John Adams
On December 4, 1770, John Adams stood before a Boston jury and delivered his closing argument in the trial of British soldiers charged after the Boston Massacre. Adams was a committed patriot. He had agreed to defend the soldiers because he believed no accused man should go unrepresented, regardless of the political cost. The line from that argument — "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence" — is not a philosophical observation. It is a courtroom argument in a politically charged case, delivered by a man who knew that what he was saying would be used against him.
- Born: October 30, 1735, Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts
- Died: July 4, 1826, Quincy, Massachusetts (age 90)
- Era: American founding period
- Major works: A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), Discourses on Davila (1790); the Adams-Jefferson correspondence (1812–1826)
- First Vice President of the United States; second President, 1797–1801
Six of the eight soldiers were acquitted. Two were convicted of manslaughter, branded on the thumb, and released. Adams considered the case one of the most important things he ever did — more important, by his own account, than most of what he accomplished in office. The legal principle that evidence matters more than passion was worth defending even when the evidence was inconvenient for your own side.
He served as the first Vice President under Washington and the second President, governing through the undeclared naval war with France and the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts — the latter a decision historians have never stopped arguing about. His single term ended with his defeat by Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and the two men fell into years of bitter political silence.
What followed that silence is one of the great epistolary records in American history. Adams and Jefferson resumed correspondence in 1812 after a mutual friend brokered a reconciliation. They wrote to each other for fourteen years — on politics, philosophy, religion, history, and old age — until both men died on July 4, 1826: the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams's reported last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives." Jefferson had died hours earlier.
For anyone who believes that the most important arguments are the ones you make when the facts aren't on your side of the room.
