While it’s fairly well-known that John Adams, despite being politically aligned with the colonists (of which he was one), took the case of the Boston Massacre defendants, his colleague who also took the case is lesser known… probably owing to his early death. However, Josiah Quincy (who, yes, is the namesake of Josiah Cairn), is just as worth remembering.
Josiah Quincy’s father wrote him a very distressed letter after hearing that he’d agreed to take the soldiers’ case, to which he crafted a very polite and brave response, including:
I never harboured the expectation, nor any great desire, that all men should speak well of me. To inquire my duty, and to do it, is my aim. Being mortal, I am subject to error; and conscious of this, I wish to be diffident. Being a rational creature, I judge for myself, according to the light afforded me. When a plan of conduct is formed with an honest deliberation, neither murmuring, slander, nor reproaches move. For my single self, I consider, judge, and with reason hope to be immutable.
Taking the case was also a bit of an awkward family situation, because the prosecutor was actually Josiah’s older brother, Samuel. Conflicts of interest really weren’t a thing in those days.
Generally, history looks well on Adams and Quincy for taking the case. It reinforced how important it is that every single person receive adequate defense counsel, no matter how unpopular the defendant. Plus, of course, the particulars of this case that came out (in no small thanks to the defense strategy) indicate that it was perhaps less akin to more modern incidents of governmental brutality or Paul Revere’s famous plagiarized etching, and more just a tragic series of events.
Quincy and Adams used logic and appeals to common sense and empathy in their arguments, and secured the acquittal of seven of the soldiers. The other two were convicted on the far less severe count of manslaughter (one more justifiably, the other, despite being depicted in the papers as the scapegoat, likely not) and branded instead of hung. Adams would state over fifty years later that he never felt more sympathy than he did for the two who were convicted:
I never pitied any men more than the two soldiers who were sentenced to be branded in the hand for manslaughter. They were noble, fine-looking men; protested they had done nothing contrary to their duty as soldiers; and, when the sheriff approached to perform his office, they burst into tears.
Most of Adam’s arguments were dripping in sarcasm and filled with appeals to empathy, making his work quite interesting to read. He encourages the jurors to put themselves in the shoes of the soldiers and constantly shades the more outlandish claims that had absolutely no evidence (like the idea that Kilroy stabbed Gray’s brains), going so far as to mock the conclusion that blood on a bayonet meant a brain stab as against “common sense.” Considering someone else testified to having been wounded by a bayonet, and no one testified to have seen a stabbing, we must agree with Adams here and mention that it is baffling that, even to this day, famous renderings of the event depict this stabbing-brains incident when it didn’t happen.
Quincy’s arguments, in contrast to his co-councilor’s acerbic wit, were based in general appeals to humanism, the idea of the better part of human nature:
Gentlemen, this is for their lives! We all reluct[ant] at death. We long for one short space more – we grasp, with anxious solicitude, even after a wretched existence. God and Nature has implanted this love of life.
(This argument is all the more poignant when considering that, when speaking these words, Quincy likely knew he didn’t have long to live himself.)
Still, I have to criticize some of their arguments. Or really, one in particular, given by Adams specifically. I’m not going to quote it, but you can read his remarks on two victims in particular, remarks that use their ethnicities against them, here.
Crispus Attucks, a mixed-race man (he was Native American and most likely part Black as well) is described as being very violent. Whether or not he was behaving as such doesn’t actually matter, because chalking any such behavior up to his ethnicity is still a reductive portrayal that reads deeply uncomfortably. Patrick Carr was Irish (in those days, the Irish were hated because of the Irish=Catholic presumption) and this was also used to support the idea that the mob was prone to violence and a lack of reason.
Ironically most if not all of the soldiers charged were also Irish, but not Catholic… even though the Boston newspapers insinuated they were! And Carr, who was Catholic, gave evidence supporting the defense before he died, in which he insisted that the soldiers really were in danger of losing their lives, and he forgave them.
Listen, again, I think defending these soldiers was the right thing to do. Whether or not Adams himself actually held these racist views can’t be known, but he did say it, and that’s bad enough. Thus arguments that the jury members were almost certainly prejudiced and Adams may have just played on these ideas to get an acquittal could be true, and it still wouldn’t change the impact of those racist words. While Adams was the only president out of America’s first five to not own slaves, and he in fact abhorred slavery… that’s still not the same as not being racist, even by 18th century standards. The framing of Attucks especially as being, in essence, a pretty racist caricature should bother us.
Soon after the trial, John Adams suffered a nervous breakdown. Convinced he’d had a heart attack, Adam was largely bedridden for several weeks. He recovered, but he has several more of these breakdowns throughout his life. Modern scholars theorize he lived with recurrent depression and anxiety.
Adams, of course, also went on to become the second president of the United States and the father of the sixth president. At some point during the 1780s, after British surrender at Yorktown, Adams traveled to London to negotiate with the British, where he actually met up with Captain Thomas Preston, whose life he’d saved. He died at age 90, on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the exact same day that his frenemy Thomas Jefferson died.
Unfortunately, Josiah Quincy wasn’t blessed with so long a life. By the time of the Massacre trial, he was already suffering from tuberculosis. He died on April 26, 1775, just after the outbreak of the War at Lexington and Concord.
Next week, we’ll take a slight flash forward to 1775, as it’ll be approaching the 251st anniversary of Lexington and Concord, and discuss which traitor might have leaked the supposedly secret British mission (spoiler: it wasn’t Margaret Gage). But first, we have Stubborn Things‘ synopsis later this week!
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