There are moments in history when the moral courage of a single individual becomes a kind of quiet lighthouse — unshowy, steady and stubbornly faithful to the truth even when the surrounding waters churn with fear, anger and tribal certainty.
John Adams’ defense of the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre is one of those moments. It is a story I return to often, not because it flatters our national mythology, but because it unsettles it.
It reminds me the work of citizenship — then and now — requires a discipline of perception, a willingness to see the humanity of those we are told to despise and a refusal to let outrage do our thinking for us.
Joe Marlow
The Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, was not a massacre in the cinematic sense. It was a chaotic street confrontation, born of months of tension between colonists and British troops stationed in Boston. Snowballs, clubs and insults flew; a soldier slipped; a musket discharged; and in the confusion, more shots followed.
Five colonists died. The event quickly became a symbol, a rallying cry, a piece of political theater. Paul Revere’s engraving — dramatic, inaccurate and effective — spread like wildfire. The soldiers were branded murderers before they ever saw a courtroom.
And into this atmosphere stepped John Adams.
Adams was no Tory sympathizer. He already was a committed advocate for colonial rights, a man who would soon help draft the Declaration of Independence. But he believed something even more fundamental than independence was at stake: the rule of law.
“Facts are stubborn things,” he would later say in his summation, insisting justice must not bend to the passions of the moment. He took the case not because it was popular — it wasn’t — but because he sensed a society that abandons fairness for the sake of political expediency is already halfway to tyranny.
What strikes me, reading Adams today, is not simply his legal brilliance but his moral posture. He refused to let the colonists’ legitimate grievances blind him to the soldiers’ humanity. He insisted on seeing the event from multiple vantage points, reconstructing the chaos with empathy rather than ideology. He acknowledged the fear of the soldiers surrounded by an angry crowd. He acknowledged the anger of the crowd provoked by months of military occupation. He held both truths without collapsing one into the other.
This is the discipline we are losing.
“Every conflict becomes a morality play with preassigned heroes and villains.”
Our contemporary public life is marked by a kind of moral nearsightedness. We see only our side’s wounds, our side’s fears, our side’s righteousness. Social media accelerates this narrowing of vision, rewarding instant outrage and punishing nuance. Every conflict becomes a morality play with preassigned heroes and villains. Every event is flattened into a meme before the facts have even settled. And in this environment, the Adams posture — the willingness to slow down, to listen, to imagine the world through the eyes of the “other” — feels almost countercultural.
Yet it is precisely what our moment demands.
Consider the protests and counter‑protests that have erupted across the country in recent years over policing, public health, immigration, elections and foreign conflicts. In each case, the temptation is to choose a side quickly and defend it absolutely. But the deeper work, the work Adams models, is to ask harder questions: What fears animate each group? What histories shape their reactions? What legitimate grievances are being expressed, even if imperfectly? What truths are obscured by the noise?
This is not moral relativism. Adams was not neutral about British oppression. But he understood justice requires more than loyalty to one’s tribe. It requires the courage to see complexity where others demand simplicity. It requires the humility to admit that our first interpretation of an event may not be the truest one. It requires the patience to let facts, not feelings, guide our judgments.
There also is something deeply humane in Adams’s example. He believed even those we oppose — politically, culturally, emotionally — are still bearers of dignity. The British soldiers were instruments of an unjust imperial policy, yet Adams refused to reduce them to caricatures. He saw them as young men caught in a volatile situation, frightened and fallible.
His defense did not excuse the broader injustices of British rule; it simply insisted that justice must be particular, not collective. Individuals must be judged for their actions, not for the sins of the system they represent.
This distinction matters today. In our debates about policing, for example, we often oscillate between two extremes: condemning entire institutions or excusing individual wrongdoing. Adams offers a third way: Hold systems accountable while still seeing the humanity of the people within them. Demand reform without surrendering to dehumanization. Insist on justice without abandoning mercy.
“He preserved the belief that justice must be blind to popularity.”
What I admire most about Adams in this episode is not that he won the case — although he did, securing acquittals for most of the soldiers — but that he preserved something fragile and essential in the process. He preserved the idea that truth is not determined by volume or anger. He preserved the belief that justice must be blind to popularity. He preserved the conviction that a society worthy of liberty must first be a society capable of fairness.
In the end, Adams’ defense of the soldiers did not diminish his patriotism; it deepened it. He understood the revolution he supported would be hollow if it was built on the same injustices the colonists accused the British of committing. Liberty without integrity is just another form of power.
As I reflect on our own moment — fractured, suspicious, quick to condemn — I find myself returning to Adams not as a figure of marble but as a model of moral imagination. He reminds me the work of public life is not merely to win arguments but to cultivate the habits of mind and heart that make justice possible. He reminds me seeing both sides is not weakness but wisdom. And he reminds me the health of a republic depends not only on the courage to resist oppression but on the courage to be fair.
In a time when outrage is easy and empathy is costly, Adams’ example is a quiet invitation: Slow down, look again and let the stubbornness of facts — and the dignity of people — guide your judgment.
Joe Marlow is a theologian, historian, educator and writer now retired in South Lyon, Mich., with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two dogs. His third book — Against the Grain: Historical Interpretation and the Messiness of Truth — is to be published early next year.