American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  Given that “a deep-laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed for the extinction of all civil liberty,” Josiah also set forth in his instructions a call for a “firm and lasting union” to be cultivated with the other colonies of America.24

  Thomas Hutchinson condemned Josiah’s written instructions as “ravings … of political frenzy.” In letters to England, Hutchinson implied that Quincy was a “mad” man and a “mere Coxcomb.”25 He wrote that Quincy’s instructions, taken as a whole, “indicated to Government in England the design of a general revolt.”26

  But it was not revolt or rebellion that Quincy had in mind—not yet. He, along with John Adams and John Hancock, still firmly believed in a fruitful partnership with England; they did not contemplate the prospect of independence. As articulated by Josiah Jr., the stumbling block to preserving the relationship between colony and king was that the true state of matters in the colonies had been misrepresented in England (and Josiah largely blamed Hutchinson for this misinformation).

  The solution was twofold: first, to present a united front as a colony, in union with other colonies, in demanding restoration of colonial rights; and second, to prove to the king just how devoted and law-abiding (to just laws) his colonists were. When both king and Parliament recognized the loyalty, worthiness, and diligence of the colonies, their full rights under the British Constitution, the charters of the colonies, and natural law would be restored.

  What better way to demonstrate to the Crown and all of England the worthiness of the colonists of Massachusetts than to conduct fair and open trials in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre? John Hancock, John Adams, and the Quincy brothers, Sam and Josiah, were all in agreement: the deaths of the five civilians would be avenged but not by a mob.

  Thousands had turned out for the largely peaceful funerals of the slain citizens; mourners marched soberly through the streets, and “most of the shops in Town were shut, [and] all the Bells were ordered to toll a Solemn Peal.”27 Now thousands more, at home and abroad in England, would watch justice unfold as the trial of Captain Preston and his soldiers began.

  14

  On Trial

  Law, no Passion can disturb.

  Tis void of Desire

  and Fear, Lust and Anger …

  Tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible.

  —JOHN ADAMS

  The trial of “the Inhuman Murderers of the 5 of March” was scheduled to begin in the late spring of 1770. Thomas Hutchinson, in his role as chief justice of the colony, did what he could to put off the trial, hoping the passage of time would subdue the protests sure to attend any judicial proceedings on the matter. He argued that not enough judges were available to sit for the trial (a quorum of four was required for cases of this kind); when Justice Peter Oliver fell from his horse in late May, injuring himself so severely as to require bed rest, there were those in the colony who accused Hutchinson of orchestrating the accident. The likelihood of Hutchinson tricking Oliver’s horse into rearing was slim, but the outcome was certain: the trial was delayed until the end of summer.

  John Adams welcomed the delay. He would finally have the time he needed to catch his breath, settle back, and take stock. He sat down at his desk and opened his diary for the first time in months. “The only Way to compose myself and collect my Thoughts is to set down at my Table, place my Diary before me, and take my Pen into my Hand. This Apparatus takes off my Attention from other objects.”1 He wrote happily of taking “an Airing in the Chaise” with his cousin Sam and enjoying quiet evenings with his wife and children (baby Charles had been born at the end of May). He wrote of his pride in having worked hard, rising out of “Obscurity” and planning well “for futurity.” In his new state of satisfaction, he noted in his diary, “it is no Damage to a young Man to learn the Art of Living, early.”2

  The art of living was seen as a balance of duties and pleasure: this was a goal for which Adams had long strived. On the one hand, Adams’ legal work was suffering because of the nonimportation measures still strong in Massachusetts; “the Lawyers loose as much by this Patriotic Measure as the Merchants, and Tradesmen,” he lamented.3 But while the work that paid the bills faltered, his political work increased. He’d been asked to take James Bowdoin’s seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, after Bowdoin was elected to the Provincial Council.

  Being named a representative was an honor for John, and proof that his role as defense lawyer for the British soldiers did not harm his reputation among liberty-loving colonists. At the same time, the political role would place a strain on an already burdened schedule; “My health was feeble: I was throwing away as bright prospects as any Man ever had before him: and had devoted myself to endless labour and Anxiety if not to infamy and to death, and that for nothing, except, what indeed was and ought to be all in all, a sense of duty.”4

  John sought the counsel of his wife, whom he trusted to be both truthful and supportive. He laid out to her “all my Apprehensions” about taking on such a prominent political role in Boston; after breaking down “into a flood of Tears” Abigail then gathered herself and told John that “she thought I had done as I ought, [and] she was very willing to share in all that was to come and place her trust in Providence.”5

  Whatever happened to John and Abigail, it would be borne by both together. John would tend to the trials of Captain Preston and the soldiers, along with other cases; to politics; and to his public image. Abigail would take care of the four children, manage the move to a new home in Boston (back to Brattle Square), and keep track of farm affairs in Braintree.

  Abigail lamented that months had gone by since she had written to her sister Mary in Salem. While Mary’s trials were of a different nature—never enough money and a brilliant husband who was a repeated failure at business—the two sisters had always sympathized with each other’s burdens and bolstered each other through problems. But with so much to tend to in Boston and oversee in Braintree, Abigail had no spare minute to write to Mary. John might have time to tend to his diary and shore up his energy for the fall trial to come, but Abigail passed the summer in a fog of work and grief, still nursing her sorrows over her lost child, Suky. Just when she needed her sister’s counsel and comfort most, she was simply too tired to reach out for it.

  * * *

  In February 1770, Dolly Quincy’s oldest sister, Elizabeth, died of a sudden illness. Dolly’s father, Edmund Quincy IV, felt the loss keenly. Elizabeth’s death reminded him of the loss of his wife, for whom his daughter had been named. The two women had shared many qualities, including those of piety and generosity, and both had been dearly loved by their husbands. Elizabeth’s husband, the Reverend Samuel Sewall, deacon of the Old South Meeting House, spoke of her in his eulogy as his “amiable, virtuous, and desirable consort” and swore he could not live without her; he died eleven months later.6

  Edmund found what comfort he could in his own deep faith, and in his certainty of a happy afterlife where both wife and daughter waited for him: “This present life is but infancy of our being, a prelude to a better existence, a Novice-ship.”7 But with political tensions high in Boston, and business slow due to the ongoing boycott of British goods and the rising costs of everything, there was little to make him smile in the here and now. Dolly tried to cheer her father with walks taken together in the Common and stories about the many dinner parties she enjoyed at the home of Aunt Lydia and John Hancock.

  The dinner parties, made up of Boston merchants mixed in with Sons of Liberty, along with their wives and sisters, cousins and aunts, made for lively evenings, and great gossip with which to entertain her father. Dolly described in detail the five-course meals served in the sixty-foot dining room, its long table fitted out with plates, silver, and crystal and a silver candelabra alight with dozens of candles. Men and women sat side by side, talking over the woes and hopes of the colony. Dolly brought her sister Katy along with her whenever she could, and often Dolly’s cousin and close friend, He
lena Bayard, was also invited to accompany the sisters.

  Hannah Rowe attended with her husband, John, and Sally Inches, formerly Sally Jackson and onetime dalliance of John Hancock, came with her husband, Henderson. Abigail and John Adams were absent from the dinner parties; although John now served as Hancock’s lawyer, neither Abigail nor John Adams enjoyed big dinner parties. Nor could they reciprocate in kind, so they preferred to stay away.

  On those evenings when the men took themselves off to the local coffeehouse after dinner for political (or other) discussions, the women left in the mansion found good company in one another, playing cards and talking until late into the night. The political discussions of the women could be just as fierce as the men’s debates, and their commitment to the rights of colonists just as diverse and layered. Back in February, Sally Inches had bought a bolt of white satin for her wedding gown from a British importer and only apologized for buying banned goods after she was found out.

  Sally now joined Dolly, Katy, and Helen in diligently swearing off all British accoutrements to their wardrobes, along with all other British goods, and their discussions were rife with complaints against Crown administrators. Hannah Rowe, wife of a leading merchant and often present at the dinner parties, led the charge against Hutchinson; she had been vilifying Hutchinson and his administration ever since he (correctly) accused her husband of helping to instigate mob protests against the Stamp Act. Aunt Lydia presided over the women’s drawing room with quiet discretion; both in public and in private she kept her own political views under wraps, preferring to let her nephew make the stand for the Hancock name.

  * * *

  When the Superior Court of Boston sat again at the end of August 1770, the trial of Preston and his men was put off once more, rescheduled to begin at the end of October. The decision was also made to hold two trials, one for Captain Preston and one for the men under his command. Preston, whose case would be based on the argument that he never ordered his men to shoot at the crowd, was content with having two trials. The soldiers, however, whose defense was based on the claim that they had only fired when ordered to do so, worried that while their captain, “he being a Gentelman should have more chance for to save his life,” the soldiers—“we poor men that is Obliged to Obay his command”—would lose theirs.8

  For Quincy and Adams, the countering positions their clients wanted to take—Preston arguing the soldiers had fired on their own volition and the soldiers arguing they were firing under command—would have been difficult to present if all the accused had been tried together. Now with a split in the trials, a vigorous defense utilizing both arguments could be made. But Josiah Jr. had a different—and a much more expansive—defense planned for both Preston and the soldiers. It was a defense for which John Adams was not prepared and one he would do all in his power to negate.

  Jonathan Sewall, as attorney general for the colony, should have taken the lead in prosecuting Preston and his men. But after enduring the setbacks and failures of both the Liberty and the Lydia smuggling cases, Sewall had begged off serving as lead counsel for the Crown. As John Adams put it, Sewall preferred “disappearance” from the courtroom rather than suffering humiliation in it.9 Thomas Hutchinson directed Samuel Quincy, who had indicted Captain Preston and his men, to now handle their prosecutions.

  Hutchinson was perhaps indulging in some malicious glee: he would enjoy watching the two Quincy brothers face off, both of them holding positions neither found natural. Samuel, loyal to the king and Parliament, and by extension to His Majesty’s troops, would now have to seek death sentences for Preston and his men; Josiah Quincy, firebrand orator against the troops in Boston, would have to defend them and save their lives.

  Captain Preston’s trial finally began on October 23. With such a long delay between the bloody evening of March 5 and the trial, Sam Adams worried that public outrage over what he called “the murders” had dimmed. There was a strong desire among the colonists to return to business as usual; tensions with the troops had subsided and support for the boycott of British goods was fading. Other American colonies had reopened trade with Britain, and only the merchants of Massachusetts still adhered, in word at least, to the nonimportation resolutions. Finally, on October 11, 1770, the merchants of Boston voted to end the boycott of British goods.

  The Sons of Liberty did all they could to stir up public indignation before the trials began. A broadside was printed in early October and distributed widely, containing an eleven-stanza poem lamenting the delay of “SEVEN long Months” since “INNOCENCE itself became a Prey.… Was it my Eyes Deceived me? Did I Dream? / or did I Clearly see through every Scene, / Blood Trickling down … GOD hath said, the Murderer SHALL NOT LIVE.”10

  The broadside sold briskly and was successful in reigniting interest in the cases about to start in the courthouse on Queen Street. But no matter how much excitement the broadside caused in the street, it was the men of the jury seated at trial who would determine the outcome. Back and forth the Crown and the defense proposed and rejected jurors; in the end, in both trials, the juries were filled primarily by men loyal to the Crown, either for business or political reasons, along with provincials from outlying villages who had little experience with standing troops (and troop-related tensions) as compared to citizens of Boston.

  Samuel Quincy was the first to speak at Captain Preston’s trial. His opening statement was uninspired and rote, merely noting the crime for which Preston was charged: willful premeditated murder for ordering troops to fire on the inhabitants of Boston on the evening of March 5, 1770. Quincy followed up his lackadaisical opening statement with a long parade of witnesses, questioned by both Quincy and his co-counsel, Robert Treat Paine. The collective testimony of the witnesses was meant to prove that Preston had both prepared his men to fire and ordered them to fire.

  But the testimony offered was contradictory and presented instead a picture of mayhem and chaos. Far from demonstrating that the shootings of March 5 had resulted from a premeditated plan of action formulated and carried out by Preston, the witnesses provided vivid observations of townspeople taunting and insulting the soldiers and attacking them with snowballs, sticks, and stones. No two witnesses could agree on having heard Preston give the order to fire, and in fact, much of the shouting of “Fire!” “Fire, damn you!” was heard coming from the gathered crowd, both in front of and behind the soldiers, and not from the line of soldiers as they attempted to retreat to the barracks.

  When it was time for the defense to make its case, the secret plan of Josiah Quincy Jr. became clear to John Adams. Josiah had prepared all the witnesses, but it would be John who questioned them on the stand. When Adams asked John Gillespie, a defense witness, what he had observed on the evening of March 5, Gillespie testified to seeing “a gang of townspeople, armed with sticks and swords” parading through the streets “at least two hours before the firing.”11

  Adams returned to the defense table and looked over the witness notes prepared by his co-counsel. His heart quickened: Josiah Quincy Jr. intended to put the citizens of Boston on trial. Josiah’s witnesses would present testimony demonstrating that the mobs of the town, intent on driving the British troops out of Boston, had instigated the violence of March 5 and put the lives of Captain Preston and his men in danger. In response, Preston and his men had no choice but to fight for their lives. The case then became one of self-defense, with the mobs of Boston the perpetrators of violence and the British troops defending against it.

  Adams drew Quincy aside and told him, firmly but softly, that he would present no more evidence placing the blame on the citizens of Boston or indicating that “the expulsion of the troops from the town of Boston was a plan concerted among the inhabitants.”12 Furthermore, he warned Quincy, if the young lawyer tried any more maneuvers to put Boston itself on trial, Adams would walk away.

  Adams was wary of portraying the protesting citizens of Boston as lawless, especially because he viewed the parliamentary actions that instigate
d the protests in the first place as unlawful. In addition, the defense proposed by Josiah Jr. was unnecessary. Sam Quincy and the prosecution had failed to prove their case against Preston. Repeatedly, the prosecution witnesses had testified to the utter chaos of the evening, and there was no proof that Preston had prepared for or ordered the shootings. His acquittal was guaranteed.

  Josiah Quincy Jr. finally acquiesced to Adams and withdrew those questions that would have elucidated for the jury both the motivations and the goals of the Boston mobs that cold March day. But he was only biding his time. He never trusted a mob, and he would do whatever he could to take away the power of the Boston mobs and restore the rule of law and order in Boston: not the order imposed by the British troops, but the order guaranteed to the citizens of the colony under its charter and under “that glorious medium, the British constitution.”13

  After four days of testimony, closing arguments began. John Adams offered a vigorous and impassioned display of rhetoric and maxims, offering the jury the legal high ground on which to acquit Preston. He also delivered a careful and detailed demolition of the testimony offered by opposing witnesses, giving the jury the plain facts upon which to find Preston not guilty. Samuel Quincy presented no closing argument or statement, leaving Robert Treat Paine alone in his attempt to present the mob as a normal occurrence in Boston and the response of Preston as planned, methodical, and ultimately murderous. Rather than defending his own life or the lives of his soldiers, Paine argued, the British captain went on the offensive and killed inhabitants of Boston.

  The jury returned their verdict in three hours. Captain Preston was found not guilty. Preston expressed no gratitude to his defense lawyers but “immediately disappeared.”14 John Adams consoled himself with having performed “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life.”15 (Adams must also have found consolation in receiving payment of over £100, a worthy sum that bolstered the Adams household budget considerably.)