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