John Adams had defended the British soldiers indicted of murder in 1770. As tensions heightened in 1773 and the patriots focused their anger on Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts Bay, Adams wrote this newspaper blurb accusing Hutchinson of instigating the massacre and therefore chargeable with the victims’ blood. Note Adams signed the open letter “Chrispus Attucks.” A black man, Attucks was the first victim killed in the Boston Massacre.
Sir
You will hear from Us with Astonishment. You ought to hear from Us with Horror. You are chargeable before God and Man, with our Blood.—The Soldiers were but passive Instruments, were Machines, neither moral nor voluntary Agents in our Destruction more than the leaden Pellets, with which we were wounded.—You was a free Agent. You acted coolly, deliberately, with all that premeditated Malice, not against Us in Particular but against the People in general, which in the Sight of the Law is an ingredient in the Composition of Murder. You will hear further from Us hereafter.
Chrispus Attucks
Source: H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2, Diary 1771–1781 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 84–85.
Evaluating the Evidence