Josiah Quincy (1744-1775), American lawyer and patriot, born in Boston, and educated at Harvard College. He denounced the Stamp Act and British colonial policies in a series of articles written under various pen names for Boston newspapers. Out of a sense of justice, in 1770 he and John Adams, later president of the U.S., handled an unpopular case . They defended in court the British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre. In May 1774, Quincy's most important patriotic tract, Observations of the Act of Parliament Commonly Called the Boston Port-Bill, appeared. Later that year he went to England as the representative of Boston patriots and unsuccessfully pleaded the colonial cause. He sailed for America in the spring of 1775 but died en route.