"UNITED BOSTONIANS IN OUTRAGE AND SCHOOLED THEM IN THE DANGERS OF EQUIVOCATION… A VITAL WELLSPRING OF SHARED EXPERIENCE"

(EDES, Peter, editor). Orations Delivered at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, to Commemorate the Evening of the Fifth of March,1770, when a Number of Citizens were Killed by a Party of British Troops, Quartered Among Them, in a Time of Peace. Boston: Peter Edes, [1785]. 12mo,modern half tan calf, red morocco spine label; pp. 200. $8500.

First edition of this collection of the annual Boston Massacre Oration, with individual speeches by John Hancock, Peter Thacher, Joseph Warren, Benjamin Church, James Lovell, George Richards Minot and others.

Peter Edes collected in book form all of the orations delivered annually on March 5th from 1771 through 1783 to mark the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which had previously been published individually as pamphlets. Includes speeches by John Hancock, Peter Thacher, Joseph Warren, Benjamin Church, James Lovell, George Richards Minot, and others. John Hancock's 1774 oration is probably the most famous. "From its earliest years, when orators helped solidify a local consensus about the massacre's larger meaning, to the dark days of Boston's reoccupation, through the difficult rials of war, the annual commemoration of the Boston Massacre served as a vital touchstone that articulated grievances and principles and stoked popular emotions… [The memory of the Boston Massacre] united Bostonians in outrage and schooled them in the dangers of equivocation. It became a vital wellspring of shared experience. But by war's end it had served its purpose…" (Hinderaker, Boston's Massacre). Second state, with the memorial oration given by Perez Morton at the 1785 reinterment of Joseph Warren, killed at Bunker Hill a decade before, with a separate title page. Evans 18997. Sabin 6737.

Interior clean, text trimmed a bit close, just touching text on one leaf; very handsomely bound at the Harcourt Bindery.