What John Adams Taught a Soon-to-Be Nation About the Rule of Law, Mob Rule

America was not fully formed in 1770, but the nature and character of the soon-to-be nation—and the importance of the rule of law—were forged by a Boston lawyer who put his nascent political career at risk to defend British soldiers accused of killing five Colonists.

At a time when many Americans fear prosecutors are using their offices to punish political adversaries and curry favor with the public—think no further than cases in Atlanta and New York where publicly elected prosecutors campaigned to "get Trump"—what John Adams did in 18th-century New England is worth remembering. And revering.

Adams was not born to wealth: His father made his living as a farmer and shoemaker. The turning point in the life of the man who would become America's first vice president and second president—his big break—came in the form of a scholarship to Harvard at the age of 15, As David McCullough points out in his biography John Adams, the college then consisted of four buildings and seven faculty members.

At Harvard, Adams cultivated his appetite for reading and studying, which would last a lifetime. After graduating in 1755, he pursued a legal career, which did not include a stint in graduate school (Harvard Law did not open its doors until 1807). He worked by day as a teacher to pay for his legal training with lawyers in and around Boston, launching his legal career in 1758. By 1770, he was one of the busiest and best attorneys in the city.

Then came the moment that tested Adams' commitment to the rule of law. At great risk to his growing practice, he chose to represent the redcoats in the biggest case of his time: the Boston Massacre Trial.

The events leading up to that bloody day on March 5, 1770, were years in the making. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which taxed Colonists on all kinds of essential products, including paper, paint, glass and tea. Worse, the British headquartered customs officials throughout the city to serve as collection agents and enforcers of the latest trade regulations.

The Colonists were furious, assembling town hall meetings and protesting in the streets. Reacting to the growing dissent, the British scaled up their presence, ordering an additional 4,000 redcoats to bring order to the streets. The Boston Massacre, it turns out, wasn't an accident. It was inevitable.

"On the icy, cobbled square where the Province House stood, a lone British sentry, posted in front of the nearby Custom House, was being taunted by a small band of men and boys," McCullough wrote in John Adams.

"Somewhere, a church bell began to toll, the alarm for fire, and almost at once crowds began pouring into the streets, many men brandishing sticks and clubs," he went on. "As a throng of several hundred converged at the Custom House, the lone guard was reinforced by eight British soldiers with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, their captain with drawn sword."

McCullough continued: "Shouting, cursing, the crowd pelted the despised redcoats with snowballs, chunks of ice, oyster shells and stones. In the melee the soldiers suddenly opened fire, killing five men. Samuel Adams was quick to call the killings a 'bloody butchery' and to distribute a print published by Paul Revere vividly portraying the scene as a slaughter of the innocent, an image of British tyranny, the Boston Massacre, that would become fixed in the public mind."

The next day, Adams was asked to represent the soldiers and their captain. No other lawyer in town was willing to take the case, but he accepted without hesitation. He understood the perils of defending the redcoats, fearing for his family's safety—his bride, Abigail, was pregnant—and his own. He also worried that his law practice and political ambitions would suffer too. But Adams understood that the rule of law itself was on trial if mob justice prevailed.

There were two Boston Massacre trials. In the first, the captain accused of issuing the orders to fire upon the crowd of civilians was acquitted. Adam's legal skills were on full display in the second. Here's an excerpt from the remarkable—and often quoted—opening statement by Adams, in which he argued that the British soldiers acted in self-defense.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defense.

What followed was a master class in civil liberties, as Adams explained why self-defense was a bedrock not only of law but human nature itself. "The rules of the common law therefore, which authorize a man to preserve his own life at the expense of another's, are not contradicted by any divine or moral law," Adams said. "We talk of liberty and property, but, if we cut up the law of self-defense, we cut up the foundation of both."

Adams' rhetorical skills were on full display, according to McCullough, who excerpted some of the best lines from his opening statement.

The sun is not about to stand still or go out, nor the rivers to dry up because there was a mob in Boston on the 5th of March that attacked a party of soldiers.... Soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs where they prevent one. They are wretched conservators of the peace.

Adams described how the mob pelted the British soldiers with "every species of rubbish." One soldier, he said, was beaten to the ground with a club, rising up only to be beaten down again. "Do you expect he should behave like a stoic philosopher, lost in apathy?' Adams asked the jurors. And, by proxy, the entire city of Boston.

Adams then explained why the presumption of innocence is the bedrock of civil society. "Better that many guilty persons escape unpunished than one innocent person should be punished," he said.

After a thorough testing of the prosecution's evidence, Adams closed his case quoting Algernon Sydney, the English political theorist who wrote Discourses Concerning Government, often referred to as the textbook of the American Revolution because of its influence on our Founding Fathers.

'The law, (says he,) no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but without any regard to persons, commands that which is good, and punishes evil in all, whether rich, or poor, high or low, is deaf, inexorable, inflexible. On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf to the clamors of the populace.

The jury was out for less than three hours. Six soldiers were acquitted, and two were found guilty of manslaughter. Adams suffered in the short term for his efforts: He was attacked by the press and lost almost half of his law practice.

"As time would show, John Adams's part in the drama did increase his public standing, making him in the long run more respected than ever," McCullough wrote. "Years later, reflecting from the perspective of old age, Adams himself would conclude with pardonable pride that his part in the defense was 'one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.' "

Americans have much to learn from the most important trial in their Colonial history. It taught us all that unpopular people or people we hate—and hate even for good reason—must not be subject to the whims of the mob. Or prosecutors doing the mob's bidding at the expense of the rule of law and justice itself.