Dialogue on John Adams and His Legacy

Part 1:

John Adams and the Boston Massacre Trials

Who was John Adams?

What do you know about him?

What was the “Boston Massacre?”

What happened?

Imagine you are back in the year 1770.

The Father’s Letter: “My dear Son, I am under great affliction, at hearing the bitterest reproaches uttered against you, for having become an advocate for those criminals who are charged with the murder of their fellow-citizens. Good God! Is it possible? I will not believe it...Your anxious and distressed parent, Josiah Quincy.”

The Son’s Reply: “Honored Sir, ...I refused all engagement, until advised and urged to undertake it, by an Adams, a Hancock, a Molineux, a Cushing, a Henshaw, a Pemberton, a Warren, a Cooper, and a Phillips...I dare affirm, that you, and this whole people will one day REJOICE, that I became an advocate for the aforesaid “criminals,” charged with the murder of our fellow citizens. I am, truly and affectionately, your son, Josiah Quincy Jun.”

“We poor distressed prisoners beg that ye would be so good as to let us have our trial at the same time with our Captain, for we did our Captain’s orders, and if we do not obey his command should have been confined and shot for not doing it.” 

Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Diary Entry #1: “I … devoted myself to endless labour and Anxiety if not to infamy and death, and that for nothing, except, what indeed was and ought to be all in all, a sense of duty. …The Part I took in Defence of Captain Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy [bad-mouthing] enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right. 

Diary Entry #2: “. . . In the Evening [of the trials] I expressed to Mrs. Adams all my Apprehensions: That excellent Lady, who has always encouraged me, burst into a flood of Tears, but said she was very sensible of all the Danger to her and to our Children as well as to me, but she thought I had done as I ought, she was very willing to share in all that was to come and place her trust in Providence. 

Diary Entry #3: “[Eighteen Guineas was]…all the pecuniary Reward I ever had for fourteen or fifteen days labour, in the most exhausting and fatiguing Causes I ever tried: for hazarding a Popularity very general and very hardly earned: and for incurring a Clamour and popular Suspicions and prejudices, which are not yet worn out and never will be forgotten as long as History of this Period is read.”

By his own account, why did John Adams defend the British? Why would he feel it was his duty to defend them?

How did it affect him? Did he think he did the right thing?

Do you think his reasons were good and his decision right? What does he say about his wife’s and the public’s reaction to his taking the case?