Samuel AdamsA Massachusetts Patriot
Samuel Adams is often called “the father of the Revolution.” He was the great-grandson of one of the Puritan settlers who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1722.
Adams was not a typical thrifty New Englander. His private life was a series of business failures and hardships that remind us of the early career of Patrick Henry. Adams, however, unlike Henry, was college bred, having been educated at Harvard. He tried law as a profession, but did not like it well enough to continue its practice. Then he became, first a clerk and then a merchant, and as both he was a failure. Next he became a brewer, and in this trade, also, he was unsuccessful. The truth is, he kept too busy attending to public business to pay proper attention to his private affairs. Perhaps his attention was first called to public matters by a private grievance. A law passed by Parliament against certain stock-companies made it necessary to close a banking company with which his father was connected and swept away his fortune.
SAMUEL ADAMS
SAMUEL ADAMS
SAMUEL ADAMS
Unsuccessful as Samuel Adams was as a business man, it was known that he was a good citizen, with wise and patriotic views about public matters. He ably voiced colonists’ objections to the arbitrary taxationof the British government. “If taxes are laid upon us,” he said, in a paper in 1764, “in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only. We are born to them!”
Adams was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1765 and the famous “Massachusetts Resolves” were his work. They expressed loyalty to the king, but refused to aid to execute the Stamp Act. It was not against England as yet but against the unjust laws of the despotic king and ministry that there was hostility.
Hutchinson, who was the royal governor, informed the home government that its course was unwise. “It cannot be good policy,” he said, “to tax the Americans; it will prove prejudicial to the national interests. You will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance.” But his warning was unheeded, and it devolved upon him to execute the unpopular acts. He suffered as the instrument of British oppression. His house was attacked and destroyed, and he and his family were driven away.
The first of November came—the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into effect. Boston church bells tolled and minute guns were fired. The stamps layuntouched; business stopped, because people would not buy and use them as required by law. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament at the same time took occasion to assert “that it was competent to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Other unjust taxes were laid and protest followed protest from the colonies.
In order to uphold the king’s authority, British soldiers were sent to Boston. On a March day in 1770 occurred one of the many quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens. A company of soldiers was sent out to disperse the mob; it refused to disperse, and the soldiers fired, killing three people and wounding several others. This was the famous “Boston massacre.”
The infuriated people would have attacked the soldiers but Samuel Adams persuaded them to refrain from disorder and bloodshed; he advised them to demand from the governor the withdrawal of the two regiments stationed in Boston. This was agreed to and the next day a committee, of which Samuel Adams was the spokesman, went to Governor Hutchinson to make this demand. The governor said at first that he had no authority to remove the troops; after talking with the commander, however, he promised to send one regiment away.
“Sir,” said Samuel Adams, “if you have authority to remove one regiment you have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the departure of the troopswill satisfy the public mind or restore the peace of the province.”
The governor finally had to yield to the demand of the people that he withdraw “both regiments or none” and the soldiers were sent to the castle.
As time passed, Adams ceased to hope for reconciliation between the colonies and England. He realized that it was important for the colonies to make common cause in defence of their rights. On his motion in the Massachusetts legislature in 1772 citizens were appointed as Committees of Correspondence to “state, communicate, and publish the rights of the colonies.” From this beginning grew the union of the colonies.
Matters came to a crisis in Boston when the tea on which a tax was laid was sent to the port. It had been sent to New York and Philadelphia, and there the people refused to allow it to be landed and it was returned to England. In South Carolina it was landed and left to mold in cellars because the people would not purchase it. In December, 1773, Samuel Adams, so often the spokesman of the people, went to ask the governor to send the tea back to England, instead of having it landed in Boston. In old South Church were assembled seven thousand people, to hear the result of his embassy. The governor refused.
“This meeting can do nothing more to save the country,” said Samuel Adams when he announced the fact. But another scheme was on foot which was probablyknown to Adams if not inspired by him. Some men disguised as Indians went to the harbor and threw overboard the three hundred and forty chests of tea. The next morning the patriots drank a decoction of native herbs while the Chinese tea floated on the salt waters of the bay. The Boston Tea Party, as it was called, by its disregard of the rights of property and its defiance of his authority, made the king very angry. There was passed the Boston Port Bill, which forbade vessels to enter or leave that port.
General Gage was sent to Boston with soldiers to enforce the king’s laws. General Gage realized that Samuel Adams, “the Cromwell of New England,” was the ringleader of the rebellion. An attempt was made to bribe Adams, who was very poor, with money or with position. But Adams was proof against the British offers. “I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings,” he said. “No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country.”
In June Gage dissolved the general court, and the patriots organized a government of their own. Largely through the influence of Samuel Adams, it was resolved that representatives of the colonies should meet in Philadelphia to discuss affairs. He went as the representative of Massachusetts, which was suffering most from British oppression, having her port closed and an army stationed on her soil. We are told that Adams rodeto Philadelphia on a borrowed horse, wearing a coat presented to him “to enable him to make a decent appearance.”
Delegates from eleven colonies met in this Congress in September, 1774, and discussed their situation. Among the delegates was a traitor who gave the royalists a full account of the meetings. This man said, “Samuel Adams eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much. He is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his object. He is the man who, by his superior application, manages at once the factions in Philadelphia and the factions of New England.”
The people were now getting ready to fight. Minute men were being drilled, firearms and powder and ball were being collected. Samuel Adams encouraged all these preparations.
One night lights in the belfry of the North Church at Boston—a system of signals agreed upon—informed the patriots that British troops were leaving the city. They were going to seize the military stores collected at Concord and Worcester by the patriots. Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere,” tells in stirring phrase how the patriot-messenger galloped forth to give the alarm. In Medford he roused John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two leaders whom Gage was anxious to capture. The minute men sprang to arms. When the British soldiers, eight hundred in number, reached the village of Lexington about four o’clock on the morning of April19, 1775, they found sixty or seventy men collected on the green.
“Disperse, you rebels!” said the English officer. “Lay down your arms.”
The men stood firm. Captain Parker had already given his orders: “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean war let it begin here.”
The British fired and the shots of the Americans rang out in answer; eight Americans lay dead on the green. The War of the Revolution was begun. Adams and Hancock heard the shots as they galloped from Medford.
“Oh, what a glorious morning for America this is,” said Adams.
At Concord the minute men assembled and put the British to flight. From there to Boston, sixteen miles away, they fired on the British from behind trees and stone walls. Finally, the British broke and ran.
On the northwest Boston was commanded by Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. A force of Americans under Colonel Prescott occupied Breed’s Hill one night and threw up earthworks to protect the city. The British soldiers marched forth to attack them and the American troops formed behind the earthworks and on the edge of Bunker Hill.
“Wait till you can see the whites of their eyes,” said the American leader, wishing to use the small supplyof ammunition with deadly results. Twice the British attacked and twice they were driven back. Then the ammunition of the patriots was exhausted and they had to retreat. The news of the battle between the patriots and the king’s troops was borne to the other colonists; they came to the aid of Massachusetts.
Samuel Adams, who had done so much to inspire resistance to oppression, did not serve the patriot’s cause on the battle-field. His work was in Congress, and his position as a leader was so well recognized that the English excluded from the offer of pardon to the rebels two men—Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and “one Samuel Adams.”
After the war was over, Adams served as governor of Massachusetts. He aided to draft the state constitution, the only one of the old constitutions adopted immediately after the Revolution which is still in force. He died, October 2, 1803, and was buried in Boston. In the busy business heart of the city, there is a metal disc bearing the inscription, “This marks the grave of Samuel Adams.”