It cannot be doubted that the character of the person from whom, in such affecting circumstances, he derived an honorable patronymic, was an object of emulation.  John Quincy was a gentleman of wealth, education, and influence.  He was for a long time Speaker of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, and during many years one of His Majesty’s Provincial Council.  He was a faithful representative, and throughout his public services, a vigorous defender of the rights and liberties of the Colony.  Exemplary in private life, and earnest in piety, he enjoyed the public confidence, through a civil career of forty years’ duration.

The American Revolution was rapidly hurrying on during the infancy of John Quincy Adams.  In 1769, the citizens of Boston held a meeting in which they instructed their representatives in the Provincial Legislature to resist the usurpations of the British Government.  John Adams was chairman of the committee that prepared these instructions, and his associates were Richard Dana and Joseph Warren, the same distinguished patriot who gave up his life as one of the earliest sacrifices to freedom, in the battle of Bunker Hill.

Those instructions were expressed in the bold and decided tone of John Adams, and they increased the public excitement in the province, by the earnestness with which they insisted on the removal of the British troops from Boston.

The popular irritation increased, until on the 5th of March, 1770, a collision occurred between the troops and some of the inhabitants of Boston, in which five citizens were killed, and many wounded.  This was called the Bloody Massacre.  The exasperated inhabitants were with difficulty restrained from retaliating this severity by an extermination of all the British troops.  A public meeting was held, and a committee, of which Samuel Adams was chairman, was appointed to address the Governor (Gage), and demand that the troops should be withdrawn.  John Adams described the excitement, on a later occasion, in these words: 

“Not only the immense assemblies of the people from day to day, but military arrangements from night to night, were necessary to keep the people and the soldiers from getting together by the ears.  The life of a red-coat would not have been safe in any street or corner of the town.  Nor would the lives of the inhabitants have been much more secure.  The whole militia of the city was in requisition, and military watches and guards were everywhere placed.  We were all upon a level.  No man was exempted:  our military officers were our only superiors.  I had the honor to be summoned in my turn, and attended at the State House with my musket and bayonet, my broadsword and cartridge-box, under the command of the famous Paddock.”

The Governor withdrew the troops and sent them to the castle:  the commanding officer and some of the soldiers were arrested, and brought to trial for murder.