Full Answer
Next on trial were the eight soldiers under Prestonâs command on the night of the Boston Massacre. There was a different jury for this trial and they were, once again, sequestered. During the seven-day trial, more than eighty witnesses were called to testify.
Adams defended the British officer Thomas Preston and his soldiers in two separate trials. Can you talk about the balancing act Adams undertook to defend all his clients without alienating his fellow Bostonians, many of whom fervently supported the broader patriot cause?
Witnesses recalled how the mob had repeatedly called for the British soldiers to be killed. Particularly effective testimony for the defense came from Dr. John Jeffries, who had tended to one of the colonists killed on the night of March 5, 1770.
Boston Massacre Trial. A defense lawyer to the last, Adams negotiated the sentences of Montgomery and Kilroy using and ancient precedent of English law. The âPlea of Clergyâ meant that instead of death, the two men would be branded on the thumbs as first offenders, never to be permitted to violate the law again.
Photo Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park. The crowd strained forward in the Queen Street courtroom on October 17, 1770. Murmurs and rumblings of anger filled the air. Captain Thomas Preston, a British grenadier, shifted his feet nervously and felt the sweat rising to his brow.
That is what these Bostonians wanted! The only hope for Preston and his men lay with this short, stocky country lawyerâa colonial American after allâJohn Adams, and his too young assistant Josiah Quincy. Seven months had passed since the âhorrid, bloody massacreâ took place on the 5thof March.
He had been able to impanel a jury from out-of-town, not a single Boston man among them and, Preston felt, the jury seemed uncommonly thoughtful for upstart colonials! Now Adams was questioning Richard Palmes, a witness most of the crowd recognized, about events that night. Preston could hear Palmes saying,
Adams would later describe his role as âthe greatest service I ever rendered my country.â Why? In a town where British soldiers were hated, there had been a fair trial by jury. In a land where mobs could sway events, the world saw that justice and liberty were valued as the legal rights of all!
The very next day, John Adams received a loud knock on his door. He was asked to defend the soldiers and Captain Preston, as nobody else would take the case. Without hesitation Adams agreed to defend the soldiers and their captain. Above all, John Adams believed in upholding the law, and defending the innocent.
By the beginning of March, 1770, tensions seemed to reach a boiling point. On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White was under assault by a crowd of boys throwing snowballs, oysters in their shells, stones and clubs.
The soldiers formed a half circle around White, with Captain Preston standing in front of his men to keep the peace. According to witnesses, a club flew through the air striking one soldier in the head, which caused him to lose his balance, and discharge his musket.
Paul Revere altered an engraving by Henry Pelham commemorating the bloody massacre on King Street to show the redcoats taking great pleasure in firing at the townâs people, and also depicting Captain Preston standing behind his men while giving them the order to fire.
Above all, John Adams believed in upholding the law, and defending the innocent. Adams was convinced that the soldiers were wrongly accused, and had fired into the crowd in self-defense.
Extreme patriots regarded the absence of a lynching of Preston and his men as proof of the impartiality of Boston justice. John Adams, possessing strong patriotic views by refusing to express them on any terms but his own, sometimes was suspected of a lack of Whiggish zeal.
Six were acquitted, and two were found guilty of manslaughter. (Their punishment was to be branded on the right thumb by the Boston sheriff.) More than this, however, the speech illuminated the core of Adamsâs political thought, especially his view of the human material of which politics is made.
Adams had a week or ten days in which to prepare for the second and final massacre, Rex v. Wemms et al. That the wheels of justice did not turn without lubrication in those days is obvious from the itemized expenses for which Adams later sought reimbursement from the British army.
The inference to be drawn from the Preston verdict was that they had fired without a lawful order. To the Whigs, they were murderers. For the student of John Adamsâs life and thought, the most important feature of the second massacre trial was the presence in the courtroom of a shorthand writer.
We have only Adamsâs word for the noble speech he delivered to the merchant, James Forrest, but it would not have been out of character: âI had no hesitation in answering that Council ought to be the very last thing that an accused Person should want in a free Country. That the Bar ought in my opinion to be independent and impartial at all Times And in every Circumstance. And that Persons whose Lives were at Stake ought to have the Council they preferred: But he must be sensible this would be as important a Cause as ever was tried in any Court or Country of the World: and that every Lawyer must hold himself responsible not only to his Country, but to the highest and most infallible of all Trybunals for the Part he should Act. He must therefore expect from me no Art nor Address, No Sophistry or Prevarication in such a Cause nor any thing more than Fact, Evidence and Law would justify.â Forrest replied that that was all the defendant wanted. Payment of a single guinea constituted Adamsâs retainer.
On the morning of the fourth day, Saturday, October 27, Adams rose to give the first of the defenseâs closing arguments. If Preston still harbored doubts about his famous Whig attorney, he soon had reason enough to lay them aside.
He was carried along to King Street, where a file of redcoats was formed up at a distance from some blood-stained ice. Nearby two townspeople lay dead; three were mortally wounded. Adams, who had been spending a convivial evening in the South End with members of his club, now thought of home.
Two privates in the British 29th Regiment of Worcestershire named Hugh, Hugh White and Hugh Montgomery, played central roles in the tragic events on the night of March 5, 1770. This has been a cause for confusion: in one account of the Boston Massacre, Harry Hansen's The Boston Massacre: An Episode of Dissent and Violence , the two Hughs become one.
Boston-born Thomas Hutchinson was, at the time of the Massacre, Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor of Massachusetts Province. A former Speaker of the Massachusetts House, Hutchinson was a man of substantial abilities. The fifty-nine-year-old Hutchinson had made a career of defending British perogatives against the democratic trend.
In an early letter to the paper, Preston extended his "thanks...to the inhabitants of this town--who throwing aside all party and prejudice, have with the utmost humanity and freedom stept forth advocates for truth, ind defense of my injured innocence." On June 25, however, a letter Preston sent to London found its way into Boston papers and undermined whatever goodwill he might have built up earlier. In his London letter, Preston complained about Bostonians who "have ever used all means in their power to weaken the regiments and to bring them into contempt, by promoting and aiding desertions, and by grossly and falsely promulgating untruths concerning them." He wrote that bitter "malcontents" were maliciously "using every method to fish out evidence to prove [the March 5 shooting] was a concerted scheme to murder the inhabitants."
At three o'clock in the morning, he was sent to the jail where he would remain for the next seven months.
Adams told the jury: "Soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs where they prevent one." He argued that the soldier who fired first acted only as one might expect anyone to act in such confused and potentially life-threatening conditions. "Do you expect that he should act like a stoic philosopher, lost in apathy?", Adams asked the jury. "Facts are stubborn things," he concluded, "and whatever may be our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Initial reaction to Adams role in the case was hostile. His law practice dropped by over half. In the long run, however, the courageous actions of Adams only enhanced his growing reputation.
The sloop carried a shipment of Madeira wine. Under British law, Hancock was obligated to pay customs duty on the wine, but instead the wine was unloaded and transported to Hancock's warehouse without the required payment. Customs officials ordered Liberty seized, leading to a public outcry--especially from Hancock. Defiance of customs officers by Hancock and others was the justification given for moving British troops into Boston in September 1768.
Eight British soldiers and their officer in charge, Captain Thomas Preston, faced charges for murdering five colonists. Not far from the Custom House, a 34-year-old Boston attorney sat in his office ...
The Boston Massacre certainly could have led to the revolution six years earlier, but it didnât because people accepted a very controversial verdict. As we talk about in the book, part of the reason the trial transcript was so important was so anyone who wasnât in court could still review what the witnesses said. It wasnât just British soldiers haphazardly firing on colonists.
The blood remained fresh on the snow outside Bostonâs Custom House on the morning of March 6 , 1770. Hours earlier, rising tensions between British troops and colonists had exploded into violence when a band of Redcoats opened fire on a crowd that had pelted them with not just taunts, but ice, oyster shells and broken glass. Although the soldiers claimed to have acted in self-defense, patriot propaganda referred to the incident as the Boston Massacre. Eight British soldiers and their officer in charge, Captain Thomas Preston, faced charges for murdering five colonists.
But I also think he learned a little about the case and thought there was a legitimate defenseâbecause the events were not as clear cut as some patriots wanted to make them out to be. He also knew there were a couple of attorneys who said they would take the case as long as he was part of the team.
Not far from the Custom House, a 34-year-old Boston attorney sat in his office and made a difficult decision. Although a devout patriot, John Adams agreed to risk his familyâs livelihood and defend the British soldiers and their commander in a Boston courtroom. At stake was not just the fate of nine men, but the relationship between ...
In the new book John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Fatherâs Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial, Dan Abrams and coauthor David Fisher detail what they call the âmost important case in colonial American historyâ and an important landmark in the development of American jurisprudence. Abrams, who is also the chief legal affairs ...
Adams didnât blame the city for initiating the skirmish. He kept it very, very focused on the facts of this particular instanceâwhat happened, who was there, the specific individualsâand did not make it a broader indictment of the Sons of Liberty and others who had supported violence against the British soldiers.
After a soldier was knocked down, someone fired into the crowd, confused, and killed the first colonist in the Revolutionary War â Crispus Attucks. Panic ensued, and soldiers fired into the crowd of colonists. After the skirmish ended, five of the colonists had been killed.
Before the trial, Loyalists and Patriots engaged in a propaganda war. Patriot cartoons and articles painted the riot as an all-out attack by aggressive British soldiers. Paul Revere even published a cartoon which he named The Bloody Massacre, leading the riot to be known as the Boston Massacre.
The jury found Preston not guilty after a six-day hearing. Boston Massacre lithograph, Henry Pelham Wikimedia Commons. Next on trial were the eight soldiers under Prestonâs command on the night of the Boston Massacre. There was a different jury for this trial and they were, once again, sequestered.
Boston was a major port for trade as well as a hotbed for Patriot activity and organization. Britain stationed a large garrison of troops in the city with the aim of controlling unruly colonists who were resisting customs officials.
After deliberating for three hours, the jury found all eight soldiers not guilty of murder. Two of the men were found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter and their penalty was reduced to branding on the thumb. The other six soldiers were completely cleared of all charges.
The impact on todayâs legal system. The Boston Massacre trials served as a landmark case for the new justice system in the colonies. This trial was the first time that a jury was sequestered, which is now typical practice in high profile cases. The standard of reasonable doubt was also introduced during this trial.
American colonists wanted more independence and control over their economy. The Americans were prospering on their own and desired to break free of colonial control.
On the evening of 5th March 1770, in a snowy Boston, eight British soldiers led by Captain Thomas Preston confronted a crowd of Bostonians, who had gathered to protest outside the Custom House. Ignoring Prestonâs command to disperse, the angry mob closed around, throwing snowballs and oyster shells at them.
Although vilified at the time, Adams later reflected that his defence of the British soldiers had been âone of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my Countryâ, having upheld the principles of justice and the right to a fair trial regardless of any predilection. As Adam said in his closing statement at the trial:
Adams firstly secured the acquittal of Captain Preston on the grounds that the men under his command had fired without orders.