Samuel Adams was a politician of the American Revolution, leader of the Massachusetts “radicals,” who was a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–81) and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was later lieutenant governor (1789–93) and governor (1794–97) of Massachusetts.
Background
Samuel Adams was born on September 16, 1722, (Old Style date) in Boston, at that time a part of the British Colony of Massachusetts. According to the new style dating system, his date of birth falls on 27 September of the same year.
Samuel's father, Samuel Adams Sr. , was a Deacon in the Congregational Church. A leading member of the Boston Caucus, he was also a prosperous merchant and owned a malt-house. In 1739, he promoted Land Bank, which introduced paper money instead of gold and silver, thus helping to solve the ongoing currency crisis. His mother, Mary (nee Fifield) Adams, was a deeply religious woman and a devout Puritan.
The couple had three surviving children. Brought up in seclusion, they were instilled with a sense of personal responsibility.
Education
Young Samuel had his early education at the Boston Latin School. On graduating from there in 1736, he entered Harvard College to be trained as a minister; but very soon his interest began to shift towards politics.
In 1740, Samuel graduated from Harvard, winning a class debate on liberty and then enrolled at the same institution for his master’s degree. In the same year, his father’s Land Bank was dissolved by the British Parliament on the urging of the Court Party, made up of aristocrats. In 1743, Adams was awarded his master’s degree for his thesis ‘Whether It Be Lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate, If the Commonwealth Cannot Be Otherwise Preserved’. Thereafter, he briefly studied law and then gave it up to start his political career.
When Samuel graduated from Harvard College in 1740, his ideas about a useful career were vague: he did not want to become a brewer, neither did work in the Church appeal to him. After a turn with the law, this field proved unrewarding too. A brief association in Thomas Cushing's firm led to an independent business venture which cost Adams's family £1,000. Thus fate (or ill luck) forced Adams into the brewery; he operated his father's malt house for a livelihood but not as a dedicated businessman.
When Samuel's father suffered financial reverses, Adams accepted the offices of assessor and tax collector offered by the Boston freeholders; he held these positions from 1753 to 1765. His tax accounts were mismanaged and an £8,000 shortage appeared. There seems to have been no charge that he was corrupt, only grossly negligent. Adams was honest and later paid off the debts. His luck had changed, for he was about to move into a political circle that would offer personal opportunity unlike any in his past.
Adams became active in politics, and politics offered the breakthrough that transformed him from an inefficient taxgatherer into a leading patriot. As a member of the Caucus Club in 1764, he helped control local elections. When British policy on colonial revenues tightened during a recession in New England, the passage of the Sugar Act in 1764 furnished Adams with enough fuel to kindle the first flames of colonial resistance. Thenceforth, he devoted his energies to creating a bonfire that would burn all connections between the Colonies and Great Britain. He also sought to discredit his local enemies - particularly the governor, Thomas Hutchinson.
Enforcement of the Sugar Act was counter to the interests of those Boston merchants who had accepted molasses smuggling as a way of life. They had not paid the old sixpence tax per gallon, and they did not intend to pay the new threepence levy. Urged on by his radical Caucus Club associates, Adams drafted a set of instructions to the colonial assemblymen that attacked the Sugar Act as an unreasonable law, contrary to the natural rights of each and every colonist because it had been levied without assent from a legally elected representative. The alarm "no taxation without representation" had been sounded.
During the next decade, Samuel Adams seemed a man destined for the times. His essays gave homespun, expedient political theories a patina of legal respectability. Eager printers hurried them into print under a variety of pseudonyms. Meanwhile Parliament unwittingly obliged men of Adams's bent by proceeding to pass an even more restrictive measure in the Stamp Act of 1765. Unlike the Sugar Act, this was not a measure that would be felt only in New England; Adams's audience widened as moderate merchants in American seaports now found more radical elements eager to force the issue of whether Parliament was still supreme "in all cases whatsoever." In one of many results, Governor Hutchinson's home was nearly destroyed by a frenzied anti-Stamp Act mob.
Adams's hammering essays and unceasing activities helped crystallize American opinion into viewing the Stamp Act as an odious piece of legislation. Through his columns in the Boston Gazette, he sent a stream of abuse against the British ministry; effigies of eminent Cabinet members hanged from Boston lampposts testified to the power of his incendiary prose. Adams rode a crest of popularity into the provincial assembly. As calm returned, he knew that the instruments of protest were developed and ready for use when the next opportunity showed itself.
The Townshend Acts of 1767 furnished Adams with a larger and more militant forum, projected his name into the front ranks of the patriot group and earned him the hatred of the British general Thomas Gage and of King George III. Working with the Caucus Club, the radicals overcame local mercantile interests and demanded an economic boycott of British goods. This nonimportation scheme became a rallying point throughout the 13 colonies. Though its actual success was limited, Adams had proved that an organized, skillful minority could keep a larger but diffused group at bay. Adams worked with John Hancock to make seizure of the colonial ship Liberty seem a national calamity, and he welcomed the tension created by the stationing of British troops in Boston. Almost singlehandedly Adams continued his alarms, even after repeal of the Townshend duties.
In the succession of events from the Boston Massacre of 1770 to the Boston Tea Party and the Bill, Adams deftly threw Crown officials off guard, courted the radical elements, wrote dozens of inflammatory newspaper articles, and kept counsel with outspoken leaders in other colonies. In a sense, Adams was burning himself out so that, when the time for sober reflection and constructive political activity came, he had outlived his usefulness. By the time of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, when he and Hancock were singled out as Americans not covered in any future amnesty, Adam's career as a propagandist and agitator had peaked.
Adams served in the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1781, but after the first session he occupied himself with gossip, uncertain as to what America's next steps should be or where he would fit into the scheme. He failed to perceive the forces loosed by the Revolution, and he was mystified by its results. While serving in the 1779 Massachusetts constitutional convention, he allowed his cousin John Adams to do most of the work. Tired of Hancock's vanity, he let their relationship cool; Hancock's repeated reelection as governor from 1780 on was a major disappointment. Against Daniel Shays's insurgents in 1786-1787, Adams shouted "conspiracy," showing little sympathy for the hard-pressed farmers.
As a delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention in 1788, Adams made a brief show as an old-time liberal pitted against the conservatives. But the death of his son weakened his spirit, and in the end he was intimidated by powerful Federalists. He was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1789 to 1793, when he became governor. As the candidate of the rising Jeffersonian Republicans, he was able to exploit the voter magnetism of the Adams name and was reelected for three terms. He did not seek reelection in 1797 but resisted the tide of New England federalism and remained loyal to Jefferson in 1800.
Samuel Adams is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He helped prepare the ground for the American Revolution by inflammatory newspaper articles and shrewd organizational activities.
All his life, Samuel remained true to his Puritan heritage. Adams was proud of his Puritan heritage, and emphasized Puritan values in his political career, especially virtue.
Politics
After the formation of parties, he became allied with the Democratic-Republicans rather than with the Federalists.
Samuel Adams must be considered as a democratic politician working in a democratic society and as one of the earliest advocates of American independence.
Samuel was a leader of the Sons of Liberty which Hutchinson called the Sons of Sedition; and at the time of the Townshend Acts (1767), which levied an import duty on tea, paper, and other goods brought from Britain into America, he quoted Adams' defiant declaration: "Independent we are an independent we will be.
Samuel's political position from 1746 to 1776 remained consistent: Massachusetts, or any political society, should be free to govern itself.
Adams believed the colonies would need to be independent because all men had the inalienable right to govern themselves.
Views
Quotations:
"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
"The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks."
"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"
"Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty."
"Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason."
"We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them."
Membership
Adams was one of the charter members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780.
1780
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Personality
Samuel Adams is a man whose character lead them to great places. His witty demeanor and eloquence, gave him one of the sharpest tongues known to history. Yet he didn't just have a silver tongue he had a voice of thunder too. His belief in personal liberties and passion beyond measure allowed his writings and voice to bend the passions of others to his. His patriotism and incorruptible integrity made him the fire-brand of the revolution and the patriarch of liberty. His character made him one of the "hall-of-fame's" of history.
Quotes from others about the person
Cornelius Harnett was called the "Samuel Adams of North Carolina", Charles Thomson the "Samuel Adams of Philadelphia", and Christopher Gadsden the "Sam Adams of the South".
Peter Oliver, the exiled chief justice of Massachusetts, characterized him as a devious Machiavellian with a "cloven Foot".
Connections
In October 1749, Samuel Adams married Elizabeth nee Checkley, the daughter of the New South pastor. The couple had six children, out of which four died in infancy. His wife died soon after giving birth to a stillborn child in 1757.
In 1764, Adams married Elizabeth nee Wells. The couple did not have any children.
