Samuel Adams of Massachusetts
Samuel Adams (1722 - 1779) was a radical agitator who was active in fomenting resistance to British rule during the American Crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. He was the chief organizer of the Boston Tea Party and a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Adams was arrested for treason following the end of the North American Rebellion in June 1778 and transported to London for trial. He was found guilty of treason and executed in 1779.
Birth and Upbringing[]
Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 16 September 1722 (Old Style), and attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, graduating in 1740 and gaining a Master's degree in 1743. Adams' poor business skills led him to embark on a political career, and in 1748 he and several friends founded the Independent Advertiser, a weekly newspaper that frequently published Adams' radical political essays. According to Sobel, Adams' relatives in Boston considered him "a black sheep and a crank" and "a malcontent few listened to or respected."
Rise to Prominence[]
After passage of the Sugar Act by Parliament in 1764, Adams argued that Parliament had no authority to impose taxes on the American colonies, and he persuaded the Boston Town Meeting to adopt this view. Following passage of the Stamp Act the following year, Adams' opposition to Parliamentary taxation gained popularity throughout the thirteen colonies, and he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Following repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, Adams was re-elected to the House of Representatives and chosen as its clerk.
Passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767 led to the organization of economic boycotts of taxed goods throughout New England, and also resulted in the publication of a series of anonymous essays by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania echoing Adams' belief that the Parliamentary taxes were unconstitutional, and that the colonists had a right to resist them. Adams wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter asking that the other colonists join the boycott. Francis Bernard, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, ordered the House to rescind the Letter. The House refused, and instead issued a petition to King George III authored by Adams requesting that Bernard be removed from office. Bernard responded by dissolving the House of Representatives, and calling for British troops to occupy Boston.
According to Sobel, Adams at this time sought outright independence for the colonies, and worked secretly to foment discord between the colonies and the British government. This reached its climax in March 1770 when British troops fired on a Boston mob, killing five men. Several of the British troops were tried and acquitted of murder, and the newly-appointed Royal Governor, Thomas Hutchinson, had the British troops withdrawn from Boston. All of the taxes established by the Townshend Acts except the tea tax were abolished, and the economic boycott collapsed.
Passage of the Tea Act in 1773 led to the resumption of the American crisis. When three British ships reached Boston in late autumn with a cargo of East India Company tea, a group of colonists boarded them and threw the tea overboard. The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, a series of acts rewriting the Massachusetts Charter, shutting down Boston's trade, and appointing General Thomas Gage as Royal Governor. Adams led the call for a renewed boycott of British goods, and also organized the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
The Continental Congress[]
The Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves calling on Massachusetts to actively resist the Coercive Acts and for all the colonies to raise their own armed militias. The Congress also issued a Declaration of Rights and established a Continental Association to oversee a general boycott of British goods. Finally, the Congress resolved to meet again in May 1775.
A month before the Second Continental Congress met, British troops clashed with Massachusetts militia at Lexington and Concord on 18 April 1775, the first battle of the North American Rebellion. After the battle, General Gage granted a general pardon to all colonists who would "lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects," -- except Adams and John Hancock. Adams was appointed to the Second Congress, along with Hancock and his cousin John Adams, and he astutely organized a movement for independence, which resulted in the Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776.
Adams continued to serve in the Congress until the end of the North American Rebellion, when he was arrested and sent to London to stand trial for treason. During his trial, Adams admitted (possibly under coercion, although Sobel does not say so) that he had been working for a break with Great Britain for at least a decade. Adams was executed for treason in 1779.
Sobel's sources for the life of Adams include Herbert Wechler's Sam Adams' Plans: Blood and Boston (New York, 1944), Lawrence Gilman's Sam Adams and the Rebellion: A Study in Revolutionary Leadership (Mexico City, 1954), and the 14th edition of Adams' own Letters of a Rebel (Mexico City, 1965).
In For All Nails, a radical anti-government terrorist group in the C.N.A. is known as the Samuel Adams Brotherhood.