Josiah Quincy II (; February 23, 1744April 26, 1775) was an American lawyer and patriot. He was a principal spokesman for the Sons of Liberty in Boston prior to the Revolution and was

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...

' co-counsel during the trials of Captain Thomas Preston and the soldiers involved in the

Boston Massacre The Boston Massacre (known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street) was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing t ...

Family

Quincy was the son of Col. Josiah Quincy I and the father of the

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

president and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

mayor

Josiah Quincy III Josiah Quincy III (; February 4, 1772 – July 1, 1864) was an American educator and political figure. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1805–1813), mayor of Boston (1823–1828), and President of Harvard University (1829� ...

. He was a descendant of Edmund Quincy, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1633. His first cousin once removed was Dorothy Quincy, wife of Governor

John Hancock John Hancock ( – October 8, 1793) was an American Founding Father, merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor o ...

. He was also a distant relative of

John Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...

through the sixth President's mother, Abigail Smith Adams.

Life

Quincy was born in

in 1744, to Col. Josiah Quincy and Hannah Sturgis Quincy. In 1756, shortly after the death of his mother, he moved with his father and other siblings to their ancestral homestead in Braintree. In 1763, he graduated

, and began studying law in the office of

Oxenbridge Thacher Oxenbridge may refer to: * Elizabeth Oxenbridge (died 1578), was an English gentlewoman, courtier, and writer. * Goddard Oxenbridge (died 1531), was an English landowner and administrator from Sussex. * John Oxenbridge (1608–1674), was an English ...

(died 1765), a top Boston attorney, whose practice he would take over in 1765. A gifted orator, in 1766 he delivered an impassioned address in English "on liberty," or as others would recall it, on the meaning of being "a patriot," at Harvard's commencement upon receiving his Masters. The speech caught the attention of Boston's patriot leadership, and by 1767, he was contributing regularly to

Samuel Adams Samuel Adams ( – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, an ...

' '' Boston Gazette''. Published initially under the name " Hyperion", his essays were notable for their colorful rhetoric and denouncement of British oppression. On February 12, 1770, he published in the ''Gazette'' a call to his countrymen "to break off all social intercourse with those whose commerce contaminates, whose luxuries poison, whose avarice is insatiable, and whose unnatural oppressions are not to be borne He used the signatures Mentor, Callisthenes, Marchmont Needham, Edward Sexby, &c., in later letters to the ''Boston Gazette.'' After the

(March 5, 1770) he and John Adams defended Captain Preston and the accused soldiers and secured their acquittal. Prosecuting the case were Robert Treat Paine and Josiah's older brother Samuel Quincy, who shortly after was named solicitor general. He traveled for his health in the South in 1773, and left in his journal an interesting account of his travels and of society in

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

; this journey was important in that it brought Southern patriots into closer relations with the popular leaders in Massachusetts. Perhaps seeking to enhance his standing in advance of the selection of delegates to the

First Continental Congress The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from 12 of the 13 British colonies that became the United States. It met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the British Nav ...

, in May 1774 he published ''Observations on the Act of Parliament, commonly called The Boston Port Bill, with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies'', in which he urged patriots and heroes to form a compact for opposition and for vengeance. In September 1774 he secretly left for England, where he argued the American cause to British politicians who were sympathetic to the colonies. On March 16, 1775, he started back, but he died of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...

on April 26, 1775, on a boat within sight of the Massachusetts shore.Page 21 ''The life of Josiah Quincy II'', by Edmund Quincy, Little, Brown and Company Boston 1874 6th Edition

References

Sources

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quincy, Josiah Massachusetts lawyers Harvard University alumni Quincy family Members of the Universalist Church of America 1744 births 1775 deaths 18th-century American lawyers 18th-century Christian universalists 18th-century deaths from tuberculosis Lawyers from Boston People from Braintree, Massachusetts People of Massachusetts in the American Revolution People from colonial Boston People of colonial Massachusetts Tuberculosis deaths in Massachusetts

Family

Life

See also

References

Sources

External links