Trial of the British Soldiers

John Adams Defends the Soldiers

When Captain Thomas Preston and the eight soldiers who fired on the crowd were arrested and charged with murder, they needed lawyers. Most attorneys in Boston were too afraid of public opinion to take the case. The streets were filled with people who believed the soldiers were cold-blooded killers. Taking their side in court was not a popular thing to do.

John Adams agreed to defend them anyway. Adams was already an established Boston lawyer and a firm believer in the Patriot cause. He opposed British rule just as much as Samuel Adams, his cousin. But he also believed deeply that every person had the right to a fair trial, no matter what they had done or how the public felt about them. He wrote later that it was one of the most important things he ever did in his life.

Adams believed that defending the soldiers would actually strengthen the Patriot cause in the long run. If the trial were fair and the soldiers were convicted, it would show that colonial courts could deliver justice. If they were found not guilty, it would prove that the courts followed the law rather than mob opinion. Either way, he thought the principle of fair justice was more important than the political outcome.

Courtroom Testimony

The trials began in October 1770, seven months after the massacre. Captain Preston was tried first, separately from the soldiers. The key question was whether he had ordered his men to fire. Witnesses disagreed completely. Some said they heard him give the command. Others were certain he had not. The jury found Preston not guilty.

The eight soldiers were tried next. Adams argued that the crowd had been dangerous and threatening. He described the situation the soldiers faced: a crowd pressing in on them in a dark street, throwing objects, daring them to fire, and making so much noise that no one could clearly hear or communicate. He argued that any reasonable person in that situation would have felt their life was in danger.

A key piece of evidence came from the deathbed statement of Patrick Carr, one of the victims. Before he died, Carr told a doctor that he thought the soldiers had been provoked and that he did not blame them for firing. Adams used this statement powerfully at trial, pointing out that even one of the men who had been shot believed the soldiers had acted out of fear rather than malice.

The prosecution argued that the soldiers had no right to fire into a crowd of unarmed citizens, even a threatening one. They pointed to witnesses who said the crowd had not been especially dangerous and that the soldiers had overreacted badly.

Verdict and Legacy

Six of the eight soldiers were found not guilty. The jury decided that the evidence showed the crowd had been dangerous enough that the soldiers could reasonably have believed their lives were at risk. Two soldiers, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter rather than murder. They were branded on the thumb, which was a standard punishment at the time, and then released.

Many Bostonians were angry about the acquittals. Samuel Adams and his allies made sure that word of the verdicts spread, and they continued to use the massacre in their political writing for years afterward. But the trials also demonstrated something important: colonial courts could hold a fair trial even in the most charged political atmosphere. That was not nothing.

John Adams paid a price for defending the soldiers. He lost clients and faced public criticism. But he always maintained that taking the case had been the right thing to do. The trial became an example of the rule of law functioning even under enormous pressure, and that example mattered to Adams as much as any political victory could have.