John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams

Author:Dan Abrams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2019-12-31T15:45:18+00:00

Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society

Samuel Adams was an astute politician who became a leading force in the revolution and an architect of the resulting republic. He deftly exploited the massacre trial for its propaganda, attending every session, planning strategy, then writing about it under the pseudonym Vindex. After the trial he continued to use it as kindling for the independence movement, staging a commemoration each March 5.

Jedediah Bass saw Montgomery fire and the people beginning to run. Wilkinson ignored warnings that he would be killed if he went into the street; he saw Captain Preston march the guard to King Street. “He saw the flash of each gun; seven went off and one flashed. There, gentlemen, you have evidence of all the party’s firing save one.” The witness did not see anything thrown by the crowd; “if he had, he should have thought himself in danger and retreated.”

Next was the overly confident and descriptive Simpson. And once again John Adams begins his comments with the word, “Curious.” Even Quincy was a bit hesitant, cautioning the jury to pay extra heed: “He swears to the discharge of eight guns, which if you give credit to his testimony, will prove to you that the whole party fired...”

Next, Fosdick testified to the disposition of the soldiers before and after shots were fired. “When the first gun was fired, the second man from the right pushed his bayonet at him and wounded him in the breast; you saw, Gentlemen, the mark in court; before this two different men pierced him in the arm and elbow quite to the bone; here, Gentlemen were three thrusts given to a person innocently passing down upon the cry of fire!...”

In his testimony, Hemmingway quoted Killroy’s foul words, that he had wanted to fire on the people of the town ever since he landed. Quincy suggested to the jury, “These expressions...are of such a nature as you cannot but draw from them the temper of the man’s heart who spoke them...”

Witness Hilyer watched as “a little boy ran across the street crying fire—and the soldier on the left followed the boy with his gun; there was nothing passed, he observed, to induce them to apprehend any danger.” And yet, Adams writes of the same witness, “A little boy, running and crying fire, the last gun was pointed at him and fired.” While transcripts have been known to include errors and dropped or missed words, and later there would be much grumbling about this one, this was a peculiar discrepancy that Adams would have to address in his own case.

Nicholas Ferriter had been at the ropeworks “before this affair happened.” He had told the jury about three attacks, the third such fray being “after three-quarters of an hour they came back and went at it again, in this last squabble the soldiers were a third time worsted. From this affair perhaps may be dated a good deal of the proceedings of Monday evening; you have heard from witnesses that

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