Samuel Adams

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death - Patrick Henry

Another lesson that I failed to learn in school about the American Revolution was the central role played by Samuel Adams and the state of Massachusetts in “causing” the revolution. And just like Forrest Gump who appeared at every historical event in the movie, at every major event prior to the Revolution one will find Samuel Adams. In a previous blog I showed how the road to revolution was paved by taxes to pay off the British debt from the French & Indian War. I’d like to retrace some of those steps and point out the ‘where’ and the ‘who’ behind the events.

Samuel Adams was elected to his first political office at age 25 (1747) and made politics his life. In 1764 Adams wrote an objection to the Sugar Act (“no taxation without representation”) that was ratified by the Boston Town Meeting, making it "the first political body in America to go on record stating Parliament could not constitutionally tax the colonists”-Wikipedia. Adam’s belief that the colonies should present a unified defense of their rights was published widely in newspapers and pamphlets.

When the Stamp Act tax was passed in 1765, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a widely reprinted set of resolves against the Stamp Act that resembled Adams's arguments against the Sugar Act. But it was Massachusetts again that led the way with House Member, James Otis, Jr., calling for a Stamp Act Congress to coordinate colonial resistance. Nine of the colonies sent delegates (which included Sam Adams) to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City. They adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances which was sent to England (and rejected). It was also in Massachusetts that Stamp Act protests turned violent with the destruction of the lieutenant governor’s house and the home and office of the Boston Stamp Official. The governor blamed Adams for organizing the trouble makers.

In 1767 England approved the Townshend Acts, this time trying to collect taxes via custom agents. Adams used the Boston Town Meeting to organize an economic boycott, and called for other towns to do the same. By February 1768, towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had joined the boycott. Also in February of 1768, Samuel Adams wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter which was approved by the Massachusetts House and sent to the legislatures of the other colonies. It stated that only Colonial Legislatures had the authority to tax local citizens under the Colony Charters and British Constitutional Law. The British Parliament disagreed and when Massachusetts refused to revoke the Letter, the Massachusetts House was dissolved. This led to an outbreak of mob violence from colonists who no longer had any legal way to deal with their grievances. They attacked customs officials, making it impossible for them to perform their duties. In response England sent four regiments of British soldiers to occupy Boston. Adams wrote numerous letters and essays in opposition to the occupation, which he considered a violation of the 1689 Bill of Rights. Increasing tensions culminating in March 1770 with the Boston Massacre, a milestone that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British acts and taxes. Once again Adams pops up. Not wanting Boston to appear “lawless”, he asks his cousin John Adams (future president) to defend the soldiers.

In 1773 a new Massachusetts governor unwisely stated that support for British Parliament was all or nothing, "I know of no line that can be drawn, between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies." Adams and the House disagreed and the dispute was widely published as the "Boston Pamphlet".

Also in 1773, Parliament tried to help the East India Company with the Tea Act. Seven ships full of tea sailed to America, four of them to Boston. Adams promoted opposition to the Tea Act and in every colony except Massachusetts, protesters were able to force tea merchants in the US to refuse delivery and return the tea to England. In Boston, two of the tea merchants were sons of the governor and would not to back down. When the first ship arrived in Boston, Adams called for a mass meeting. Thousands of people attended. They passed a resolution urging the captain of the Dartmouth to send the ship back without paying the import duty and assigned twenty-five men to watch the ship and prevent the tea from being unloaded. The governor refused to allow the Dartmouth to leave without paying the tax. The stalemate lasted several weeks and two more tea ships arrived. On the twentieth day, the dispute had reached a crisis point – under British law, after 20 days, customs agents could seize any unloaded cargo with unpaid taxes. Governor Hutchinson had again refused to let the ships leave, and Adams announced that "This meeting [of now 7000 citizens] can do nothing further to save the country." That night 30-130 men dumped the tea overboard.

The British responded to the Boston Tea Party with the Coercive Acts of 1774. This closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. It rewrote the Massachusetts Charter and allowed colonists charged with crimes to be transported and tried in England. Great Britain hoped to isolate radicals in Massachusetts but the harshness of the Acts backfired and unintentionally promoted sympathy for Massachusetts from the other colonies. Adams was successful in organizing a First Continental Congress in Philadelphia for all colonies to attend in September of 1774. This Continental Congress issued a Declaration of Rights and created the Continental Association, an agreement to boycott British goods and, if that did not get the Coercive Acts reversed after a year, to stop exporting goods to Great Britain as well. The Congress also pledged to support Massachusetts in case of attack, which meant that all of the colonies would become involved when the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord.

When Adams returned to Massachusetts in November of 1774, he served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, an extralegal legislative body indepedent of British control and helped form the first minutemen companies.

A Second Continental Congress was scheduled to meet in Philadelphia in May of 1775. The British issued orders to arrest any men trying to attend this meeting. Sam Adams and John Hancock went into hiding at Hancock’s childhood home in Lexington. When British soldiers triggered “the shot heard round the world” the official purpose of the expedition was to seize and destroy military supplies in Concord but according to many historical accounts, General Gage was also attempting to arrest Hancock and Adams in Lexington. After the battle, General Gage offered a pardon to all men who would surrender their arms, EXCEPT for Hancock and Adams.

Adam participated in the Second Continental Congress and was a signer of the resulting Declaration of Independence. He praised Thomas Paine's popular pamphlet Common Sense. During the revolution Adams served on military committees to help organize and fund the war. He was the Massachusetts delegate appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation. Adams was appointed to a three-man drafting committee with his cousin John Adams and James Bowdoin to write the Massachusetts Constitution.

After the war, Hancock and then Adams served as Governors to the new State of Massachusetts. Adams opposed the “Federal” powers of the new US Constitution and helped bring about the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Bottom Line

Adams died in 1803 and a Boston paper eulogized him as the "Father of the American Revolution." Thomas Jefferson characterized as Adams "truly the Man of the Revolution." When John Adams traveled to France during the Revolution, he had to explain that he was not Samuel, "the famous Adams".

Today most people know Sam Adams only as the face on Samuel Adams Boston Lager. And while I have personally waked the Boston Freedom trail, visited Concord and Lexington, see the Minuteman memorial, etc, I always imagined that other states like Pennsylvania must have similar prewar historical sites. It somehow never dawned on me how central Massachusetts and Sam Adams were to events that escalated disagreements over “rights” with England. And while "Father of our Country" George Washington won the war, it was Adams that played a leading role in uniting the colonies before the war.