articles didn’t just stay on the page. Printers pulled choice passages out, turned them into broadsides, and plastered them across the town, arguments made portable, ready to be read, recited, and debated in taverns and marketplaces.

Governor Hutchinson and British Soldiers inspect a tavern broadside

Liberty in Disguise

Both Warren and Adams knew the risks of being too outspoken in a city watched by royal officials and patrolled by British troops. Pen names gave them a little distance, but the ideas themselves were anything but hidden.

Under every pseudonym, the message was unmistakable:

• Power must answer to the people.
• Rights are not gifts from a king.
• Liberty is worth the risk of speaking out.

Their writings, poems, plays, essays, and editorials crackled with the language of resistance. They didn’t always call openly for revolution at first, but they steadily pushed readers toward the conclusion that something fundamental had to change.

From Typeset to Town Square

At Edes & Gill, the words of Mercy Otis Warren and Samuel Adams were transformed from ink on a compositor’s tray into Boston Gazette broadsides; single sheets, set in type, inked, pressed, and hung up where no one could miss them.

Imagine the scene:

• The press creaks.
• Fresh sheets are hung to dry.
• A rider grabs a bundle for a nearby town.
• A tavern keeper nails one to the beam above the door.

Colonialists reading broadsides in a tavern

By evening, those same words are being read aloud to a crowded room, argued over by fishermen and merchants, echoed in toasts, turned into verses of songs. The authors remain half-hidden behind their pen names, but the talk of liberty, of rights, of the possibility of independence, belongs to everyone.

In the end, the revolution wasn’t just fought with muskets on muddy fields. It was prepared in places like Edes & Gill, in the careful setting of type, in the courage of writers like Mercy Otis Warren and Samuel Adams who trusted that words, anonymous or not, could move a people toward freedom. Their broadsides didn’t just report history; they helped create it, one sheet, one poem, one article of resistance at a time.

Broadsides, Broadsides, Everywhere Broadsides!

If you’re writing a musical about Boston in the 1770s, you’re basically swimming in Broadsides. They were the social media of the Revolution: one sheet of paper, ink still tacky from the press, slapped onto tavern walls, meeting house doors, and convenient fence posts. News, satire, song lyrics, if it needed to be seen or sung, it went on a broadside. So of course, in Broadside, they’re everywhere.

Dr Joseph Warren hands out Broadsides of the Liberty Song

Opening the show with a song sheet.

In our opening scene at Faneuil Hall, Dr. Joseph Warren doesn’t just give a speech, he hands history out, one sheet at a time. He moves through the crowd of uneasy colonists, passing out fresh-inked copies of “The Liberty Song.” The hall is full of men who’ve been reading angry essays for years, but this is different. This is something they can sing. At first the colonists only mouth the words, sounding out the rhythm from the page. A few lines later, a melody catches, someone dares to sing out, another joins, and the harmony slowly gathers. By the end of the number, the whole hall is on its feet, they all start singing “The Liberty Song” together, the broadside in their hands turning into a shared anthem. It’s a quiet revolution: not muskets, not marches, just verses and a melody, printed in black and white. The colonists study the notes, lift their voices, and you can feel the room shift. The broadside becomes a kind of permission slip to raise their voices together.

General Gage tears up Paul Revere's Broadside "A Warm Place—Hell"

When the broadside bites back.

Later in the scene the mood has changed. This time it’s General Thomas Gage holding a sheet of paper, and it’s not a hopeful new anthem. It’s one of Paul Revere’s most vicious broadsides: “A Warm Place – Hell,” with its devil driving Boston’s “rescinders” straight into the jaws of a monstrous sea creature. Gage treats it almost like a prop in a dark comedy. He holds it up for the crowd, Loyalists chuckling behind him, Patriots watching tightly from the benches and reads it like an absurd review of his own administration. Then he shrugs and says: “I daresay we’ve all been living in our own kind of hell these past months. Perhaps it’s time…” (he tears the sheets neatly in two) “…to let your neighbors up and out.” It’s a chilling moment because he’s not just tearing paper. He’s trying to tear up the story the Patriots are telling about his loyalist party.

Inside Broadside: The Night Boston Ran Out of Legal Options

In Broadside, one of the most gripping moments arrives inside the Old South Meeting House on December 16, 1773, the final hours before the Boston Tea Party. It’s a scene that doesn’t rely on a massive crowd or spectacle; instead, it distills the tension of thousands of angry colonists into a handful of characters whose choices carry the weight of a city on the brink.

Sam Adams and John Hancock leading a meeting in the Old South Meeting House

The scene begins with Samuel Adams confronting the core issue dividing Boston: Parliament’s insistence on taxing tea without giving the colonies a voice. Sam Adams and John Hancock voicing the fears and frustrations that were echoing across Boston that night. The simplicity of the staging keeps the focus exactly where history placed it: on the impossible bind the colonists had been forced into.

Son's of Liberty leaving Old South Meeting House

Enter Francis Rotch, exhausted from a desperate ride to Milton. Rotch was the unlucky owner of the Dartmouth, the first tea ship to arrive in Boston Harbor. Broadside stays true to that moment: Rotch returns to the meeting house shaken, reporting that Governor Hutchinson has again refused permission for the ships to leave the harbor with the tea still aboard. With that decision, every legal avenue of protest disappears.

Son's of Liberty march to boats in Boston Harbour

What makes the scene powerful onstage is the quiet that follows. Adams delivers the line that still echoes through history, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country” and the small cast shifts, almost imperceptibly, into the role of a city ready to take action. They slip out into the night one by one, hinting at what Boston knows but cannot yet say aloud.

Son's of Liberty throw crates of tea into the harbour

By dressing as Native Americans, the participants rejected their British identity and signaled their new allegiance to America, a moral critique of British decadence and consumerism with simple costumes like blankets and war paint, they intended to present a menacing image to the British. In Broadside, this moment is the hinge between protest and revolution. It’s the instant Boston stops asking permission and starts making history. It’s small, tense, human and it sets the fuse for everything that follows.

Stitches, Secrets, and the Last Chimney Standing

If you visit the site of the Hartwell house today, you’ll find only the central chimney still standing, an intricate stack of brick and stone that once carried heat to multiple fireplaces throughout the home. It was the warm core of the house, and on the tense nights leading up to April 19, 1775, it kept Mary Hartwell steady as musket shots echoed along the Battle Road.

Hartwell House Chimney Fall 2025

Just down the road stood the family-run Hartwell Tavern, where Mary had plenty of chores; bringing in wood, tending the kitchen, helping guests settle. But on certain nights, those chores quietly went unattended. Mary would slip upstairs to a small room where three unlikely women met in secret: Prudence Wright, Abigail Adams, and Mary herself, the small, discreet network we call "The Needle Guard" in the Broadside universe.

Walk from Hartwell House to Hartwell Tavern

Prudence had the steadiest needle, Abigail the sharpest mind, and Mary the most important resource of all: access to cloth, buckram, and whalebone, the materials that let them hide Dr. Joseph Warren’s messages inside petticoats and corsets. Mary wasn’t the most precise seamstress, but she was the one who could get what the mission required, even if it meant leaving a stack of tavern tasks undone.

Mary Hartwell, witness to the shot heard round the world

Standing beside the lone chimney today, it’s easy to imagine British soldiers marching past on the same road, their bayonets glinting just as Mary remembered. The house and tavern are quiet now, but the story remains, a reminder that revolutions aren’t just launched by heroes with muskets. Sometimes they begin with a woman slipping away from her chores to stitch a secret in the dark.

The British Grenadiers form a column

Sam Adams, His Many Masks, and the Night the Ghosts Came Out to Play

Few revolutionaries wore more faces than Samuel Adams. In the pages of the Boston Gazette, he was not just one sharp mind but a whole chorus of them; Vindex, Candidus, Populus, Alfred, Valerius Poplicola, A Chatterer, and a rotating cast of other aliases deployed whenever the political winds required a different voice. Each pseudonym carried a distinct tone: righteous fury, calm logic, biting satire, or the voice of “the common people” urging action. Together, they formed the illusion of an entire public awakening, when in truth much of the agitation came from a single pen in a single room.

Sam Adams dreaming with his pseudonyms

The Print Shop After Midnight

The illustration captures that idea literally, Sam Adams, asleep at Edes & Gill’s print shop, slumped in a wooden chair as ghostly versions of his pseudonyms float around him. A Broadside hangs from his fingers, ink still tacky, the press looming behind him. It’s a scene that distills the entire period: one man writing as many, shaping the emotional tempo of a city on the edge. The print shop itself was a furnace for rebellion. Ideas entered as drafts and left as sparks; broadsides, essays, and etchings that circulated across Boston faster than British patrols could track them. Here, propaganda wasn’t a whisper; it was a printed roar.

A Broadside Scene in Broadside

In Broadside, this image becomes a full theatrical moment: Sam dozes in the shop after a long night of writing, only to have his pseudonym “ghosts” spring to life. They swirl around him, arguing with each other, bragging about which one stirred the most trouble, and bickering like siblings who share the same brain. Then the British soldiers burst in thinking they’ll finally catch the “network” of writers behind the Gazette. What they find instead is Adams alone… until the ghosts turn toward them. The soldiers can’t see them. The audience can. And that’s where the fun begins.

Sam Adams pseudonyms speak through Boston Gazette Broadsides

The ghost of Candidus lectures the redcoats on constitutional rights. Populus shouts populist slogans directly into a soldier’s ear. Valerius Poplicola bows dramatically like a Roman senator. A Chatterer buzzes around them, narrating every move. The soldiers, confused and unnerved, grow increasingly spooked as the room seems to hum with unseen agitation. Meanwhile Adams, half-asleep, murmurs the beginnings of another essay, unaware that his alter-egos are haunting the British for him. It is the perfect metaphor for his influence: the British weren’t fighting one man. They were fighting the appearance of an entire movement created by one exhausted revolutionary with too many aliases and too much to say. This is where Broadside shows its teeth and its humor. And it all starts with Sam Adams asleep at the press, surrounded by the restless spirits of his own invention.

Dr. Joseph Warren’s “Needle Guard”: The Secret Stitchers Who Warned a Revolution

Up a narrow staircase inside Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern, in a cramped room that smelled of wool, ink, and secrecy, Dr. Joseph Warren convened one of the most unusual intelligence units of the Revolutionary era. Later whispered about as his “Needle Guard,” this covert network of women, Prudence Wright, Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams worked not with muskets or pamphlets, but with needles, seams, and the quiet confidence that no one ever suspects, the petticoats.

The Needle Guard and Dr. Joseph Warren's spy network.

The image below captures a moment that blends strategy with domestic stillness. Warren stands as the fitting mannequin, eyes closed, while the three women sew by candlelit concentration. On the surface, they are adjusting a corset and petticoat, soft linen, the kind of garment any officer’s wife might wear without question. Hidden inside the seam, however, is the real message: coded warnings about British troop movements, meant for Margaret Kemble Gage, the general’s wife and a quietly sympathetic channel inside the highest ranks of the Crown’s command.

The Needle Guard and Dr. Joseph Warren's spy network

In our musical the plan was deceptively simple. Warren would give the finished corset-petticoat to Margaret and she would use it to send secret messages to the "Son's of Liberty" spy network. Threads became signals. Seams became couriers. A woman’s garment became a conduit between Boston and Concord. Just as Prudence tightened the last hidden stitch, a firm knock sounded on the tavern door. For a heartbeat, no one breathed. Then a voice called up the stairs, only a drunk regular searching for his friends and the tension dissolved. Laughter, low and relieved, filled the little room. For one night at least, the secret held. And history, still unaware, inched closer to the morning when those warnings would help shape the first steps of the Revolution.

Edes & Gill: The Little Print Shop That Helped Ignite a Revolution (1769-1775)

Between 1769 and 1775, Boston was a city simmering toward a boil, and no place captured that volatility more vividly than the modest print shop of Benjamin Edes and John Gill. Tucked into the warren of streets near today’s Faneuil Hall, their printing office was small, unadorned, and easy to overlook, yet it became one of the most influential engines of resistance in the American colonies.

Edes & Gill Print Shop (1769) Artist's Rendition

A Shop at the Center of Turmoil

In 1769, Edes & Gill were already well known for publishing The Boston Gazette, a newspaper that gave voice to a rising chorus of Patriot sentiment. Their shop was not a genteel workspace; it was a hive of ink-stained apprentices, clattering presses, damp sheets of type-set broadsides, and lively political debate. The Gazette was fed directly by the pens of radical contributors such as Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and the mysterious “Vindex” and “Populus.” Here, the grievances of ordinary Bostonians became pointed columns, satirical poems, sharply illustrated mastheads, and devastating political essays. Every Monday morning, fresh from their handpresses, the Gazette hit the streets criticizing British policy, celebrating acts of resistance, and shaping the tone of colonial outrage.

1770: Reporting the Massacre

When the Boston Massacre erupted on March 5, 1770, Edes & Gill were among the first to frame the public narrative. Their pages carried eyewitness accounts, editorials, and inflammatory descriptions of “bloody butchery,” giving shape to the collective memory of the event. While Paul Revere’s engraving famously visualized the massacre, the Gazette gave it voice articulating colonial fury and demanding accountability.

Edes & Gill Print Shop on Court Street (1770) Artist's Rendition

Tea, Taxes, and Escalation

Through the early 1770s, Edes & Gill continued to publish essays attacking taxation, standing armies, and ministerial overreach. Their print shop became an unofficial headquarters for Patriot communication. Notices for meetings at Old South, exposés on customs officers, and fiery calls to resist the Tea Act all passed through their press. When the Boston Tea Party unfolded in 1773, Edes was said to have knowledge, if not direct involvement, in the planning. The Gazette’s reporting afterward reflected both patriotic pride and careful protection of the participants’ identities.

Edes & Gill Print Shop (1775) Artist's Rendition

1774–1775: Toward Open Conflict

By 1774, the Coercive Acts tightened the noose around Boston, but Edes & Gill didn’t relent. Their press issued broadsides condemning the closing of the port, circulated resolves from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and printed instructions to towns preparing for potential conflict. As tensions peaked in early 1775, the Edes & Gill shop printed the alarm signals, committees’ circulars, and political essays that helped mobilize the countryside. The very week of Lexington and Concord, their work continued—quiet, relentless, essential.

Legacy

Between 1769 and 1775, Edes & Gill’s print shop served as more than a business. It was a crucible of revolutionary thought, a communications hub, and a lifeline for the Patriot movement. The Revolution was fought with muskets and militias, but also with ink, type, and the steady rhythm of a handpress.

Faneuil Hall on the Eve of Revolution

Faneuil Hall is one of those places where the air itself feels charged. Today the hall stands as an elegant icon in the heart of Boston, but the building we walk through now is the product of many renovations, expansions, and restorations layered over centuries. To understand its power, it helps to imagine what it looked like in 1769, on the eve of the Boston Massacre, when tempers were rising and truth was still being hammered into shape.

Faneuil Hall (1770) Artistic Interpretation

The original Faneuil Hall, completed in 1742, was a far more modest structure than the bustling marketplace and meeting hall we know today. It was smaller, narrower, and at the time remarkably vulnerable. After a devastating fire in 1761, the hall had been rebuilt, but the reconstruction kept to the original footprint. This meant that by 1769, the building still retained much of its colonial simplicity: a single open meeting room above and a market space below, brick walls enclosing timber floors worn by decades of debate.

Faneuil Hall (2025)

The roofline was less ornate, the windows slightly uneven, and the cupola, while stately, it felt more utilitarian than grand. Inside those wooden walls, Bostonians gathered to wrestle with the questions of the age. Resistance to the Townshend Acts was growing, British troops patrolled the streets, and merchants debated boycotts under that creaking ceiling. Voices ricocheted off beams that had seen years of smoke, sweat, and shipyard dust. It was in this cramped, imperfect hall that Samuel Adams, James Otis, and other firebrands rallied citizens long before the sound of musket fire echoed along King Street.

Faneuil Hall (2025)

The Faneuil Hall of 1769 wasn’t yet the building we celebrate today, but it was already the beating heart of Boston. A place where grievances turned into speeches, speeches turned into resolve, and resolve moved a city toward revolution. A hall built for commerce became a crucible for liberty. And in those fraught months leading up to March 5, 1770, its walls held the murmurs and shouts of a people who sensed that history was shifting under their feet.

Paul Revere’s North End Home: A Hearth of Revolution

Tucked into the narrow, winding streets of Boston’s North End stands one of the city’s quiet wonders, the Paul Revere House. Purchased by Revere in 1770, this modest, timber-framed home became the backdrop to some of the most defining years in our country's early story. While history often pictures Revere galloping under moonlight, we sometimes forget the life that waited for him behind that front door. Revere didn’t live alone inside those walls, he shared the home with his growing family. By the time he purchased the house, Revere was already a father many times over; in total, he would raise sixteen children across his two marriages. Imagine the soundscape of that home: the clatter of pewter mugs on the table, young voices learning their lessons, laughter tumbling down the stairs, and the rhythm of daily life punctuated by the urgent footsteps of a man increasingly drawn into the currents of revolution.

Paul Revere's House in Boston's north end

The North End of Revere’s day wasn’t the cannoli-filled, tourist-treasure neighborhood it is now, it was a tight-knit colonial community of tradesmen, mariners, artisans, and immigrants. Narrow alleys, brick paths, the scent of the harbor, church bells calling from Old North Church just blocks away. Revere’s life here was not grand, but grounded, rooted in family, faith, work, and community. From this home, Revere watched tensions swell in Boston. It was here he likely discussed the Boston Massacre with neighbors, raised a glass to the Sons of Liberty, and tucked his children into bed before slipping into the night to carry messages, warnings, and plans that would help define the course of history. The house stands today not simply as a monument to a midnight ride, but as a reminder that revolutions are born not only in grand halls and battlefields, but also in kitchens, workshops, and family rooms, where ordinary people gather, dream, and dare.

Paul Revere display in house museum

When you stand in the North End and look at the Revere House now, it hums with echoes, the laughter of children, the clink of metal on metal in a silversmith’s hands, and the whisper of a nation being shaped by a man who lived not as a legend, but as a husband, father, neighbor, and patriot.

Where Echoes Still Ring: Standing at the Site of the Boston Massacre

On a cool day in Boston, I found myself staring up at the Old State House, its brick walls stubbornly holding their place against a forest of modern glass towers. Crowds gathered below the balcony, where colonial officials once issued royal proclamations and later, where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to Bostonians in 1776. But the stones beneath our feet tell an even earlier story. A circular marker in the pavement reminds us: March 5, 1770, The Boston Massacre. This spot, quiet now but once crackling with tension, marks the moment when the American Revolution began to burn.

A City on Edge

By 1770, Boston was a powder keg. The Quartering Act required colonists to house and supply British troops. Even when private homes were officially exempt, the effect was the same, soldiers were everywhere, living among civilians, competing for work, drinking in the same taverns, pushing into the daily life of a city that didn’t want them. Nearly 2,000 redcoats patrolled a town of just 16,000 residents. Resentment simmered. Arguments flared. The line between order and occupation blurred.

The Night It All Ignited

It began with something small, as history often does. A dispute between a British soldier and a wigmaker’s apprentice over an unpaid bill escalated into a street confrontation. Locals gathered. Insults flew. Snowballs mixed with oyster shells and chunks of ice became missiles. A fire bell rang out, the city’s alarm system. Citizens rushed out, believing there was danger. Soldiers reacted too, believing they were under attack. Then came the fateful word. A colonist yelled “Fire!” to urge the crowd, but the soldiers mistook it as a command. Gunshots cracked through the night. In seconds, five colonists lay dead or dying, including Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent who became the first martyr of the Revolution.

The Fallout and the Firestorm

Boston exploded with outrage. Paul Revere engraved the image that spread through the colonies, a dramatic depiction, polished propaganda, and a rallying cry. But here’s the twist history sometimes hides: The soldiers were defended in court by none other than John Adams, who believed in the rule of law even when politics burned hot. Most were acquitted. Two were branded and released. Adams would later call this his “most honorable” act. A revolution had begun, but with a commitment to justice, not vengeance.

Standing in the Footsteps of History

Today, the cobblestone circle marks the spot where blood touched stone and ordinary people became catalysts of extraordinary change. Standing there, in the shadow of skyscrapers, listening to modern chatter and car horns, it's hard not to feel the echo.

• A city stirred by injustice.
• A spark catching in the air.
• A bell ringing.
• A shout.
• A gunshot.
• A nation being born.

Reflection

The Boston Massacre reminds us that revolutions don’t always announce themselves. They start with tension, misunderstanding, and moments where ordinary people refuse to stay silent. Sometimes the fuse of change is lit by accident. But once lit, it burns.

Echoes at Hartwell Tavern: Mary Hartwell and the Road to Concord

Along the old Bay Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts stands Hartwell Tavern, a sturdy timber home and gathering place that once pulsed with colonial conversation, rum, and resolve. Operated by Ephraim and Elizabeth Hartwell, the tavern was more than a roadside stop, it was a nerve center for local news, militia planning, and debate in the tense years before the Revolution.

The Hartwells’ daughter-in-law, Mary Hartwell, became part of that story on the night of April 18, 1775. As British regulars marched quietly toward Concord to seize colonial munitions, Mary heard the tramp of soldiers’ boots and the clatter of muskets on the road. She later described the eerie sound of the column moving through the dark, a memory that would echo through history as one of the first civilian accounts of the march that ignited the war for independence.

But long before that night, Hartwell Tavern was already alive with talk of liberty. Over pewter mugs of cider and ale, travelers and townsfolk discussed taxes, boycotts, and the latest broadside from Boston. Dr. Joseph Warren’s fiery words and Paul Revere’s engravings traveled up this same route, carried by riders and gossip alike. The tavern, with its low ceilings and wide hearth, was a crossroads of the Revolution, where everyday people weighed the cost of defiance against the comfort of loyalty.

Today, Hartwell Tavern stands restored within the Minute Man National Historical Park, its rooms furnished much as they were in the 1770s. Visitors can almost hear the murmur of voices debating freedom and duty, or picture Mary Hartwell stepping out into the chill night air, watching the glow of lanterns fade toward Concord. It was ordinary people like the Hartwells, innkeepers, farmers, and mothers, who bore witness to extraordinary times. Their courage, spoken and silent, helped turn talk in a tavern into the first steps toward a nation.

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The Green Dragon Tavern: Where Ale Met Revolution

Tucked deep in Boston’s North End, the Green Dragon Tavern was far more than a watering hole, it was a crucible of rebellion. Between 1770 and 1775, its smoky rooms became the informal headquarters of the patriots who would soon ignite a revolution. By candlelight and tankard, men like Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Dr. Joseph Warren, and other Sons of Liberty met to debate, plan, and print their dissent into history.

Green Dragon Tavern

Headquarters of the Revolution

Owned by the Masonic St. Andrew’s Lodge, the tavern had a cellar for drinkers and an upstairs for secret meetings. Its labyrinthine rooms offered just enough privacy for men with dangerous ideas. Daniel Webster later called it “the headquarters of the Revolution,” and with good reason, from these rooms, the plans for the Boston Tea Party were said to have taken shape, and the signals that would launch Revere’s midnight ride were whispered into motion. Picture the scene: a wooden bench, a blazing hearth, and the clatter of pewter mugs as artisans, printers, and patriots huddled over the day’s news. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, spilled ale, and tension. British redcoats patrolled outside; revolution simmered within.

Union Street in Boston

Broadsides and the Power of Print

If Boston’s streets were the stage of the Revolution, its taverns were the printing offices of rebellion. The Green Dragon wasn’t just a meeting place, it was a distribution hub for broadsides and pamphlets: single-sheet prints that carried the latest news, satire, and calls to action. Paul Revere’s engravings, from his chilling “Bloody Massacre” to his biting political cartoons, circulated through places like this tavern, passed from hand to hand like lanterns in the dark. Patriots gathered here to read aloud the latest broadsides from Edes & Gill, the Boston Gazette, and other radical presses. These sheets spread the word faster than any official proclamation could silence it. It was here, amid mugs of ale and whispered debate, that propaganda turned to purpose. A broadside pinned to the wall might inspire a meeting; a meeting might spark a march; a march might lead to a movement.

Edes & Gill in Boston

Sam Adams and Paul Revere

Samuel Adams was a master organizer who understood that revolutions are built as much in taverns as in legislatures. His knack for rallying craftsmen, dockworkers, and printers made the Green Dragon the perfect forum for building consensus and courage. Paul Revere, meanwhile, brought the tools of his trade, copper plates, etching acid, and a keen eye for politics to amplify the cause. From his workshop only a few streets away, he turned ideas discussed in taverns into images that defined the patriot narrative. Many of those images found their audience right here at the Green Dragon.

A Legacy Brewed in Liberty

The original tavern was torn down in 1832, but its legend remains as strong as the ale once poured there. Today’s Green Dragon on Marshall Street pays homage to the original, standing just a few steps from where the conspirators met. The Revolution didn’t begin with muskets, it began with meetings, broadsides, and mugs of beer, passed hand to hand in a Boston pub where freedom itself was on tap.

The Hancock-Clarke House: Where Revolution Slept

In the quiet town of Lexington, Massachusetts, this humble home became a sanctuary for liberty’s architects. On the night of April 18, 1775, John Hancock and Samuel Adams were guests of the Reverend Jonas Clarke, sheltering from the political storm brewing in Boston. The British considered them agitators, the spark behind the colonial unrest and it was no secret that their arrest was imminent.

The Hancock-Clarke House

Inside these weathered walls, by the flicker of candlelight, the men debated, prayed, and prepared for the uncertain dawn.The parsonage was meant to be a place of rest, but history had other plans. Just past midnight, Paul Revere thundered into Lexington with an urgent warning, the Regulars were marching. He rode hard through the night to reach this very doorstep, shouting his now-immortal message: “The Regulars are coming out!” Within hours, gunfire echoed across Lexington Green, marking the start of the American Revolution. Standing before the Hancock-Clarke House today, you can almost hear the echoes of that night, the creak of the floorboards, the hurried voices inside, and the distant rhythm of hoofbeats racing against time. The revolution didn’t begin in a grand hall or battlefield, but right here, in a quiet parsonage where faith, fear, and freedom met under one roof.

The Midnight Ride: More Than One Rider, More Than One Route

The night of April 18, 1775 was anything but silent. As British troops prepared to march on Concord, a network of colonial riders set out to warn the countryside. The most famous, Paul Revere, crossed the Charles River from Boston to Charlestown, the “two if by sea” signal from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem. The phrase didn’t refer to the open ocean, but to the short stretch across the Charles where the British would cross if they came by boat.

Revere’s path (in blue on the map) joined with William Dawes (green), who had ridden out through Roxbury and Brookline after slipping past the guards at Boston Neck. Their mission was urgent: to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington that British regulars were on the move to arrest them. They succeeded reaching Hancock and Adams at the Hancock-Clarke House before being intercepted by British patrols on the road to Concord.

Dr. Samuel Prescott (purple) escaped that night and carried the alarm all the way to Concord, ensuring the militia was ready when the first shots of the Revolution were fired at dawn. The “midnight ride” was never a solo act of heroism, it was a coordinated effort, fueled by courage, communication, and a shared belief that liberty was worth the risk.

The Magna Carta and Paul Revere’s Etched Protest

When Paul Revere and his contemporaries turned to copper plates and ink, they weren’t merely making art, they were invoking history. Among the most powerful symbols underlying Revere’s engravings is the Magna Carta, the 1215 document that first established the principle that no ruler is above the law. To the American colonists, that centuries-old parchment represented a sacred promise between the governed and their government, a promise they now felt Britain had broken.

Liberty Bowl at Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

By the 1760s and 1770s, Revere’s engravings; such as The Bloody Massacre, A Warm Place—Hell, and The Able Doctor, doubled as visual arguments. They carried with them the weight of English common law and centuries of expectation that even kings were bound by their word. To the colonists, taxes without representation (Townshend Acts), warrantless searches (general writ), and soldiers quartered in private homes were not just political inconveniences; they were violations of the ancient rights guaranteed by Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights to the British/American Whips.

Revere Document References 1768

Revere’s etchings often depict allegorical figures like Britannia, Liberty, Justice, wounded or restrained. These images echoed the colonists’ belief that their “rights as Englishmen” were being trampled. His satire, distributed through broadsides and newspapers, served as both propaganda and pedagogy: reminding a largely literate public that their resistance was not rebellion but restoration, a demand that Britain live up to its own founding principles.

As the Revolution gained momentum, the Magna Carta became more than a relic of medieval England; it was a moral touchstone. Revere’s burin carved not only scenes of outrage but a lineage of liberty connecting the parchment sealed at Runnymede to the pamphlets, protests, and songs that would soon ignite a nation. In short, Paul Revere’s etchings were not merely acts of defiance, they are remembrance. Each print whispered the same enduring truth: when power forgets its promises, it is the duty of the people to remind it.

The Able Doctor, or America Swallowed the Bitter Draught

Before political cartoons filled newspapers, they filled broadsides single sheets of satire, scandal, and rebellion. One of the sharpest came from none other than Paul Revere, who engraved this biting image for The Royal American Magazine in 1774.

A Nation Under the Knife

In the engraving, “America” is personified as a Native woman, pinned down, half-naked, and forced to drink tea by British officials representing Lord North, Lord Bute, and the King himself. Nearby, France and Spain look on, aghast. The scene is shocking, even grotesque and exactly as Revere intended.

It’s titled “The Able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught.” Translation? Britain’s “medicine” is tyranny.

"The Able Doctor, or America Swallowed the Bitter Draught"

From Magazine to Broadside

Revere created the image for the Royal American Magazine, but he quickly saw its potential beyond the printed page. He re-engraved and sold impressions as broadsides, single-sheet prints cheap enough to hang in taverns and meeting halls.

These weren’t just souvenirs; they were visual manifestos, meant to stir outrage and conversation. Like his Boston Massacre engraving, this print mixed news, art, and protest, the 1770s version of going viral.

The Artist as Agitator

By 1774, Revere wasn’t just an artisan; he was a revolutionary publisher. He knew that a clever image could travel faster than a sermon. With every press of the plate, he printed defiance... an idea we carry forward in Broadside the Musical:

That the pen, the press, and the performer all serve the same cause, the people’s voice.

Sarah “Sary” Revere: The Heart Behind the Hero

Long before Paul Revere became the voice of revolution, he was a husband and father. His wife, Sarah Orne Revere, known lovingly as “Sary” in his letters, was the quiet strength behind the silversmith’s hammer and the patriot’s pen.

Married in 1757, Sarah and Paul built a bustling household in Boston’s North End, a modest home filled with the sounds of six children, the scent of molten metal, and the rhythm of a city stirring toward change. While Paul etched Liberty onto copper plates, Sary kept the family running amid rising tensions, shortages, and soldiers in the streets.

Sarah "Sary" Orne Revere

Tragically, in 1773, the same year Revere helped plan the Boston Tea Party, Sarah died after the birth of their sixth child. She was just 37 years old. Her passing marked a turning point, a personal loss set against the city’s growing rebellion. Within months, Revere threw himself deeper into the cause, channeling his grief into purpose.

Sarah’s name rarely appears in history books, but her spirit lingers between the lines, in the steadiness that carried Revere through his midnight ride and in the countless families who bore the unseen weight of revolution. She was, in many ways, Boston’s first unsung heroine her courage printed not in ink, but in love.

The Bloody Massacre: How Paul Revere Turned Ink into Revolution

Long before hashtags or headlines, there was the broadside; ink, paper, and outrage. Just weeks after the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, Paul Revere turned that outrage into an image that would rally a city and shape a movement.

The Original “Breaking News”

Revere wasn’t there that night, but he knew the power of a picture. Working from a drawing by fellow engraver Henry Pelham, he carved a copperplate engraving called “The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston.” It showed British soldiers lined up in formation, firing into a peaceful crowd, a powerful, if exaggerated, vision of tyranny.

Pelham was furious and accused Revere of stealing his design, but the horse was already out of the stable. Revere printed and sold copies all over Boston, signing them proudly:

“Engrav’d, Printed & Sold by Paul Revere”

“The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston.”

Not Quite a Broadside, But Close Enough

Technically, it wasn’t a letterpress broadside (those were printed from raised wood type), but it acted like one. It was propaganda disguised as news; copied, colored, and pasted in taverns and shop windows throughout the colonies. In effect, it was the first viral post in American history, an image that made sure everyone “saw” what happened, or at least what Revere wanted them to see.

The Power of Print

Every line and shadow in that engraving carried political weight. The soldiers are unified and calm, cold enforcers of empire. The colonists are victims, innocent, bleeding, brave. The word “Massacre” screams across the bottom, paired with a poem mourning the dead. It was performance on paper, and like any good musical number, it stirred emotion before reason.

Legacy in Ink Revere’s Bloody Massacre did more than sell prints, it set the stage for revolution. Within months, the colonies were singing from the same sheet of music: resistance, liberty, unity. His engraving inspired copies, broadsides, even Isaiah Thomas’s almanacs, ensuring that image and message endured. Two and a half centuries later, that same spirit fuels Broadside the Musical: a story about how art, propaganda, and song became the tools of a nation’s birth.

Stitching Revolution: Creating Authentic, Breathable Costumes for Broadside

As we prepare to bring Broadside the Musical to life onstage, every detail matters, from the press that spreads the word to the coats that define our characters. This season, our costume department is taking a deep dive into Revolutionary War fashion, balancing historical authenticity with modern comfort for our summer performances.

Finding the Perfect Pattern:

Butterick Pattern #3072, from their Making History collection

We were thrilled to discover Butterick Pattern #3072, part of their Making History collection, as the foundation for our colonial costumes. The design captures the essence of 18th-century men’s attire with its long front-flapped coat, waistcoat, breeches, and tricorn hat. It’s the kind of look you might imagine on Paul Revere himself, ready to print a broadside or ride through the night shouting news of liberty.

Choosing Fabrics that Breathe and Belong:

While wool, velvet, and heavy gabardine were period-accurate choices, they don’t exactly lend themselves to the summer heat of a stage production—or the packed venues of a festival run. Instead, we’re using modern natural fibers that mimic the historical textures while allowing airflow and flexibility.

• For coats: lightweight cotton twill or linen-blend suiting in muted Revolutionary reds and indigo blues.
• For waistcoats: breathable woven cotton or linen with subtle textures to evoke hand-loomed fabrics.
• For shirts: soft muslin or fine cotton voile for that classic, billowy colonial sleeve.

These substitutions let our actors move freely under the stage lights while keeping that authentic “hand-stitched revolution” look audiences expect.

Color as Character:

In the 18th century, color was more than fashion, it was identity. British red, colonial blue, and the ivory whites of fife and drum corps helped distinguish rank and regiment. Our Broadside palette will mirror that tradition, using deeper reds and ocean blues for the main cast, and lighter hues for musicians and ensemble members who carry the “rhythms of rebellion.” The contrast onstage will help audiences read social and political divisions at a glance, just as people did 250 years ago.

Sewing Toward America’s 250th Birthday:

These costumes will do more than dress our characters—they’ll help tell the story of a nation in rehearsal. As we approach the United States’ 250th anniversary, Broadsidecelebrates the artists, printers, and everyday dreamers who built a new world from ink, paper, and courage. Our colonial coats, stitched by modern hands, will walk through both history and satire—reminding audiences how rebellion can still look sharp in the summer heat.