“Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my
person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable
right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the
compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I
would.”
— John Adams, Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763,reprinted in 3 The
Works of John Adams 438 (Charles F. Adams ed., 1851).