John Adams (TV Miniseries) - Historical Inaccuracies - Part I

Part I

• John Hancock, after being confronted by a British customs official, orders the crowd to "Teach him a lesson, tar the bastard". Hancock and Samuel Adams then look on while the official is tarred and feathered, to the disapproval of John Adams. The scene is fictional and does not appear in McCullough's book. According to Samuel Adams biographer Ira Stoll, there's no evidence that Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were opposed to mob violence, were ever present at a tarring and feathering, and so the scene succeeds in "tarring the reputations of Hancock and Samuel Adams". Jeremy Stern writes that, "Despite popular mythology, tarrings were never common in Revolutionary Boston, and were not promoted by the opposition leadership. The entire sequence is pure and pernicious fiction." According to Stern, the scene is used to highlight a schism between Samuel and John Adams, which is entirely fictional.

• Captain Preston and the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre are tried in a single trial in the seeming dead of winter and declared not guilty of all charges. In actuality, Captain Preston's trial took place on October 24 and ran through October 29, when he was found not guilty. The eight soldiers were brought to trial weeks later in a separate trial that concluded on November 29. Six of the soldiers were found not guilty but two, Hugh Montgomery and Hugh Killroy were convicted of manslaughter. They both received brands on their right thumbs as punishment.

• In the tar and feather scene, a black, modern tar was used. In reality, the liquid known as tar in the 18th century was actually pine tar (a much clearer liquid). The tar we know today is actually called petroleum tar or bitumen. Pine tar also has a low melting point, and in the scene John Adams was portraying this act as a "brutal" act of violence. In reality, a tar and feathering was an act of humiliation, not brutality.