John Adams | Defense of the British Soldiers at Trial, October 1770
A descendant of Puritans, John Adams was a Harvard graduate, Enlightenment thinker, and lawyer. He wrote some of the most important legal defenses of colonial rights in response to Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act. A staunch patriot, Adams agreed to defend the British soldiers because he believed that everyone deserved a fair trial. This decision did not injure Adams’s reputation. Indeed, he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court (legislature) while preparing for the trial.
I shall endeavour to make some few observations on the testimonies of the witnesses, such as will place the facts in a true point of light. . . .
The next witness is Dodge, he says, there were fifty people near the soldiers pushing at them; now the witness before says, there were twelve sailors with clubs, but now here are fifty more aiding and abetting of them, ready to relieve them in case of need; now what could the people expect? It was their business to have taken themselves out of the way; some prudent people by the Town-house told them not to meddle with the guard, but you hear nothing of this from these fifty people; no, instead of that, they were huzzaing and whistling, crying damn you, fire! why don’t you fire? So that they were actually assisting these twelve sailors that made the attack; he says the soldiers were pushing at the people to keep them off, ice and snow balls were thrown, and I heard ice rattle on their guns, there were some clubs thrown from a considerable distance across the street. . . .
. . . When the multitude was shouting and huzzaing, and threatening life, the bells ringing, the mob whistling, screaming, and rending like an Indian yell, the people from all quarters throwing every species of rubbish they could pick up in the street, and some who were quite on the other side of the street throwing clubs at the whole party, Montgomery in particular smote with a club and knocked down, and as soon as he could rise and take up his firelock, another club from afar struck his breast or shoulder, what could he do? Do you expect he should behave like a stoic philosopher lost in apathy? . . . It is impossible you should find him guilty of murder. You must suppose him divested of all human passions, if you don’t think him at the least provoked, thrown off his guard, and into the furor brevis [brief madness], by such treatment as this. . . .
. . . 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 defence; 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, . . . 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 candor and justice I submit the prisoners and their cause.
Source: Frederick Kidder, History of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770 (Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1870), 249, 252, 257–58.
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