John Adams
Friday, March 21st, 2008Well, I just had my first really annoying WordPress moment — I somehow lost a post midway through writing it. I’m not going to take the time to carefully write it again, I’ll do what I should have done in the first place and just stick to the main points.
I just watched the first episode of John Adams. I really enjoy American history — especially the Revolutionary era — but I am constantly reminded of how little I know. Was I not taught in high school that John Adams represented the British troops that opened fire at the Boston Massacre? Did I just forget? Well, I know it now. One of the first of Adams’s values we learn is his adamant view that even the the least of men are entitled to proper representation at trial. He does not represent the British in spite of what they’ve done and symbolize, but precisely because they are people and endowed with rights which are not created and cannot be abrogated by the King or Parliament.
In a later scene, John and his cousin Samuel are witnesses to the tarring and feathering of a British sailor. Paul Giamatti’s Adams shows palpable disgust as the mob strips this man and covers him with hot tar & feathers and proceeds to parade him around the docks on a rail. Even the expression on the face of rebellious Samuel turned to chagrin as the man screamed in excruciation.
I recall in grade school not thinking much of tarring and feathering. Like so much of what I read in history books, this was something that happened long ago — so long ago that I never internalized it as having actually happened. This isn’t like covering someone in glue and glitter. The tar is hot enough to cause permanent disfigurement. The colonists certainly had grievances against the Crown, but the image of a mob terrorizing a helpless man doesn’t make my heart well up with patriotism.