John Adams Research Paper

“Facts are stubborn things.” 

When America’s Founding Fathers are thought of, many people automatically think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock. While they were great men with lasting contributions to our country, John Adams is sometimes overlooked in favor of the more famous Founding Fathers. It is important that today’s Americans remember Adams not only for his participation in the founding of our country, but also for his legacy in the American legal system. Adams’ virtuoso defense of the British soldiers charged with murder in what later became known as the Boston Massacre remains one of America’s supreme legal performances in history. The Boston Massacre trials launched Adams into Early National American politics, and laid a foundation for his belief in democratic government and liberty. This essay will briefly examine the events leading up to the Boston Massacre, the trial of British Captain Thomas Preston, and the trial of the British soldiers, all with Adams serving as the connecting cornerstone. 

After the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 and the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767, British troops were sent to Boston to attempt to keep order in the city (Zobel 65). Not only did the British soldiers patrol the city, many lived and worked part time in Boston warehouses and barracks. Because of the taxation and presence of British soldiers on the streets of Boston, riots and protests were common in those tempestuous times (John Adams Heritage Blog). Matters culminated on the night of March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. A lone sentry, posted in front of the Custom House, was being taunted by a group of men and boys. After a church bell started ringing (a signal for fire), the streets were suddenly filled with several hundred citizens. The sentry was reinforced by eight British soldiers and their captain. The crowd quickly began shouting, cursing, and throwing ice, snowballs, sticks, oyster shells, and stones at the soldiers (McCullough 65). One soldier, Hugh Montgomery, was struck twice, the second time so hard that he was knocked to the ground. With tensions rising, “Fire!” was heard and the soldiers began shooting at the citizens. When the smoke finally cleared, four citizens were shot dead and one more died five days later. Captain Preston was afterward remembered as furious that his men had fired a single shot without his order (Zobel 287). So who gave the command to fire? 

The day after the shootings, the British soldiers began to seek legal representation. Given the sour taste of British relations, Boston attorneys did not want to represent the soldiers and their captain. After several tries at obtaining council, Josiah Quincy, Jr. agreed to assist in the representation under the condition that John Adams would join him (Donovan 23). “Adams accepted, firm in the belief, as he said, that no man in a a free country should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial, and convinced on principle, that the case was of utmost importance” (McCullough 66). Robert Auchmuty created the triumvirate of the Captain’s defense team as he joined Quincy and Adams in the biggest trial any of the men had ever been involved (John Adams Heritage Blog). 

Three weeks after the shooting, the British soldiers and their captain were indicted for the murder of the Americans, including the mixed-race mulatto Crispus Attucks (John Adams Heritage Blog). Waiting for tensions to cool, the trials did not begin until late-November. In the meantime, a propaganda war began. A committee in charge of submitting an official account of the murders produced a one-sided account, entitled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (John Adams Heritage Blog). The Narrative spanned an ocean in readership. In addition, Samuel Adams, a distant cousin of John Adams, co-authored another heavily prejudiced account of the shootings. Another example of this early-American propaganda war is Paul Revere’s poignant engraving of the massacre, notable for it’s lasting emotional significance. Within a few days of the shootings, a young man named Henry Pelham produced a dramatic drawing depicting the events on King Street on the night of March 5, 1770. Never mind that the drawing was grossly inaccurate, Paul Revere was somehow able to obtain, without permission or attribution, the drawing and engrave it for mass reproduction (Zobel 211). The engraving, coupled with heavily biased accounts of the shootings on King Street, fanned a flurry of anti-British sentiment. Adams later remarked that representing the soldiers and their captain caused him to be the target of “suspicions and prejudices” from the people of Boston (McCullough 66). Above all, Adams hated public scorn. 

Adams and his team of two councilors immediately faced a dilemma that if not handled properly, could potentially cost Captain Preston and his men their lives. The problem arose from one major fact: Captain Preston had not killed anyone. He stood accused of ordering his men to fire without enough reason. Captain Preston needed to argue in court that he had never given a command to fire. On the other hand, the soldiers needed to show that in pulling their triggers, they had only followed orders (Zobel 241). Against some of the soldier’s wishes, Adams decided on the legal strategy of holding two trials, one for Captain Preston and one for his soldiers. John Phillip Reid has argued that John Adams separated the trials in order to prevent any mutual finger-pointing by either the soldiers or Captain Preston (Reid 196).

Captain Preston’s trial began on October 24, 1770, a mere seven months after the Boston Massacre (John Adams Heritage Blog). Until Captain Preston’s trial, no criminal case had ever required more than one day to try (excluding jury deliberations) (Zobel 248). Attorneys for the crown (the prosecution in modern terms) opened the case. The crown needed to prove that Preston gave the order to fire, or in the very least, could have prevented the shootings all together (Zobel 248). Over two days, the crown called fifteen witnesses alone who testified that they heard Captain Preston give the order to fire. However, on cross-examination their testimony appeared contradictory (ja historical society). If anything, the testimony of the crown’s witnesses strengthened the upcoming defense’s argument “that the crowd’s violence and taunting had provoked the tragedy” (Zobel 251).

Next, as junior attorney to the defense, John Adams was tasked with opening the defense’s case and questioning witnesses. No notes or transcripts remain of Adams’ opening, but his initial tactic was to set the scene of the event: a cold March evening, where British soldiers were being taunted and heckled beyond bearing, that finally culminated in the deaths of Boston citizens (Zobel 254). Calling twenty-two witnesses on day three of Captain Preston’s trial, Adams created a scene of confusion, noise, and verbal threats (Zobel 256). Adams did not call Captain Preston’s men to testify on his behalf even though they could have done so. Hiller B. Zobel points out that the men could have provided accounts that the townspeople had provoked the soldiers and Captain Preston was left with no other option that to command the soldiers to fire (Zobel 255). 

Finally, on October 27, 1770, the defense rested (Zobel 260). Adams next rose to give his summation. Beginning the legendary summation Adams laid a framework rooted in law. “It is better five guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should die” (Zobel 260). Following that, Adams dissected the crown’s evidence. With a legal finesse, Adams had an answer for the witnesses of the crown who claimed they had heard Captain Preston issue the order for fire: instead, townspeople had not heard Captain Preston’s entire command of “Fire by no means!” (Zobel 261). Whether truth or merely speculation, with this simple suggestion Adams was able to raise serious doubts of Captain Preston’s utterance of that infamous command. Adams also had an answer for the conflicts of evidence on who actually issued the order to fire. He argued that since the mob caused the soldiers to fire, then the mob could have also caused witness accounts to be unreliable (Zobel 262). Perhaps sensing defeat, the attorney for the crown who gave the prosecution’s summation, Robert Treat Paine, could barely be heard during the summation (Zobel 264). 

On October 30, 1770, the jury returned with a verdict in the case of Captain Thomas Preston: not guilty (Zobel 265). John Adams had successfully defended his client, but now the work began to save Captain Preston’s men from execution. The Captain’s acquittal made the soldiers’ defense more difficult (Zobel 268). The crown had an easier time proving that the soldier’s acted on their own accord by firing into the townspeople. 

Samuel Quincy led off for the crown in the trial of the soldiers that began on November 27, 1770 (John Adams Heritage Blog). With the five deaths that occurred as a result of gunshot wounds on March 5, 1770, the crown was faced with a much easier job by only having to prove that the soldiers were there and that they fire their weapons (Zobel 271). Unfortunately for the crown, several of its witnesses hit sour notes. One witness recalled that it was the townspeople who were yelling “Fire!” (Zobel 273). The majority of the crown’s witnesses testified to a crowd of armed sailors and missile-throwing boys attacking and possibly knocking down an armed soldier (Zobel 274). 

As the crown’s case came to an end, Quincy kept his closing remarks simple. He named each soldier individually, and reminded the jurors of each witness who was able to identify each. He reviewed in explicit detail each witnesses testimony (Zobel 276). Quincy closed, “confident on the evidence as it now stands” (Zobel 277). 

Junior attorney Josiah Quincy, and younger brother to the crown’s junior attorney Samuel Quincy, started the defense case for the soldiers. His job was to desensitize the emotions which the crown’s testimony was able to incite (Zobel 278). Not every citizen on King Street on the night of the shootings witnessed the soldiers acting out of hatred by firing on the citizens. In fact, the defense witnesses nearly all testified that the British soldiers were in real peril (Zobel 283). One witness specifically remembered seeing the now-dead Crispus Attucks reach into a woodpile and pull out two large clubs (Zobel 283). The defense’s climax came in the form of star witness Dr. John Jeffries. Dr. Jeffries was present on the deathbed of the soldier who died five days after the shooting (Zobel 285). According to Dr. Jeffries, the soldier stated that he did not blame the British soldiers for firing into the crowd. He seemed incredulous that the soldiers had not fired sooner than they actually had. Not only that, but the dying citizen did not blame the soldier who fired the bullet that would ultimately kill him (Zobel 286). This testimony wrapped up the defense’s case, powerfully aided the defense, and happened to be John Adams’ exact legal strategy (Zobel 284). 

Unlike the first trial, Adams did not play the role of junior attorney. He did not call and question witnesses, but he did give one of history’s greatest speeches with his summation. Returning in part to strategy used in Captain Preston’s case, Adams again reminded the jury that innocence be protected at the expense of guilt being punished (Zobel 289). It is worthy to note that by conceding this point, Adams admitted to the guilt of at least some of the soldiers. Furthermore, Adams was faced with the problem of bloodshed. Eighteenth-century Americans were convinced that blood required blood. Adams reminded the jury of a time in Colonial American history where enemy forces had been slain, but colonists did not call for the blood of the aggressors (Zobel 289). 

In another strategic move, Adams addressed the law of self-defense. Adams argued that if the mob had throated the lives of the soldiers, then the soldiers had a right to deprive the lives of the mob. Making an exact legal point, Adams posited that even if the killings might not have been entirely justifiable, still they were no more than manslaughter (Zobel 291). After making this point, court adjourned for the day. 

The next morning, Adams turned to the evidence and testimony from the trial. He left no stone unturned as he examined each witness’s testimony in minute detail. Nothing escaped his attention. At no point did Adams explicitly call witnesses liars, but he inferred that given the mob mentality, it was no wonder that few of the crown’s witness’s testimony reliably matched. Regarding Montgomery, the British soldier who had been knocked to the ground Adams asked: “What could he do? Do you expect he should behave like a Stoick Philosopher lost in Apathy?” (Zobel 292). Adams closed his summation with his famous lines that “Facts are stubborn things.” He coasted to the finish by reminding the jury that the law is “deaf, inexorable, inflexible” (Zobel 293). 

Finally, it was Paine’s turn to provide the summation for the crown’s prosecution. Almost comically, rather than establishing his own legal points, Paine refuted or denied the defense’s. Paine’s attempts were not enough. On the afternoon of December 5, 1770, the jury returned its verdict in the case of the Boston soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. Six soldiers were found not guilty, while two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. Because they had never been in any legal trouble before, both guilty soldiers claimed benefit of the clergy, had their thumbs branded with an “M”, and were released (John Adams Heritage Blog). 

John Adams’ successful representation of Captain Preston and his soldiers made Adams in the long run more respected than ever (McCollough 68). Just a short time later, Adams was elected to the Boston city legislature, an appointment which clearly indicates the respect the thirty-four-year old had earned the previous Fall (Zobel 298). The trials earned Adams much esteem not only in the courtroom, but in New England and abroad. His defense of liberty remains one of America’s greatest treasures. 

Bibliography

Adams, John, and Frank Donovan, ed. The John Adams Papers. Cornwall, New York: The Cornwall Press, Inc., 1965.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Touchstone, 2001. 

Reid, John Phillip. “A Lawyer Acquitted: John Adams and the Boston Massacre Trials.” The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1974). pp. 189-207. 

The John Adams Historical Society Blog; “Events that led to the Boston Massacre.” www.john-adams-heritage.com/events-that-led-to-the-boston-massacre/ (accessed May 4, 2015).

Zobel, Hiller B. The Boston Massacre. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Ltd, 1970.