116 Facts About Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams 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.

Samuel Adams was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.

Samuel Adams was an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760s, and he became a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent.

Samuel Adams was actively involved with colonial newspapers publishing accounts of colonial sentiment over British colonial rule, which were fundamental in uniting the colonies.

Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, at which time Samuel Adams attended the Continental Congress in Philadelphia which was convened to coordinate a colonial response.

Samuel Adams helped guide Congress towards issuing the Continental Association in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and the Massachusetts Constitution.

Samuel Adams returned to Massachusetts after the American Revolution, where he served in the state senate and was eventually elected governor.

Samuel Adams later became a controversial figure in American history.

Samuel Adams's parents were devout Puritans and members of the Old South Congregational Church.

Samuel Adams was proud of his Puritan heritage, and emphasized Puritan values in his political career, especially virtue.

Deacon Samuel Adams became a leading figure in Boston politics through an organization that became known as the Boston Caucus, which promoted candidates who supported popular causes.

Deacon Samuel Adams rose through the political ranks, becoming a justice of the peace, a selectman, and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

The younger Samuel Adams attended Boston Latin School and then entered Harvard College in 1736.

Samuel Adams's parents hoped that his schooling would prepare him for the ministry, but Adams gradually shifted his interest to politics.

Samuel Adams's life was greatly affected by his father's involvement in a banking controversy.

Directors of the land bank, including Deacon Samuel Adams, became personally liable for the currency still in circulation, payable in silver and gold.

Lawsuits over the bank persisted for years, even after Deacon Adams's death, and the younger Samuel Adams often had to defend the family estate from seizure by the government.

Samuel Adams considered becoming a lawyer but instead decided to go into business.

Samuel Adams worked at Thomas Cushing's counting house, but the job only lasted a few months because Cushing felt that Adams was too preoccupied with politics to become a good merchant.

Samuel Adams always remained, in the words of historian Pauline Maier, "a man utterly uninterested in either making or possessing money".

Years later, a poet poked fun at Samuel Adams by calling him "Sam the maltster".

Samuel Adams has often been described as a brewer, but the extant evidence suggests that he worked as a maltster and not a brewer.

Samuel Adams's essays drew heavily upon English political theorist John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, and they emphasized many of the themes that characterized his subsequent career.

Samuel Adams argued that the people must resist any encroachment on their constitutional rights.

Samuel Adams cited the decline of the Roman Empire as an example of what could happen to New England if it were to abandon its Puritan values.

When Deacon Samuel Adams died in 1748, Samuel Adams was given the responsibility of managing the family's affairs.

Samuel Adams remarried in 1764 to Elizabeth Wells, but had no other children.

Samuel Adams was elected to his first political office in 1747, serving as one of the clerks of the Boston market.

Samuel Adams often failed to collect taxes from his fellow citizens, which increased his popularity among those who did not pay, but left him liable for the shortage.

The town meeting was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Samuel Adams was compelled to file suit against delinquent taxpayers, but many taxes went uncollected.

Samuel Adams's friends paid off some of the deficit, and the town meeting wrote off the remainder.

Samuel Adams emerged as an important public figure in Boston soon after the British Empire's victory in the French and Indian War.

Samuel Adams was foremost in actively using newspapers like the Boston Gazette to promote the ideals of colonial rights by publishing his letters and other accounts which sharply criticized British colonial policy and especially the practice of colonial taxation without representation.

Samuel Adams earnestly endeavored to awaken his fellow citizens over the perceived attacks on their Constitutional rights, with emphasis aimed at Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

The first step in the new program was the Sugar Act of 1764, which Samuel Adams saw as an infringement of longstanding colonial rights.

Samuel Adams highlighted what he perceived to be the dangers of taxation without representation:.

Otis boldly challenged the constitutionality of certain acts of Parliament, but he would not go as far as Samuel Adams, who was moving towards the conclusion that Parliament did not have sovereignty over the colonies.

Samuel Adams argued that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional; he believed that it would hurt the economy of the British Empire.

Samuel Adams supported calls for a boycott of British goods to put pressure on Parliament to repeal the tax.

Samuel Adams was friendly with the Loyal Nine but was not a member.

For example, historian John C Miller wrote in 1936 in what became the standard biography of Adams that Adams "controlled" Boston with his "trained mob".

Some modern scholars have argued that this interpretation is a myth, and that there is no evidence that Samuel Adams had anything to do with the Stamp Act riots.

James Otis was attending the Stamp Act Congress in New York City, so Samuel Adams was the primary author of a series of House resolutions against the Stamp Act, which were more radical than those passed by the Stamp Act Congress.

Samuel Adams was one of the first colonial leaders to argue that mankind possessed certain natural rights that governments could not violate.

Samuel Adams was re-elected to the House and selected as its clerk, in which position he was responsible for official House papers.

Samuel Adams was initially a protege of Adams, and he used his wealth to promote the Whig cause.

Samuel Adams therefore used the Boston Town Meeting to organize an economic boycott, and called for other towns to do the same.

The letter written by Samuel Adams called on the colonies to join with Massachusetts in resisting the Townshend Acts.

Samuel Adams directed Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to have the Massachusetts House rescind the letter.

The convention issued a letter which insisted that Boston was not a lawless town, using language more moderate than what Samuel Adams desired, and that the impending military occupation violated Bostonians' natural, constitutional, and charter rights.

Nevertheless, the traditional, standard view of Samuel Adams is that he desired independence before most of his contemporaries and steadily worked towards this goal for years.

Samuel Adams wrote numerous letters and essays in opposition to the occupation, which he considered a violation of the 1689 Bill of Rights.

Samuel Adams continued to work on getting the troops withdrawn and keeping the boycott going until the Townshend duties were repealed.

Samuel Adams wanted the soldiers to have a fair trial, because this would show that Boston was not controlled by a lawless mob, but was instead the victim of an unjust occupation.

Samuel Adams convinced his cousins John Adams and Josiah Quincy to defend the soldiers, knowing that those Whigs would not slander Boston to gain an acquittal.

However, Samuel Adams wrote essays condemning the outcome of the trials; he thought that the soldiers should have been convicted of murder.

Samuel Adams urged colonists to keep up the boycott of British goods, arguing that paying even one small tax allowed Parliament to establish the precedent of taxing the colonies, but the boycott faltered.

John Samuel Adams withdrew from politics, while John Hancock and James Otis appeared to become more moderate.

In 1771, Samuel Adams ran for the position of Register of Deeds, but he was beaten by Ezekiel Goldthwait by more than two to one.

Samuel Adams convinced the tea consignees, two of whom were his sons, not to back down.

The mass meeting passed a resolution introduced by Samuel Adams urging the captain of the Dartmouth to send the ship back without paying the import duty.

However, this claim did not appear in print until nearly a century after the event, in a biography of Samuel Adams written by his great-grandson, who apparently misinterpreted the evidence.

Samuel Adams never revealed whether he went to the wharf to witness the destruction of the tea.

Whether or not he helped plan the event is unknown, but Samuel Adams immediately worked to publicize and defend it.

Samuel Adams argued that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option that the people had to defend their constitutional rights.

Samuel Adams was one of five delegates chosen to attend the First Continental Congress.

Samuel Adams was never fashionably dressed and had little money, so friends bought him new clothes and paid his expenses for the journey to Philadelphia, his first trip outside of Massachusetts.

In Philadelphia, Samuel Adams promoted colonial unity while using his political skills to lobby other delegates.

Samuel Adams served as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, which convened despite the Massachusetts Government Act, and was appointed to the Committee of Inspection to enforce the Continental Association.

John Hancock had been added to the delegation, and he and Samuel Adams attended the Provincial Congress in Concord, Massachusetts, before Samuel Adams's journey to the second Congress.

Samuel Adams was a cautious advocate for a declaration of independence, urging eager correspondents back in Massachusetts to wait for more moderate colonists to come around to supporting separation from Great Britain.

Samuel Adams was pleased in 1775 when the colonies began to replace their old governments with independent republican governments.

Samuel Adams praised Thomas Paine's popular pamphlet Common Sense, writing as "Candidus" in early 1776, and supported the call for American independence.

Samuel Adams served on military committees, including an appointment to the Board of War in 1777.

Samuel Adams advocated paying bonuses to Continental Army soldiers to encourage them to reenlist for the duration of the war.

Samuel Adams was the Massachusetts delegate appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, the plan for the colonial confederation.

From Philadelphia, Samuel Adams urged Massachusetts to ratify, which it did.

Samuel Adams signed the Articles of Confederation with the other Massachusetts delegates in 1778, but they were not ratified by all the states until 1781.

Samuel Adams returned to Boston in 1779 to attend a state constitutional convention.

Samuel Adams was appointed to a three-man drafting committee with his cousin John Samuel Adams and James Bowdoin.

Samuel Adams's health was one reason; he was approaching his sixtieth birthday and suffered from tremors that made writing difficult.

Samuel Adams returned to Boston in 1781, and never left Massachusetts again.

Samuel Adams remained active in politics upon his return to Massachusetts.

Samuel Adams frequently served as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, and was elected to the state senate, where he often served as that body's president.

Samuel Adams focused his political agenda on promoting virtue, which he considered essential in a republican government.

Samuel Adams disapproved of what he viewed as Hancock's vanity and extravagance, which Samuel Adams believed were inappropriate in a republican leader.

Samuel Adams thought that Hancock was not acting the part of a virtuous republican leader by acting like an aristocrat and courting popularity.

Samuel Adams favored James Bowdoin for governor, and was distressed when Hancock won annual landslide victories.

Samuel Adams played a major role in getting Boston to provide a free public education for children, even for girls, which was controversial.

Samuel Adams was one of the charter members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780.

Samuel Adams worried that the Society was "a stride towards an hereditary military nobility", and thus a threat to republicanism.

Samuel Adams believed that public theaters undermined civic virtue, and he joined an ultimately unsuccessful effort to keep theaters banned in Boston.

Samuel Adams approved of rebellion against an unrepresentative government, as had happened during the American Revolution, but he opposed taking up arms against a republican government, composed of fellow American citizens, where problems should be remedied through elections.

Samuel Adams thought that the leaders of Shays's Rebellion should be hanged, reportedly saying that "the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death", and urged Governor Bowdoin to use military force, who obliged and sent four thousand militiamen to put down the uprising.

The Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, when Samuel Adams expressed his displeasure.

The younger Samuel Adams had served as surgeon in the Revolutionary War, but had fallen ill and never fully recovered.

The younger Samuel Adams left his father the certificates that he had earned as a soldier, giving Samuel Adams and his wife unexpected financial security in their final years.

Samuel Adams was concerned about the new Constitution and made an attempt to re-enter national politics.

Samuel Adams belonged to the school of revolutionary crusaders, whose purpose and influence became obscured by 1776 and all but disappeared by war's end.

Samuel Adams subsequently became a firm supporter of the Constitution, with these amendments and the possibility of more.

In 1789, Samuel Adams was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and served in that office until Governor Hancock's death in 1793, when he became acting governor.

The next year, Samuel Adams was elected as governor in his own right, the first of four annual terms.

Samuel Adams was generally regarded as the leader of his state's Jeffersonian Republicans, who were opposed to the Federalist Party.

Unlike some other Republicans, Samuel Adams supported the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 for the same reasons that he had opposed Shays's Rebellion.

The Adams cousins remained friends, but Samuel was pleased when Jefferson defeated John Adams in the 1800 presidential election.

Samuel Adams took a cue from President Washington, who declined to run for reelection in 1796: he retired from politics at the end of his term as governor in 1797.

Samuel Adams suffered from what is believed to have been essential tremor, a movement disorder that rendered him unable to write in the final decade of his life.

Samuel Adams died at the age of 81 on October 2,1803, and was interred at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.

When John Adams traveled to France during the Revolution, he had to explain that he was not Samuel, "the famous Adams".

William Gordon and Mercy Otis Warren, two historians who knew Samuel Adams, wrote of him as a man selflessly dedicated to the American Revolution.

The first full biography of Samuel Adams appeared in 1865, a three-volume work written by William Wells, his great-grandson.

The Wells biography is still valuable for its wealth of information, although Whig portrayals of Samuel Adams were uncritically pro-American and had elements of hagiography, a view that influenced some later biographies written for general audiences.

Samuel Adams' writings include letters and essays, many of which were published in colonial newspapers like the Boston Gazette.

In 1885, James Hosmer wrote a biography that praised Samuel Adams, but found some of his actions troubling, such as the 1773 publication of Hutchinson's private letters.

Harlow argued that, because the masses were easily misled, Adams "manufactured public opinion" to produce the Revolution, a view that became the thesis of John C Miller's 1936 biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda.

Samuel Adams's name has been used by commercial and non-profit ventures since his death.