John Adams Under Fire

John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial- Dan Abrams & David Fisher
Hanover Square Press
Release Date: March 3, 2020

Rating:
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Synopsis: History remembers John Adams as a Founding Father and our country’s second president. But in the tense years before the American Revolution, he was still just a lawyer, fighting for justice in one of the most explosive murder trials of the era.

On the night of March 5, 1770, shots were fired by British soldiers on the streets of Boston, killing five civilians. The Boston Massacre has often been called the first shots of the American Revolution. As John Adams would later remember, “On that night the formation of American independence was born.” Yet when the British soldiers faced trial, the young lawyer Adams was determined that they receive a fair one. He volunteered to represent them, keeping the peace in a powder keg of a colony, and in the process created some of the foundations of what would become United States law.

In this book, New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher draw on the trial transcript, using Adams’s own words to transport readers to colonial Boston, a city roiling with rebellion, where British military forces and American colonists lived side by side, waiting for the spark that would start a war.

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250 years after the Boston Massacre, most people couldn't really tell you anything about it.  Maybe they assume it was a battle during the Revolutionary War.  And in a way, it was.  Years before shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, they were fired in Boston's King Street.  When the smoke cleared, five Boston civilians were dead.  But what happened before that has never satisfactorily been explained. And the importance this incident had to the developing country of America and its legal system has not been acknowledged.

In John Adams Under Fire authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher shine new light on the events leading up to the shooting, but also use trial transcripts to bring the reader into the courtroom as "Loyalists' and 'Patriots' are asked to put aside their personal political feelings as well as all of the rhetoric they've heard in newspapers and on the streets.  Instead, the jury is asked to focus only on what they hear in the court to decide if eight British soldiers and their captain committed murder on the night of March 5, 1770 or protected themselves against a rioting mob. In a clear example of everyone having the right to an attorney, the soldiers find themselves defended by lawyers who are 'Patriots', including new lawyer John Adams (who would go on to sign the Declaration of Independence) while the prosecutors were well-known British 'Loyalists.  While social pressure pushed for quick 'guilty' verdicts, the judges, lawyers, and juries were asked to ignore the popular view in favor of the legal view.

 What results is a well-written, fast-paced, and fascinating account of America's longest trial at the time.  I especially appreciated the attention to detail as the trial continued, including explaining new developments in the legal system that made the trials closer to what modern readers are used to than previous court cases.  That by itself makes this book worth reading, but Abrams and Fisher place the case in context in such a way that readers are able to understand exactly the role the case played in the development of the American legal system, and American independence.

A surprisingly fast and smooth read, this is a book history lovers will appreciate, and students of the legal system should read, yet at the same time, everyone else will still enjoy for it's down to earth writing, well-crafted descriptions, and attention to detail.   

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review