The New Student's Reference Work/Quincy, Josiah

Quincy, Josiah, an American lawyer, was born at Boston, Feb. 23, 1744, and died at sea, off Gloucester, Mass., April 26, 1775. After graduating at Harvard in 1763, he studied law. He took a strong stand against the oppressions of the parliament of the mother-country and its violations of the rights of the colonists, and his name is associated with those of James Otis and Joseph Warren as men who had most influence in bringing about the Revolution. Although Quincy had a slender frame and ill-health, his gift of oratory, heightened by a voice of rare beauty and compass and an impassioned and graceful delivery, had great weight in public assemblies. When Captain Prescott and the soldiers who fired on the people in the Boston massacre of March 5, 1770, were arrested, Josiah Quincy and John Adams were applied to in their behalf to act as their counsel, and, although they earned great reproach by doing so, the acquittal of the prisoners on trial the next autumn justified their course. In May, 1774, he published his chief political work: Observations on the Boston Port Bill, with Thoughts on Civil Government and Standing Armies. In September, 1774, he went to England on a private mission for the popular cause, as also for his health. This visit excited much notice in London. He had interviews with Lords North and Dartmouth at their own request, had intercourse with Dr. Franklin and other friends constantly, and received the most bitter personal abuse from Lord Hillsborough. He returned early in the spring, against the advice of his physician, and died just before arriving. Almost his last words were that he could die content if he had an hour's talk with Samuel Adams or Joseph Warren. See Life by his son, Josiah Quincy (1820).