Chapter Three
BOSTON
Massachusetts Bay Colony
I was still mourning our baby’s death when, before the spring thaw, a new disturbance outside my window brought fresh pain.
Men with torches marched down our street demanding justice for a young boy who had been beaten by redcoats. Seeing a crowd
of angry men in the night frightened me. We were firm patriots in this house—but when a mob starts breaking windows and putting
houses to the torch, women and children often meet violence no matter what side they take.
Worse, John had not yet returned from a meeting, so I was alone with the children and servants. I wanted to send my husband’s
hired man to summon him home. But how could I send anyone out into this danger?
Fortunately, the manservant was already grabbing his cap to duck out the door. “I’ll discover what’s happening, Mrs. Adams,
and fetch your husband home.”
“You have my gratitude, sir,” I said, though words did not seem enough. But almost the moment he was gone out into the icy
night, I regretted sending him.
We heard what sounded distinctly like the snap of muskets in the distance. Then screams. And here we were without any man
at all in the house to defend us.
Starting on the task myself, I said to the maid, “Bar the windows.”
Then I looked for something with which we might protect ourselves.
I knew John kept a set of pistols in the house.
I was familiar with hunting muskets and fowling pieces, but as a parson’s daughter I’d never had cause to learn how to fire a pistol.
And I feared I might harm myself or the children if I tried.
But remembering my husband’s old case from Martha’s Vineyard years back, I glanced over the stove, where my cookery hung.
A frying pan . . . well, that I could certainly wield.
So I grabbed a cast-iron pan, then hurried up the steps, which now made me breathless, heavily pregnant as I was. I quickly
gathered Johnny and Nabby into bed with me fully clothed, in case we might have to flee. And for a second time in months,
I worried for the lives of my children. I had been unable to save Susanna. But my fingers curled around the handle of the
cooking pan because I knew that however doomed the cause might be, I would fight for the children that remained to me.
How long I huddled there, my knuckles going white around the iron handle, I cannot say. My arm was numb, my back cramped.
It could’ve been hours. It felt like a year.
At last, John returned with his servant, bursting into the house. He ran up the stairs, two at a time, shouting, “There has
been a slaughter on King Street!”
Only upon reaching our bedroom did he realize our children were present, so he motioned for me to join him in the hall. There,
in hushed tones, he explained, “British soldiers fired on a crowd.”
My stomach clenched in horror. “You witnessed it?”
“No.” John slowly removed hat and wig from his balding pate. “We heard the commotion and thought it was a fire; I grabbed
my hat to join the brigade, only to find blood in the snow.”
“And people were killed?” I asked, my fingers still frozen around the handle of the pan.
“At least five, perhaps more wounded.”
Fearful of further violence, I asked if we ought to pack up the children and retreat to his family farm in Braintree. But
John said, “I don’t think it necessary just yet. The governor showed some courage; he actually ordered the arrest of the British
soldiers who fired on the crowd.”
“As well he should,” I said, fury mounting. “But what will happen now?”
John gave a noncommittal shrug, sitting down on the top stair to remove his sodden boots. “The Sons of Liberty will mount patrols to keep the peace until these soldiers are tried; but it remains to be seen if they can get a fair-minded jury anywhere in Boston.”
I agreed with my husband that the British soldiers—who stood accused in what would eventually come to be known as the Boston
Massacre—deserved a fair trial.
But I never expected that my husband would be the one to ensure it . . .
“No one else is willing, Abigail,” my husband argued a few days later, after his cousin Sam’s most recent visit.
“For good reason no one else is willing to defend these brutes,” I replied hotly. “Just the rumor that you’re considering defending the redcoats has ruffians throwing rotten eggs at our door, and I doubt my beeswax polish
can restore it.”
Would it matter to them if the mob knew it was their favored son Samuel Adams who asked my husband to defend the soldiers?
Better you than a Tory lawyer, Sam had said. You can defend these men without casting aspersions on the city of Boston.
Sam had a political strategy in mind—one shared by my patriot uncle Colonel Quincy, who also wanted John to argue the case.
But my husband had his own reasons.
“Everyone deserves a fair trial,” John insisted to me and anyone else who might ask. “A good and zealous defense. If we believe
we have the same rights as British citizens, then we need to protect those rights.”
“But why must you take the case?” I asked.
“Why not me? I have the ability and the will. Why should the duty of protecting liberties fall to anyone else?”
I had no answer for that. Even if I was not still numb with the grief of a mother who had lost her baby, I would not have
an answer to it. Because God called us to use our gifts to help others whenever we could.
And in any case, there was no talking John out of it. For all that I was a grieving mother, he was a grieving father looking
to turn his mind away from the pain and make meaning of our lives.
The next day, the burly young bookshop clerk at Bowes’s handed me a volume amidst shelves boasting of old Roman tomes. “Is it true, Mrs. Adams, that your husband will defend those bloody redcoats?”
I thumbed my book while trying to think of a reply that wouldn’t get us tarred and feathered.
Tempers were still high in Boston; the five young men who had been shot were Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell,
Patrick Carr, and Crispus Attucks—a formerly enslaved man who was the first to be shot. All now hailed as martyrs while the
redcoats who shot them were condemned as vicious murderers.
So I answered the clerk honestly, but cautiously. “Mr. Adams was asked to represent them at trial, and he feels it is his
duty.”
Nabby had been worryingly silent since the death of her sister, but now, peeking out from behind my petticoats, she precociously
repeated her father’s high-minded ideas. “Papa says everyone deserves a fair trial.”
Thankfully, the clerk smiled down at Nabby. “Your papa is a brave and honorable man.”
Lifting his eyes to me, the clerk added, “Possibly a little foolish, though. You know, I warned Captain Preston not to fire
on the crowd that night and I don’t believe he did give the order.”
I startled. “You were there?”
“Oh, aye, I was there,” the store clerk replied, folding his meaty arms over his chest. “Tussled with some of them rowdy boys,
too, trying to get them to stop provoking the British.”
I wilted, because if the redcoats had been provoked to fire on the crowd . . . well, that could help my husband get an acquittal.
It was bad enough that John had taken the case. If he won, our family might very well be ridden out of Boston on a rail. We’d lose friends, property, income, and our standing in the
community—accepted by neither patriots nor loyalists.
By standing on principle, we’d stand alone.
Still, right was right, and holding my daughter’s hand, I felt compelled to ask, “Would you be willing to testify, sir?”
Back at home that night, John was far more pleased to hear the answer than I was to tell him.
“He’ll testify?” John took up his quill. “What’s the clerk’s name?”
“Henry Knox. And he says he’ll testify if he must.”
John clapped one hand on the table in satisfaction. “He isn’t the only one. Every day, this matter proves itself to be a straightforward
case of self-defense!”
Having agreed to take on the case, he allowed himself the vanity to think he would win. With books open on every surface,
scribbled notes piled to one side or crumpled and tossed at the fire, he was a legal force to be reckoned with.
Thankfully, he wasn’t blind to the danger.
Late that night, when finally he came to bed and found me still awake, he placed a fond hand upon my belly beneath the covers.
“Don’t fret, Abigail. Should my work prove too unpopular here in Boston, I am prepared to give up the house and move back
to Braintree.”
Twining my fingers with his, I said, “On the one hand, I daresay Boston is losing its charm. But I would not like to return
to a life where you ride circuit and are gone more days of the week than you’re home. Especially not with me so near to my
time.”
“We can move after the baby is born,” John promised, smiling in the candlelight. “A little sister for Nabby, I hope.”
Certainly one child could never replace another, but perhaps a little girl would ease our grief over Susanna.
God had other plans.
In May, I was delivered of a boy we named Charles. A delicate little baby with blue eyes and golden curls. Quite the perfect
cherub.
A rare joy, for the trial was beginning to consume my husband whole.
“Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” John would thunder, quoting Latin to justify taking on such an unpopular cause.
This trial was threatening his ability to keep food on the table. He pretended it did not distress him. Yet, anyone with eyes
could see the dreadful toll. He grew thinner, and a sickly pallor washed over his countenance. His temper shortened. And by
autumn, I found unpaid bills on the table and my husband clutching his chest, his jaw clenched in a grim line.
“John?” I rushed to him. “What is the matter?”
“Don’t scold me for opening the windows at night,” he wheezed. “I cannot—I cannot breathe.”
Watching my husband fight for breath, I eagerly helped him fling the windows open wide. But it was not enough. John staggered,
struggling with the back door. I helped him into the alley, the wet cobblestones littered with oyster shells and a child’s
hoop and ball.
My husband leaned his weight on me, and as he dragged in desperate breaths, I asked, “What ails you? Congestion in your lungs?”
John shook his head and pointed to his chest as it heaved up and down. “Terrible pain. Tightness.”
My father had seen parishioners die of such symptoms. Terrified, I put my hands to my husband’s cheeks. “Inhale slowly. With
me now.”
I breathed with him in the dim light from our kitchen until he was finally calm enough to sit on the stoop. Then I sent for
a physician, though I feared Dr. Warren might refuse to come, because the good doctor had openly condemned my husband’s clients
as murderers.
Thankfully, upon being summoned, Dr. Warren flew to our home. Pressing his ear to John’s chest, and gently palpating his neck,
the doctor finally declared, “You are working yourself to a nervous exhaustion, my dear Adams. And for undeserving British
brutes, I might add. You should quit this trial.”
John managed to argue between breaths. “Everyone . . . deserves . . . representation.”
“Be that as it may, you must rest,” the doctor said, propping my husband up in bed with pillows. “Before this anxiety becomes
a genuine threat to your life.”
Later, downstairs, with worry on their faces, my older children crowded about the doctor’s knees. “Your papa simply gave us
all a scare,” he said, producing from his medicine bag two pieces of candied fruit—one for Nabby and one for Johnny.
I sputtered a surprised laugh. “Our family physician, Dr. Tufts, always gives confections to his young patients.”
“A trick of the profession,” Dr. Warren replied.
I was grateful that Dr. Warren had eased my children’s worries, because I knew the sight of their strong father brought low
would bring nightmares. And I also appreciated Dr. Warren’s compassion about our bills. “No payment is necessary, Mrs. Adams.
Especially as your husband is not apt to follow my advice to quit this trial.”
“No, Dr. Warren,” I said. “I don’t suppose he shall.”
The young doctor smiled with understanding. But in the days that followed, I endured the cold stares of fishwives on the street.
Suspicious eyes followed me in the marketplace. Social invitations dried up. I was no longer welcome at patriot sewing circles.
And one evening I found myself standing on our doorstep, staring down at a flaming bag of horse manure. I glanced up to see
a man across the street spit in my direction, glowering. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a flinch. Instead, I kicked
the bag into the street to douse the flames, then slammed the door.
But after that I did not often step out of the house.
Oh, it burned to think our neighbors called me a Tory, for I considered myself as fierce a patriot as any. But when the case
finally came to trial in October, John pleaded his case to the jury, saying, “Facts are stubborn things. And whatever may
be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Evidence he had aplenty.
John won the case.
Only two of the redcoats were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to have their thumbs branded. Captain Preston was acquitted
of having ordered his men to fire, and because of it, many people were furious with my husband. His remaining clients deserted
him in droves, and the newspapers condemned him.
“I did not expect to be rewarded,” John admitted, glumly. “But I expected people would be fair-minded. That eventually, they’d
see the right of it.”
“The jury did,” I said. “That makes it worth it. We all want to be thought righteous, but to do right is the Lord’s command.”
That did make John smile. “In any case, we are too unpopular here now to stay. In the spring we ought to move back to Braintree.”
I agreed, though it felt like exile. And I truly feared we’d live the rest of our lives on that little farm, struggling to
make a living in humble obscurity.