Thursday Morng. Boston, March 29, 1770.
Sir,
When I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late Murder. I thought it impossible, as I knew you was not capable of doing it unless you coppied it from mine and as I thought I had entrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of Honour and Justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and Trust I reposed in you. But I find I was mistaken, and after being at the great Trouble and Expence of making a design paying for paper, printing &c, find myself in the most ungenerous Manner deprived, not only of any proposed Advantage, but even of the expence I have been at, as truly as if you had plundered me on the highway. It you are insensible of the Dishonour you have brought on yourself by this Act, the World will
not be so. However, I leave you to reflect upon and consider of one of the most dishonorable Actions you could well be guilty of.
H. Pelham.
In the absence of any defense by Paul Revere, and in the presence of the better engraving made along the lines and with the same general arrangement as that claimed by Revere, it would seem that we must convict the latter of the plagiarism with which Pelham charged him. Some of the latter’s prints were issued, since among his papers is the charge in March, 1770, of three pounds nine shillings by one Daniel Rea “To printing 575 of your Prints @ 12| Pr. Hund.” Pelham was a much abler artist than Revere; moreover, it should be noted that the latter prints upon his engraving only the words, “engraved, printed, and sold by Paul Revere,” all of which might have been the literal truth, had he utilized the design of the younger artist. None the less his appropriation without compensation of his young neighbor’s design is much to his discredit, and detracts from the interest and enjoyment with which we examine this most famous and interesting of Paul Revere’s engravings.
The vogue for this picture of the massacre has been very great from the time of its first printing until the present. We have seen how many editions appeared in 1770. These spread rapidly throughout all the English colonies in America. So popular did the prints become that as early as 1785 a new edition became necessary, while the original prints were much in demand, and formed part of early collections of Americana. Originals of 1770 are now so highly prized that single copies sell for anywhere from $750 to $1,000. In 1832 an excellent reproduction was issued, which has in its turn become rare enough to command $50 upon the market.
How much the publication of the original prints had to do with the profound sensation that the “Boston Massacre” awakened everywhere among the American colonies we have no means of judging. Certainly the representation was calculated
to arouse intense resentment against the British soldiery, and this feeling may have contributed to the alacrity with which the colonists took up arms in defense of their liberty. From a trivial encounter between imperial troops and the Boston mob, the incident arose to a position of international importance. Its pictorial presentation, therefore, has become a part of our national history.