The Part I took in Defence 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.
John Adams certainly took the view that all of his actions in defending the soldiers accused in the so-called “Boston Massacre” were above reproach, and when he was retained in the captain’s case, he made it clear that would be his intention up front:
Captain Preston must be sensible this will be as important a cause as ever was tried in any court or country in the world. Every lawyer must hold himself responsible not only to his country, but to the highest and most infallible of all tribunals for the part he should act. Tell him to expect from me no art or address; no sophistry or prevarication in such a cause, nor anything more than fact, evidence and law will justify.
Before the soldiers went to trial, Ebenezer Richardson, a well-known Tory and customs informer, was put on trial for firing out his window at a menacing crowd and killing a young boy. The judge’s instructions to the jury were clear. The most that could be made of the facts was manslaughter, and one judge even suggested there may be no offense at all. The gallery was full of Sam Adams’ “Sons of Liberty” sympathizers, many from the lower classes. One yelled, “Damn that judge! If I were nigh him, I would give it to him!” Others yelled, “Guilty!” As the jury filed out, they were subject to cries of “You are upon your oath! Blood requires blood! Damn him! Don’t bring in manslaughter! Hang the dog! Hang him! We’ve got the rope!” The frightened jury found him guilty of murder straightaway.
Why were the trials of the soldiers not subject to that kind of public pressure? Was there at least a tacit agreement between the Adams cousins that, if John Adams would avoid implicating the Sons of Liberty in the disturbances that led to the “Boston Massacre,” Sam Adams would “call off his dogs?” Both men realized the larger implications of putting the town of Boston itself on trial.
There was talk in town of one Captain Porteous. He was a captain of the city guard of Edinburgh. He had called out the guard against protestors of an execution, and in the confusion, shots were fired into the crowd. The mob packed the jury, who found him guilty, but as he was being held, they broke into the jail and murdered him in a brutal fashion. John Adams feared for the lives of his clients.
As defense counsel, his first move was to separate the trials so that Captain Preston would be tried first. A letter was sent to the court by some of the soldiers objecting to this, upon the obvious grounds that if he were found not guilty, the burden would fall upon them. John Adams represented both. Was it ethical to represent both, yet try them separately?
John Adams was as skilled a trial lawyer as Alan Dershowitz, a fellow Harvard graduate, is today. In his mind was the jury, the jury, and the jury. If tried together with their fingers pointing at each other, the jury may well vote to hang the lot of them and be done with it. Besides, the testimony of a witness named Richard Palmes, a well-known “Son of Liberty,” would clear the captain of issuing an order to fire, and the captain himself took the liberty of asking a fellow officer, called as a witness, a question:
Have you ever known an officer to give the command to fire when his men were at the half-cock, and in the position of charged bayonets?
No. Officers never give the order to fire from the charged bayonet.
Captain Preston was found not guilty, with not much of a public outcry from the Sons of Liberty. But what of the soldiers?
First step: again, the jury, the jury, the jury. Using his pseudonym “Clarendon,” John Adams secretly communicated with a Tory shopkeeper to obtain as much information as he could on the jury pool. In those days, if the “pool ran dry,” the sheriff would commandeer people off the street. The shopkeeper made sure just the right men were loitering about the courthouse when that time came. As a result of the challenges and these machinations, not only was the jury devoid of Sons of Liberty sympathizers, but no one on it was even from the Town of Boston! Sam Adams wasn’t stupid and was watching all of this, but the gallery was still well-behaved throughout, and there was little trouble in the streets.
There came a point in the Soldiers’ trial when Josiah Quincy, 2nd chair in the defense, was feeding pre-vetted witnesses to John Adams, who would simply ask them to relate what they saw. One of these was John Gillespie: “We heard bells about eight thirty, which we took to be for a fire, but the landlord of the public house told us it was to collect a mob. I resolved to go home, and as I passed by the Customs House, I saw a group of men throwing ice and snowballs at the sentry. Then a gentleman dressed in a red cape…”
John Adams cut him off forthwith, dismissed him, and called for permission to consult with co-counsel in a side room. History does not record what was said, but it was likely heated. John Adams had a volume later in life of an account of the trial by British historian William Gordon. Writing in the 3rd person in the margin next to this episode, he explained, “Adams’ motive is not here perceived. His clients’ lives were hazarded by Quincy’s too youthful ardor.”
Why was that? The man in the red cape was very likely William Molineux, Sam Adams’ right-hand man. That line of testimony could drag the Sons of Liberty into the status of what we might call today “unindicted co-conspirators.” The town itself would be cast in a bad light, making it difficult to argue for the removal of the troops from the town, causing more riots and death, and also perhaps resulting in his clients meeting the fate of Captain Porteous.
In summation, Adams was very careful to lay the blame not upon the soldiers, nor upon the good citizens of the town, but upon “…a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jacktars… soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs where they prevent one. They are wretched conservators of the peace!”
Then came his famous summation:
I will enlarge no more upon 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… The law… no passion can disturb. Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger… On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners, on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace.
Did John Adams walk a thin line of ethics in protecting the town as well as his clients? We did not gloss over this dilemma in our And Justice for All, Even Redcoats. Given what was at stake both in and out of the courtroom, though, I do not care to second-guess him.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
