Creator/Contributor: Adams, John, 1735-1826 (creator)

Creation date: 1770

Summary: John Adams’s original trial notes from the Boston Massacre.

Genre: Manuscripts

Transcription:
[You] are not sitting here as Statesmen or Politicians. You have nothing to do with the injuries your Country has just received. The town is not concerned.

This cause has attracted the attentions of this whole continent, if not all Europe. You ought to be careful to give a Verdict which will bear Examination of Time, when the Pulse which now beats shall beat no more. Do nothing which shall hereafter bite like a serpent and sting like and adder. All the colors of the canvas that Pictures, the Publications, everything that could possible, stimulate, and inflame. A high water mark – the Passions, so high that they can go no higher.

The fact of killing has not been proved with Regard to some of them, and others are left in the doubt.

A Person producing a Witness is never to discredit him. A Person swearing a Positive is to be believed, cæteris paribus, rather than one swearing a negative, a person upon guard has a particular Habit. [Therefore] probably, C. Marshall was mistaken in that Temper of Mind, that frame of Disposition, which prevailed through the whole Continent. These Persons were upon their Duty, and their Lives were in Danger if they moved from their Stations.

File name: 06_01_000717

Call no.: Ms.Am.229(23)

Title: Boston Massacre trial notes [page 8]

Location: Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department