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Text Box:  John Adams in Salem It was September of 1769, and John Adams was in Salem to defend a man who’d been arrested on the charge of murdering his wife. Adams, a native of Braintree, Massachusetts, had moved his law practice to Boston recently and on occasion traveled to surrounding towns to defend clients. While in Salem, he stayed at the Mill Street home of Richard Cranch, a respected clockmaker and Adams’ brother-in-law. Cranch, English born, had married Mary Smith. In 1764 John Adams had married her sister Abigail.   Adams and his brother-in-law got along famously, as Cranch was interested in philosophical and theological issues, spoke French, and was an easy conversationalist. At the age of 35 Adams was already famous in Massachusetts as a feisty defender of the rights of citizens and was known for not being afraid of taking on an unpopular clients and difficult cases. His client in the Salem trial was John Ames of the tiny rural community of Boxford to the west of Salem. Ames was accused of poisoning his wife Ruth. The trial was being held in the circuit court in Salem, the seat of Essex County.   John’s mother had found the body of Ruth and said that it looked as if she had died of natural causes. The doctor who examined the body said it was “rat bane” (or arsenic) poisoning.  It was common knowledge that the Ames couple had not been getting along, so the local Boxford constable decided that John was the most likely suspect. This was not going to be an easy case for John Adams. It soon became apparent, though, that the prosecution had no evidence other than the circumstantial fact that John and Ruth had argued frequently in recent months and that John could not come up with a solid alibi for the period of time in which his wife had been poisoned. The court magistrates decided to resort to the “Ordeal of Touch,” an old, but now seldom-used means of determining guilt or innocence. Many believed that the corpse of the victim would bleed if touched by the murderer, thus revealing his guilt. Adams would not allow Ames to touch the body of his wife. Both the judge and the jury were mystified by this stand, as they could see no other way of discovering the guilt or innocence of Ames. Adams explained his reason bluntly and confidently: “The Ordeal of Touch is nothing but black arts and witchcraft. Has Salem not learned its lesson about such evils? If you have no evidence against my client, you must set him free.” The perplexed prosecution, having no evidence against the accused, was unable to muster much of a case, and Ames won his freedom. Ames, like his grandmother Rebecca Eames before him, had escaped the hangman’s noose. Rebecca Eames had been accused of witchcraft during the infamous 1692 Witch Trials, and had been condemned to hang. She’d been taken to the jail to await hanging, but had been spared hanging when the trials came to an abrupt end. □                 John Adams's signature