In this episode, we’ll revisit two murder trials that were held in revolutionary Boston. The first case was against four ordinary sailors accused of murdering an officer of the Royal Navy on a ship in Massachusetts coastal waters, and the other was against nine British prisoners of war who were accused of murdering a guard aboard a prison ship in Boston Harbor. The sailors were accused in 1769, when Boston was under military occupation and the tensions that would result in the Boston Massacre were coming to a head. The redcoats stood trial over a decade later, in the midst of a bloody war that had touched the lives of all Bostonians by 1780. In both cases, attorneys and judges worried whether a jury could deliver justice in a polarized city. Both cases were argued by signers of the Declaration of Independence, with John Adams defending the American sailors in 1780 and Robert Treat Paine prosecuting the redcoats in 1780. In both cases, the defendants argued that they had acted in self defense, and amazingly, both cases ended in acquittal.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/339/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Revolutionary Self Defense

The Pitt Packet Case

This episode was inspired by a 2017 Walk Boston History blog post
The Journal of the Times covered the Pitt Packet case in May and June
Report of the shooting in the May 1, 1769 Boston Evening Post
Report on the trial in the June 19, 1769 Boston Gazette
Report on the shooting and trial in the July 3, 1769 Boston Evening Post
John Adams’ legal notes on the trial (start here and use “next document” to proceed through his notes on the admiralty court’s jurisdiction, his transcription of testimony, and a detailed record of his closing argument
In December 1769, John Adams ponders writing a pamphlet about the case
Lt Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s account of the case in his History of Massachusetts Bay
John Rowe’s diary entry for June 14, 1769 calls the resistance by the sailors “very courageous, and I think very right.”
JL Bell recounts an incident in Boston in 1774 involving impressment, in an article published after this episode was recorded.
Related epsisodes:

The Prison Ship Uprising

Without Christina Carrick’s 2016 blog post about the prison ship uprising, I would never have heard about this fascinating incident
Robert Treat Paine’s notes on the grand jury, the indictment and plea, the defendants’ petition, and the trial itself
Corporal Fox’s memoir about his captivity with the Convention Army in Boston
Grenadier Bense’s memoir about his captivity with the Convention Army in Boston
Ebenezer Fox’s memoir about his captivity on the Jersey
Notes about some American prison ships in Boston, and the ship that wouldn’t sail
MILLER, KEN. “‘A Dangerous Set of People’: British Captives and the Making of Revolutionary Identity in the Mid-Atlantic Interior.” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 32, no. 4, 2012
Tourtellot, Arthur. “Rebels, Turn Out Your Dead.” American Heritage, August 1970