John Adams and the Rule of Law in Boston
Heather Cox Richardson Message boards and blogs are full of angry people calling for Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be tortured or killed. Or both. Immediately. After all, it’s pretty clear he’s guilty, A Gilbert Stuart portrait of John Adams, ca. 1821. right? Why waste tax dollars on this guy with a long, expensive trial? And anyway, who ever said a terrorist who murders Americans should get a fair trial? Well, Founding Father John Adams , for one. Right here in Boston. Adams was a rising lawyer in Massachusetts during the infancy of the American Revolution. On March 5, 1770, eight British soldiers opened fire when someone in a taunting mob threw a rock at them. When the shooting was over, five Americans were dead and others were wounded. Within weeks, a grand jury indicted the soldiers, along with their commander, Captain Thomas Preston. It seemed all Boston was inflamed against the murdering foreign soldiers. The “Boston Massacre” became a rallying cry for th...