Samuel Adams
American diplomat and political philosopher
1722 CE to 1803 CE
Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S.
September 16] 1722 – October 2, 1803) is an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams is a leader of the movement that becomes the American Revolution, and is one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shape the political culture of the United States.
He is a second cousin to President John Adams.
Born in Boston, Adams is brought up in a religious and politically active family.
A graduate of Harvard College, he is an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector before concentrating on politics.
As an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760s, Adams is a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent.
His 1768 circular letter calling for colonial cooperation prompts the occupation of Boston by British soldiers, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770.
To help coordinate resistance to what he sees as the British government's attempts to violate the British Constitution at the expense of the colonies, in 1772 Adams and his colleagues devise a committee of correspondence system, which links like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies.
Continued resistance to British policy results in the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the coming of the American Revolution.
After Parliament passes the Coercive Acts in 1774, Adams attends the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which is convened to coordinate a colonial response.
He helps guide Congress towards issuing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and helps draft the Articles of Confederation and the Massachusetts Constitution.
Adams returns to Massachusetts after the American Revolution, where he serves in the state senate and is eventually elected governor.
Samuel Adams is a controversial figure in American history.
Accounts written in the 19th century praised him as someone who had been steering his fellow colonists towards independence long before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.
This view gave way to negative assessments of Adams in the first half of the 20th century, in which he was portrayed as a master of propaganda who provoked mob violence to achieve his goals.
Both of these interpretations have been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that these traditional depictions of Adams are myths contradicted by the historical record.
World
The Atlantic Lands
View →Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 24 total
It is an indirect tax, although the colonists are well informed of its presence.
A good part of the reason is that a significant portion of the colonial economy during the Seven Years' War is involved with supplying food and supplies to the British Army.
Colonials, however, especially those affected directly as merchants and shippers, assume that the highly visible new tax program is the major culprit.
As protests against the Sugar Act develop, it is the economic impact rather than the constitutional issue of taxation without representation that is the main focus for the colonists.
New England ports especially suffer economic losses from the Sugar Act as the stricter enforcement makes smuggling molasses more dangerous and risky.
Also they argue that the profit margin on rum is too small to support any tax on molasses.
Forced to increase their prices, many colonists fear being priced out of the market.
The British West Indies, on the other hand, now have undivided access to colonial exports.
With supply of molasses well exceeding demand, the islands prosper with their reduced expenses while New England ports see revenue from their rum exports decrease.
Also, the West Indies have been the primary colonial source for hard currency, or specie, and as the reserves of specie are depleted the soundness of colonial currency is threatened.
Two prime movers behind the protests against the Sugar Act are Samuel Adams and James Otis, both of Massachusetts.
In May, Samuel Adams draftss a report on the Sugar Act for the Massachusetts assembly, in which he denounces the act as an infringement of the rights of the colonists as British subjects:
For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves – It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us 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?
In August, fifty Boston merchants agree to stop purchasing British luxury imports, and in both Boston and New York City there are movements to increase colonial manufacturing.
There are sporadic outbreaks of violence, most notably in Rhode Island.
Overall, however, there is not an immediate high level of protest over the Sugar Act in either New England or the rest of the colonies.
That will begin in the later part of the next year when the Stamp Act is passed.
Both the Sugar Act and the proposed Stamp Act have been designed principally to raise revenue from the colonists.
The Sugar Act, to a large extent, is a continuation of past legislation related primarily to the regulation of trade (termed an external tax), but its stated purpose is entirely new: to collect revenue directly from the colonists for a specific purpose.
The novelty of the Stamp Act is that it is the first internal tax (a tax based entirely on activities within the colonies) levied directly on the colonies by Parliament.
It is judged by the colonists to be a more dangerous assault on their rights than had been the Sugar Act , because of its potential wide application to the colonial economy.
The theoretical issue that soon held center stage was the matter of taxation without representation.
Benjamin Franklin had raised this as far back as 1754 at the Albany Congress when he wrote, "That it is suppos’d an undoubted Right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own Consent given thro’ their Representatives. That the Colonies have no Representatives in Parliament."
The counter to this argument was the theory of virtual representation.
Thomas Whately enunciates this theory in a pamphlet that readily acknowledges that there can be no taxation without consent, but the facts are that at least seventy-five percent of British adult males are not represented in Parliament because of property qualifications or other factors.
Members of Parliament are bound to represent the interests of all British citizens and subjects, so colonists are the recipients of virtual representation in Parliament, like those disenfranchised subjects in the British Isles.
This theory, however, ignores a crucial difference between the unrepresented in Britain and the colonists.
The colonists enjoy actual representation in their own legislative assemblies, and the issue is whether these legislatures, rather than Parliament, are in fact the sole recipients of the colonists' consent with regard to taxation.
In May 1764, Samuel Adams of Boston had drafted the following that stated the common American position:
For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves – It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us 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.
Massachusetts had appointed a five-member Committee of Correspondence in June 1764 to coordinate action and exchange information regarding the Sugar Act, and Rhode Island had formed a similar committee in October 1764.
This attempt at unified action represents a significant step forward in colonial unity and cooperation.
The Virginia House of Burgesses had sent a protest of the taxes to London in December 1764, arguing that they did not have the specie required to pay the tax.
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had also sent protests to England in 1764.
The content of the messages varies, but they all emphasize that taxation of the colonies without colonial assent is a violation of their rights.
By the end of 1765, all of the Thirteen Colonies except Georgia and North Carolina will have sent some sort of protest passed by colonial legislative assemblies.
MacIntosh and several others are arrested, but are either freed by pressure from the merchants or released by mob action.
The street demonstrations originate from the efforts of respectable public leaders such as James Otis, who commands the Boston Gazette, and Samuel Adams of the "Loyal Nine" of the Boston Caucus, an organization of Boston merchants.
They make efforts to control the people below them on the economic and social scale, but they are often unsuccessful in maintaining a delicate balance between mass demonstrations and riots.
These men need the support of the working class, but also have to establish the legitimacy of their actions to have their protests to England taken seriously.
At the time of these protests, the Loyal Nine is more of a social club with political interests but, by December 1765, it will begin issuing statements as the Sons of Liberty.
The Townshend Acts represent the continued efforts of Parliament to place a portion of the large debt incurred by French and Indian War on the American colonies where it had been fought.
However, the Acts provoke only further outrage among American colonists and help spark the Liberty seizure and riots of 1768, their opposition best stated by the phrase "No taxation without representation" originally spoken by James Otis.
Smugglers, who are negatively affected by the Acts, avoid the taxes by importing illegal goods and by organizing a boycott of the legitimate imports, of which Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty of Boston are notable supporters.
Women also contribute by producing their own goods or relying on domestic products, e.g., spinning their own yarn and cloth, as well as participating in their own organizations such as the Daughters of Liberty.
In response to the enactment of the Townshend Act of 1767, Adams had written an essay intended to serve as the official statement from the Massachusetts assembly.
In the essay, he discusses colonial power, liberties, freedoms, self-government and the suspension of the legislature, among other things.
The assembly carefully examines and revises the essay.
After much deliberation, the statement is approved on January 12, 1768 to be sent to the king and his ministry.
Adams now decides to write a circular letter expressing the American policy that he will send to each colony for approval.
He tries to rally support in the assembly for the motion on January 21, but growing concerns from other representatives ultimately doom the plan in a House vote.
Adams goes again to his fellow delegates to gain their support for the circular letter, in which he argues that the Townshend Acts are unconstitutional because the colony of Massachusetts is not represented in Parliament.
Adams maintains that Parliament's status as the supreme legislative body of the British Empire does not permit it to violate the British Constitution and the natural rights of the colonists.
Adams makes it clear that he is not advocating colonial representation in Parliament: because the American Colonies are "separated by an ocean of a thousand leagues" from Great Britain, he thinks it is impractical for them to be properly represented in Parliament.
Instead, Adams argues in favor of the previous arrangement, where the colonies are taxed only by their own provincial assemblies in which they are already represented.
This time, the circular letter passes with a large majority on the February 4 vote.
Colonial response to the circular letter, sent to the twelve colonies on February 11, is positive.
Samuel Adams’s circular letter is subsequently published alongside a Massachusetts petition in London by Thomas Hollis, a British publisher in support of the American cause, who publishes the combined work under the title "The True Sentiments of America".
The publication has a profound impact on both American and British readers.
Britain feels this is an act of defiance, and cries to "send over an army and a fleet" are soon heard.
Also in early 1768, commissioners had complained to London that troops are needed to enforce the Townshend Acts, as their "officers were resisted and defeated in almost every attempt to do their duty."
Britain responds in May 1768, by sending soldiers to Boston.
The imprisonment, on May 10, 1768, of John Wilkes for writing an article for the North Briton severely criticizing King George III, provokes rioting in London.
The Massachusetts Assembly, with British troops on the way in June, moderates the tone of the resolution.
Four regiments arrive in Boston in October 1768 to enforce obedience to the Townshend Acts.
General Thomas Gage reports that the town is pacified by late 1768 and customs officers are examining every ship.
Adams may have been the anonymous author of "Journal of Occurrences", a series of articles that claim to be factual daily account of events in Boston during the military occupation.
The "Journal" chronicles vivid stories British soldiers beating civilians, raping young women, violating the Sabbath, and so on.
Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who disputes the veracity of the articles, accuses Adams of publishing the "Journal" in a New York City newspaper to prevent Bostonians from disputing its accuracy.
This temporarily resolves the crisis, and the boycott of British goods largely ceases, with only the more radical patriots such as Samuel Adams continuing to agitate.
A tense situation because of the heavy British military presence in Boston has boiled over to incite brawls between soldiers and civilians.
The friction between the troops and the colonists has grown from the landing of British troops in October 1768 with several events most notably including the death of Christopher Seider on February 22, 1770.
British troops on March 5, 1770, fire on an attacking mob protesting the enforced quartering of British soldiers in Boston households, killing five (three civilians are killed at the scene of the shooting, and two die after the incident) and wounding six in the so-called Boston Massacre.
The first to die is Crispus Attucks, who may have been of African-American and Native American ancestry.
The Patriot Party, organized by Samuel Adams, calms those adherents calling for rebellion.
His cousin, John Adams, successfully defends the soldiers’ actions in court.
The leaders of the independence movement want to base their argument on legal, rather than emotional, grounds.
The legal aftermath will help spark the rebellion in some of the British colonies in America, which is to culminate in the American Revolution.