On the evening of March 5 a crowd collected near the barracks and some blows were exchanged; a sentinel in King Street knocked down a boy, and was about to be mobbed, when Captain Preston and seven privates came to his assistance. The crowd pressed upon their levelled pieces, which were suddenly discharged, killing four men and wounding seven. Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was the first to fall. CRISPUS ATTUCKS [March 5, 1770] Where shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story? Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory. But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride, If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died. Shall we take for a sign this Negro slave with unfamiliar name-- With his poor companions, nameless too, till their lives leaped forth in flame? Yea, surely, the verdict is not for us, to render or deny; We can only interpret the symbol; God chose these men to die-- As teachers and types, that to humble lives may chief award be made; That from lowly ones, and rejected stones, the temple's base is laid! When the bullets leaped from the British guns, no chance decreed their aim; Men see what the royal hirelings saw--a multitude and a flame; But beyond the flame, a mystery; five dying men in the street, While the streams of severed races in the well of a nation meet! O blood of the people! changeless tide, through century, creed, and race! Still one as the sweet salt air is one, though tempered by sun and place; The same in the ocean currents, and the same in the sheltered seas; Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies; Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul-- Mere surface shadow and sunshine; while the sounding unifies all! One love, one hope, one duty theirs! No matter the time or ken, There never was separate heart-beat in all the races of men! But alien is one--of class, not race--he has drawn the line for himself; His roots drink life from inhuman soil, from garbage of pomp and pelf; His heart beats not with the common beat, he has changed his life-stream's hue; He deems his flesh to be finer flesh, he boasts that his blood is blue: Patrician, aristocrat, Tory--whatever his age or name, To the people's rights and liberties, a traitor ever the same. The natural crowd is a mob to him, their prayer a vulgar rhyme; The freeman's speech is sedition, and the patriot's deed a crime. Wherever the race, the law, the land,--whatever the time or throne, The Tory is always a traitor to every class but his own.