In early 1770, American colonists were upset about laws passed by Britain that placed taxes on goods. On March 5, 1770 a group of colonists in Boston yelled at and threatened a British soldier who was stationed outside the Customs House. Several British soldiers arrived on the scene and the colonists attacked the soldiers. The soldiers began firing their guns on the crowd and five colonists were killed. Crispus Attucks, in the center of the image, was a formerly enslaved man of mixed African and Indigenous descent, a resident of Boston, and the first of the colonists to be killed. This 1856 lithograph is a departure from earlier representations of the Boston Massacre, such as Paul Revere's 1770 engraving, because it shows the colonists fighting against the soldiers with clubs and highlights Attucks.