In 1767 Great Britain passed the
Townsend Acts, designed to collect taxes on imported goods to fund
administering, governing and protecting the Colonies and in September 1768
British troops were quartered in Boston to insure taxes were collected. The colonists led by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty began pressuring representatives to repeal the taxes and called
for a boycott of imported British goods.
Relationships between the soldiers and the citizens, never good,
deteriorated further and on March 5, 1770 a group of Bostonians began insulting
and taunting the soldier on guard duty at the customs house. As tension grew the watch commander, Captain
Thomas Preston ordered six privates and a non-commissioned officer to the
scene. Warning his troops not to fire he
urged the crowd to return home. By this
time Church bells had rung, usually used for a fire, and the crowd had grown to
more than fifty. Soon snowballs and
other objects were thrown at the soldiers, one knocking Private Hugh Montgomery
down. When he regained his feet and
recovered his musket he fired. A few minutes later other soldiers fired and
eleven men in the crowd were hit. Acting
governor Thomas Hutchinson began an immediate investigation and arrested Captain
Preston and the eight soldiers. Determined to hold a fair trial Governor
Hutchinson asked John Adams to act for the defense. Adams agreed and was assisted by Josiah
Quincy II. Acting for the prosecution
was Solicitor General Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine. In defense of the soldiers Adams argued “ I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to
you.-Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of
facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was
made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in
their own defense; if it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if
they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by
snow-balls, oyster-shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind; this was a
provocation, for which the law reduces the offence of killing, down to
manslaughter, in consideration of those passions in our nature, which cannot be
eradicated. To your candour and justice I submit the prisoners and their cause." Two of the soldiers were
found guilty of firing into the crowd and condemned to death but invoked
Benefit of Clergy and had their thumbs branded in court. (In English law the benefit of clergy was originally a
provision by which clergymen could claim that they were outside the
jurisdiction of the secular courts and instead be tried in an ecclesiastical
court under canon law. It eventually became a method
by which first-time offenders could receive a more lenient sentence for some
lesser crimes.) The Captain was exonerated.
Three years later John Adams would
write “The Part I took in Defense of Cptn. Preston
and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy 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. This however is no
Reason why the Town should not call the Action of that Night a Massacre, nor is
it any Argument in favour of the Governor or Minister, who caused them to be
sent here. But it is the strongest Proofs of the Danger of Standing Armies.”
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| The tombstone for the five men who died in the Boston Massacre: Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks and Patrick Carr. |
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| JOHN ADAMS, farmer, lawyer, patriot, President |
Posted by Diane Price
Lineage Research Chair
DAR Brunswick Town Chapter
