Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

by Richard R. Beeman

  Although most of Adams’s early political writings, unlike those of his cousin Sam, were largely theoretical, they did start to change as the full impact of the passage of the Stamp Act began to be felt. His instinctive reaction to the British provocation was pure John Adams, which is to say that it was concerned much less with long-range constitutional implications and much more with possible effects on the still-nascent law practice of John Adams. Boston’s resistance to the Stamp Act required not only street protests and boycotts but also the willingness of lawyers to refuse to comply with the act’s provisions requiring the use of stamps on all legal documents. Adams took this personally, for the cost of those stamps hit him directly in his own pocketbook. At a time when many of Boston’s political leaders were using high-minded rhetoric to encourage their fellow residents to stand up in virtuous opposition to British tyranny, Adams wallowed in self-pity, noting in his diary melodramatically that “I have groped in dark Obscurity till of late, and had but just become known, and gained a small degree of Reputation, when this execrable project was set on foot for my Ruin as well as that of America in general.” The detestable Stamp Act seemed aimed directly at the well-being of Mr. John Adams.9

  But however much Adams may have initially been preoccupied with the effects of the Stamp Act on his own livelihood, he soon found that it offered him a different route to the fame and respect to which he aspired. By the fall of 1765 his reputation as a skillful writer was sufficiently well known that he was asked to draft the town of Braintree’s instructions to its delegates to the Massachusetts General Court, commanding them to oppose the act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and that it would produce “convulsive Change” in their colony’s relationship with the mother country. And in January of 1766, Adams published three essays in the Boston Gazette elaborating on his opposition to the Stamp Act. Although Adams clearly believed that the act was unconstitutional, his essays opposing it were relatively restrained, for he was inclined to believe it was the result of blundering British ministers and an ill-informed Parliament; surely, reasonable petitions and remonstrances would cause the British government to see the error of its ways. Although Adams’s political writings and rhetoric would gradually grow more passionate over time, at this early stage of his entry into the world of politics, his natural instincts were, unlike those of his cousin, cautious and restrained.10

  John Adams steadfastly supported peaceful, purposeful resistance to the Stamp Act during the spring and early summer of 1765, but when riots erupted on the streets of Boston, he was deeply disturbed. When the Boston mob ransacked the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson in August of 1765 (an action that may have been actively encouraged by his cousin Sam), Adams recorded in his diary his concern about the “dangerous Tendency and Consequence” of such an “atrocious Violation of the peace.” Throughout the years leading up to independence, Adams would wrestle with this tension between his determination to defend America’s constitutional rights against British encroachment and his deep distaste for violence and disorder.11

  In the aftermath of the repeal of the Stamp Act in February of 1766, Adams threw himself into the task of building up a law practice that had been temporarily derailed by the closing of the courts. But as hostilities between the residents of Boston and British royal officials and soldiers escalated after the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767, Adams was once again drawn into the fray. In 1768 he served as chief defense counsel for John Hancock, the Boston merchant who had been most flagrant in his defiance of the new British acts of trade. Hancock was rewarded for his efforts by having one of his ships, the Liberty, seized and by being ordered to pay a £9,000 fine—a huge amount in those days—for having engaged in smuggling. Adams did not entirely approve of Hancock’s flaunting of British law and admitted to feeling some disgust at having to take the case, but, enticed by a substantial fee and by the attention the case would no doubt bring to his practice, he agreed to take it on. The case dragged on for several months, but in the end Adams persuaded the British that they lacked the evidence to secure a conviction, and they dropped the charges.12

  Adams’s commitment to the rule of law and peaceful resistance to British policies was put to a further test in the wake of the March 5, 1770, event that came to be known, at least in the minds of American propagandists, as the Boston Massacre. The events of that cold winter night were in some senses little different from many previous instances in which unruly Bostonians gathered to taunt the British soldiers who had been sent to the city to enforce the British version of law and order. They’d been doing it regularly since the passage of the Townshend Duties in 1767. In this case, however, someone in the crowd of 400 protesters threw a club that struck a British soldier, after which, in spite of orders to the contrary by their commanding officer, Captain Thomas Preston, the British soldiers opened fire, killing five Bostonians. The residents of Boston demanded retribution, and by the end of that month Preston and several other soldiers had been indicted by a Boston grand jury on the charge of what today would be called manslaughter. There was no shortage of Boston lawyers ready and willing to serve as prosecutors, but securing a lawyer to defend the hated British soldiers was another matter altogether.

  Historians have long speculated about the reasons behind Adams’s decision to defend the British soldiers and the consequences of his having done so. Many of the explanations have turned on the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of John’s cousin Sam, who was on the one hand determined to prove that even British soldiers could get a fair trial in Boston and, on the other, sufficiently confident of the mood of a Boston jury that even with the excellent counsel provided by his cousin and Josiah Quincy, one of the leading lawyers in Boston and the brother of the prosecuting attorney in the case, Samuel Quincy, the soldiers would in the end be convicted. This may be a sufficient explanation for Sam Adams’s role in the affair, but it does not explain why his younger cousin was persuaded to accept the assignment. Some have argued that John Adams’s election to a vacant seat in the Massachusetts provincial assembly just three months after the trial—an election in which Sam Adams vigorously supported him—is sufficient explanation of the younger Adams’s behavior. Although there may indeed have been some sort of “understanding” between the two Adamses, the fact of the matter is that not only did John agree to take the lead in defending the soldiers, but when the trials finally unfolded, his performance as a defense attorney was much more than perfunctory. Indeed, it was masterful. He insisted that Preston be tried separately from the soldiers accused of actually firing on the rioters. His vigorous cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution in Preston’s case revealed the full extent of the confusing chaos surrounding the tragedy, casting doubt on whether Preston had ever given the command to fire. And once Preston was acquitted, he secured the acquittal of six of the eight soldiers, who, he argued, were innocent victims of the riotous atmosphere and were only doing what they thought was their duty when they heard the command of “fire” from an unknown source. The other two soldiers were convicted of manslaughter, but then allowed to plead “benefit of clergy,” which enabled them to escape all punishment except for the branding of a thumb.13

  Adams’s own explanation for agreeing to serve as defense attorney emphasized his commitment to the right to competent legal counsel, which, he insisted, was an indispensable element of “a free country.” If no other Boston attorney would step forward, and if Captain Preston believed that he could not receive a fair trial in Boston, then it was, Adams argued, his moral and professional duty to prove otherwise. Moreover, Adams, no doubt aware that some might accuse him of defending the hated British soldiery simply out of a desire for material gain, insisted that he would take the case only for a token fee of one guinea. In his recounting of the event later in life, Adams would add a few embellishments, emphasizing the risks to his reputation given the intense popular hatred of the British soldiers. In fact, when news of the repeal of the Townshend Duties reached Bosto
n shortly after the events of the Boston Massacre and popular passions had subsided, Adams was able not only to take credit for stepping in to defend the principle of the rule of law but also to enhance his reputation as a highly effective lawyer in the bargain.14

  The trial of Captain Preston and the British soldiers provided further confirmation that however self-centered Adams was, he was also truly committed to the rule of law. Looking back on the tumult of the years immediately preceding independence, Adams recalled being approached on the streets of Boston by “a common Horse Jockey” who had “sometimes been my Client.” The man was, Adams noted, no stranger to the courtroom; he had been brought to trial on numerous occasions for a variety of petty civil and criminal offenses. As he came up to Adams, he greeted him with the exclamation: “Oh! Mr. Adams what great Things have you and your Colleagues done for Us! We can never be gratefull enough to you. There are no Courts of justice now in this Province, and I hope there never will be another!” Adams was appalled. “Are these the Sentiments of such People? And how many of them are there in the Country? Truly, we must guard against this Sprit and these Principles or We shall repent of all of our Conduct.”15

  In spite of these concerns, as Adams made his preparations for his journey to Philadelphia that August, his mood was ebullient. There would be no “common Horse Jockeys” at the Continental Congress, and he must have relished the opportunity to appear on a continental, rather than a merely provincial, stage. As his journey to Philadelphia proceeded, his diary entries, few and far between in previous months, increased and were notable for their detailed and enthusiastic recording of the people, places and landscapes that he saw along the way. He and his fellow delegates were particularly pleased by the favorable reception they received from important local political leaders in the towns along their route. Arriving in New Haven on August 16, he observed: “As we came into the Town all the Bells in Town were sett to ringing, and the People—Men, Women and Children—were crouding at the Doors and Windows as if it was to see a Coronation!”16

  By the time he arrived in Philadelphia, Adams must have felt great pride that he had ascended to such a high level of prominence and public trust within his home colony. Over the past decade he’d gone from an unknown lawyer scraping to making a living to one of the best-known and most respected lawyers and political activists in a colony filled with such men. Indeed, within the colony of Massachusetts, only his cousin Sam and perhaps John Hancock, could claim reputations superior to his. John Adams, being John Adams, however, must have also been well aware that his reputation at that moment was a purely provincial one, that he was little known outside of his home colony. Although he may have been a man on the way up, he knew that he had much to prove in this new, continental venue.

  The Maddeningly Moderate John Dickinson

  When the Congress opened for business on September 5, John Dickinson had not even been elected to serve as one of Pennsylvania’s delegates. Though he was by then one of the colonies’ best-known defenders of their constitutional liberties, he had been essentially blackballed by fellow Pennsylvanian Joseph Galloway. Dickinson had chosen not to serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly during the session when the congressional delegates were selected, and Dickinson’s longtime rival in Pennsylvania politics, Galloway, as Speaker of the Assembly, had ruled that only members of that body were eligible for selection. Dickinson had made his name with the publication of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, a series of twelve essays written in 1767–1768 in response to the Townshend Duties. Dickinson acknowledged Parliament’s right, dating back to the navigation acts of the mid-seventeenth century, to impose taxes on the colonies for the purposes of regulating within the British Empire, but, relying on his extensive training in international law, he had made a strong case that the acts imposed by Parliament beginning in 1764—the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties—were of an entirely different, and unprecedented character. Their purpose, he correctly pointed out, was to raise a revenue intended to go into British, not American, coffers. Dickinson argued that any tax for the purposes of raising a revenue was, in effect, a gift of the people to their government. And such gifts from the people could only be given with their explicit consent. The new British taxes on the colonies, passed without the consent of the American people, were, Dickinson insisted, contrary to the fundamental principles of the English constitution.17

  Dickinson’s family roots in America went back to the mid-seventeenth century, when his great-grandfather Walter Dickinson, along with several other members of the Society of Friends, immigrated to Virginia from England. From that time forward, the Dickinson family would steadily accumulate lands in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware and generate substantial wealth, principally from the cultivation of tobacco. Through the combination of their wealth and social connections, the Dickinsons would become known throughout the Chesapeake region as pillars of the Quaker religious community. Though many of John Dickinson’s contemporaries believed him to be a Quaker, and in spite of his long family association with Quakerism and his marriage to Polly Norris, the daughter of Isaac Norris, one of the most influential Quaker merchants and politicians in Philadelphia, Dickinson formally rejected any formal association with the Quaker meeting, or, indeed, any religious organization.

  Dickinson’s education both at home and abroad was as distinguished as that of any man in America. Schooled at his family’s home in Delaware by an assortment of tutors, he developed at an early age a deep interest in Latin and history. In 1750, when he was eighteen, Dickinson moved to Philadelphia to begin studying law under John Moland, arguably the most eminent lawyer in the city. Dickinson’s two years of study and apprenticeship with Moland deepened his interest in the connections between law and history, and it was a combination of intellectual and professional ambition that took him across the Atlantic to embark on three more years of legal study at the profession’s most prestigious institution, the Middle Temple in London. When Dickinson returned to Philadelphia in 1757 to begin practicing law, he may well have been the best-trained lawyer in America. At the time the delegates to the First Continental Congress were gathering, Dickinson was dividing his time among three separate residences; he was living at Fair Hill, the family estate of his wife on the outskirts of Philadelphia, he was building a handsome townhouse on Chestnut Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets and he remained the heir to his family’s magnificent estate, Poplar Hall, in Kent County, Delaware.18

  Dickinson’s first elected political position was as a member of Delaware’s General Assembly in 1759. In those days, the colony of Delaware was often referred to as the “three lower counties of Pennsylvania,” and the prominence of Dickinson’s family in that region made his election virtually automatic. As his social, professional and political world came increasingly to be centered in Philadelphia, however, he began to focus his attention more acutely on that city. The Dickinson family’s social and political clout was not as overwhelming in Philadelphia as it was in Delaware, however, and when John ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1761, he was defeated. But it would not take long for him to build his reputation on his own merits, and the following year, he won election as a representative from Philadelphia County. During his years of service in the Pennsylvania Assembly he was generally identified with the so-called Quaker Party, the group of legislators who, though dominated by Quakers, also included men like Benjamin Franklin, Dickinson and even his arch-rival, Joseph Galloway.

  The one thing that all of the Quaker Party members had in common was a determination to limit the prerogatives of the “proprietor.” While most American colonies were “royal” colonies, whose governors were appointed directly by the king, Pennsylvania was a “proprietary” colony. Its governor was always a direct descendant of William Penn, the English Quaker who had been given the original grant of control over all of the lands that would come to be known as Pennsylvania. William Penn’s descendants chose not to embrace their ancestor’s Quaker religion,
becoming Anglicans instead, thus setting up a conflict between many of the Quaker politicians who had come to dominate the colony’s provincial assembly and the Anglican members of the Penn family who served as the colony’s governors. Dickinson, ever independent, had no fear of breaking with party orthodoxy, and when, in 1764 Franklin and Galloway proposed to eliminate the power of the proprietor by converting Pennsylvania into a royal colony, Dickinson wrote and spoke eloquently against the scheme, observing, presciently as things turned out, that the injustices that might result from royal rule might be worse than those suffered under the proprietor. The rift between Dickinson and Galloway on that issue became so severe that the two actually came to blows, with Galloway grabbing hold of Dickinson’s notably prominent proboscis and striking him with his cane. Dickinson, mild-mannered and so slight of build that he would have been unlikely to emerge victorious in any contest of fisticuffs, managed to deflect the blow from the cane and to deliver a “fair knock on the head” to Galloway with a stick. They were eventually separated by others, but at that moment the political rivalry between the two escalated to an enmity that would last throughout the remainder of their political careers.19