Samuel Adams facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Samuel Adams
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In this c. 1772 portrait by John Singleton Copley, Adams points at the Massachusetts Charter, which he viewed as a constitution that protected the peoples' rights.
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| 4th Governor of Massachusetts | |
| In office October 8, 1794 – June 2, 1797 |
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| Lieutenant | Moses Gill |
| Preceded by | John Hancock |
| Succeeded by | Increase Sumner |
| 3rd Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts | |
| In office 1789–1794 Acting Governor October 8, 1793 – 1794 |
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| Governor | John Hancock |
| Preceded by | Benjamin Lincoln |
| Succeeded by | Moses Gill |
| President of the Massachusetts Senate | |
| In office 1787–1788 1782–1785 |
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| Delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress | |
| In office 1774–1777 |
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| In office 1779–1781 |
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| Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives | |
| In office 1766–1774 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | September 27 [O.S. September 16] 1722 Boston, Massachusetts Bay |
| Died | October 2, 1803 (aged 81) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Resting place | Granary Burying Ground, Boston |
| Political party | Democratic-Republican (1790s) |
| Spouses |
Elizabeth Checkley
(m. 1749; died 1757)Elizabeth Wells
(m. 1764) |
| Alma mater | Harvard College |
| Signature |  |
Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S. September 16] 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States.
Contents
Early life
Adams was born in Boston on September 16, 1722, an Old Style date that is sometimes converted to the New Style date of September 27. He was one of twelve children born to Samuel Adams, Sr., and Mary (Fifield) Adams. The family lived on Purchase Street in Boston.
Samuel Adams, Sr. (1689–1748) was a successful merchant and church deacon. He was later elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
The younger Samuel Adams attended Boston Latin School and then entered Harvard College in 1736. After graduating in 1740, Adams continued his studies, earning a master's degree in 1743.
Early career
After leaving Harvard in 1743, Adams decided to go into business. His father lent him £1,000, a substantial amount for that time. Adams lent half of this money to a friend who never repaid, and frittered away the other half.
After Adams had lost his money, his father made him a partner in the family's malthouse, which was next to the family home on Purchase Street. When Deacon Adams died in 1748, Adams was given the responsibility of managing the family's affairs.
Like his father, Adams decided to embark on a political career. He soon became a notable public figure in Boston. In the years leading up to and into the revolution Adams used colonial newspapers like the Boston Gazette to promote the ideals of colonial rights and to openly criticize British colonial policy, advocating independence from Britain. Adams often wrote under a variety of assumed names, including "Candidus", "Vindex", and others.
Stamp Act
Soon after the British Empire's victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the British Parliament found itself deep in debt and looking for new sources of revenue. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The act required colonists to pay a new tax on most printed materials. This produced an uproar in the colonies. Adams argued that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional and supported calls for a boycott of British goods to put pressure on Parliament to repeal the tax. In Boston, a group called the Loyal Nine, a precursor to the Sons of Liberty, organized violent protests of the Stamp Act.
The Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect on November 1, 1765, but it was not enforced because protestors throughout the colonies had compelled stamp distributors to resign. Eventually, British merchants were able to convince Parliament to repeal the tax. By May 16, 1766, news of the repeal had reached Boston. There was celebration throughout the city, and Adams made a public statement of thanks to British merchants for helping their cause.
Townshend Acts
After the repeal of the Stamp Act, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts (1767) which established new duties on various goods imported into the colonies. Revenues from these duties were to be used to pay for governors and judges who would be independent of colonial control. To enforce compliance with the new laws, the Townshend Acts created a customs agency known as the American Board of Custom Commissioners, which was headquartered in Boston.
Adams used the Boston Town Meeting to organize an economic boycott. He called for other towns to do the same. By February 1768, towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had joined the boycott.
In January 1768, the Massachusetts House sent a petition to King George asking for his help. Adams insisted that the House should send the petition to the other colonies, along with what became known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter. The letter written by Adams called on the colonies to join with Massachusetts in resisting the Townshend Acts. The House initially voted against sending the letter and petition to the other colonies but the decision was approved on February 11.
The commissioners of the Customs Board found that they were unable to enforce trade regulations in Boston, so they requested military assistance. Help came in the form of HMS Romney, a fifty-gun warship which arrived in Boston Harbor in May 1768. The situation exploded on June 10, when customs officials seized Liberty, a sloop owned by John Hancock—a leading critic of the Customs Board—for alleged customs violations. Sailors and marines came ashore from Romney to tow away Liberty, and a riot broke out. Things calmed down in the following days, but fearful customs officials packed up their families and fled for protection to Romney and eventually to Castle William, an island fort in the harbor.
Governor Bernard wrote to London in response to the Liberty incident and the struggle over the Circular Letter, informing his superiors that troops were needed in Boston to restore order. Lord Hillsborough ordered four regiments of the British Army to Boston.
Boston under occupation
Learning that British troops were on the way, the Boston Town Meeting met on September 12, 1768, and requested that Governor Bernard convene the General Court. Bernard refused, so the town meeting called on the other Massachusetts towns to send representatives to meet at Faneuil Hall beginning on September 22. About 100 towns sent delegates to the convention, which was effectively an unofficial session of the Massachusetts House. The convention issued a letter which insisted that Boston was not a lawless town and that the impending military occupation violated Bostonians' natural, constitutional, and charter rights. By the time that the convention adjourned, British troop transports had arrived in Boston Harbor. Two regiments disembarked in October 1768, followed by two more in November.
According to some accounts, the occupation of Boston was a turning point for Adams. He wrote numerous letters and essays in opposition to the occupation, which he considered a violation of the 1689 Bill of Rights. Adams continued to work on getting the troops withdrawn and keeping the boycott going until the Townshend duties were repealed. Two regiments were removed from Boston in 1769, but the other two remained. Tensions between soldiers and civilians eventually resulted in the killing of five civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 1770.
After the Boston Massacre, Adams and other town leaders met with Bernard's successor Governor Thomas Hutchinson and with Colonel William Dalrymple, the army commander, to demand the withdrawal of the troops. The situation remained explosive, so Dalrymple agreed to remove both regiments to Castle William.
Boston Tea Party
In May 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a tax law to help the struggling East India Company, one of Great Britain's most important commercial institutions. Britons could buy smuggled Dutch tea more cheaply than the East India Company's tea because of the heavy taxes imposed on tea imported into Great Britain, and so the company amassed a huge surplus of tea that it could not sell. The British government's solution to the problem was to sell the surplus in the colonies. The Tea Act permitted the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies for the first time, bypassing most of the merchants who had previously acted as middlemen. This measure was a threat to the American colonial economy because it granted the Tea Company a significant cost advantage over local tea merchants and even local tea smugglers, driving them out of business. The act also reduced the taxes on tea paid by the company in Britain, but kept the controversial Townshend duty on tea imported in the colonies. A few merchants in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charlestown were selected to receive the company's tea for resale. In late 1773, seven ships were sent to the colonies carrying East India Company tea, including four bound for Boston.
News of the Tea Act set off a firestorm of protest in the colonies. Colonial smugglers played a significant role in the protests, since the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, which threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.
Adams and the correspondence committees promoted opposition to the Tea Act. The tea ship Dartmouth arrived in the Boston Harbor in late November, and Adams wrote a circular letter calling for a mass meeting to be held at Faneuil Hall on November 29. Thousands of people arrived, so many that the meeting was moved to the larger Old South Meeting House. British law required the Dartmouth to unload and pay the duties within twenty days or customs officials could confiscate the cargo. The mass meeting passed a resolution introduced by Adams urging the captain of the Dartmouth to send the ship back without paying the import duty. Meanwhile, the meeting assigned twenty-five men to watch the ship and prevent the tea from being unloaded.
Governor Hutchinson refused to grant permission for the Dartmouth to leave without paying the duty. Two more tea ships arrived in Boston Harbor, the Eleanor and the Beaver. The fourth ship, the William, was stranded near Cape Cod and never arrived in Boston. December 16 was the last day of the Dartmouth's deadline, and about 7,000 people gathered around the Old South Meeting House. Adams received a report that Governor Hutchinson had again refused to let the ships leave, and he announced, "This meeting can do nothing further to save the country." According to a popular story, Adams's statement was a prearranged signal for the "tea party" to begin. However, this claim did not appear in print until nearly a century after the event, in a biography of Adams written by his great-grandson, who apparently misinterpreted the evidence. According to eyewitness accounts, people did not leave the meeting until ten or fifteen minutes after Adams's alleged "signal", and Adams in fact tried to stop people from leaving because the meeting was not yet over.
While Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House and headed to Boston Harbor. That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men boarded the three vessels, some of them thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, and dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water over the course of three hours. 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 Adams immediately worked to publicize and defend it. He 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.
Revolution
Great Britain responded to the Boston Tea Party in 1774 with the Coercive Acts. The first of these acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston's commerce until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. The Massachusetts Government Act rewrote the Massachusetts Charter, making many officials royally appointed rather than elected, and severely restricting the activities of town meetings. The Administration of Justice Act allowed colonists charged with crimes to be transported to another colony or to Great Britain for trial. A new royal governor was appointed to enforce the acts: General Thomas Gage, who was also commander of British military forces in North America.
Adams worked to coordinate resistance to the Coercive Acts. In May 1774, the Boston Town Meeting (with Adams serving as moderator) organized an economic boycott of British goods. In June, Adams headed a committee in the Massachusetts House which proposed that an inter-colonial congress meet in Philadelphia in September. He was one of five delegates chosen to attend the First Continental Congress.
First Continental Congress
On September 16, messenger Paul Revere brought Congress the Suffolk Resolves, one of many resolutions passed in Massachusetts that promised strident resistance to the Coercive Acts. Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, issued a Declaration of Rights that denied Parliament's right to legislate for the colonies, and organized a colonial boycott known as the Continental Association.
Adams returned to Massachusetts in November 1774, where he served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. The Provincial Congress created the first minutemen companies, consisting of militiamen who were to be ready for action on a moment's notice. Adams also 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. He was also selected to attend the Second Continental Congress, scheduled to meet in Philadelphia in May 1775.
Second Continental Congress
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The Continental Congress worked under a secrecy rule, so Adams's precise role in congressional deliberations is not fully documented. He served on numerous committees, often dealing with military matters. Among his more noted acts, Adams nominated George Washington to be commander in chief over the Continental Army.
After the Declaration of Independence, Congress continued to manage the war effort. Adams served on military committees, including an appointment to the Board of War in 1777. He advocated paying bonuses to Continental Army soldiers to encourage them to reenlist for the duration of the war. He called for harsh state legislation to punish Loyalists—Americans who continued to support the British crown—who Adams believed were as dangerous to American liberty as British soldiers. In Massachusetts, more than 300 Loyalists were banished and their property confiscated. After the war, Adams opposed allowing Loyalists to return to Massachusetts, fearing that they would work to undermine republican government.
Adams was the Massachusetts delegate appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, the plan for the colonial confederation. Adams signed the Articles of Confederation with the other Massachusetts delegates in 1778, but they were not ratified by all the states until 1781.
Adams returned to Boston in 1779 to attend a state constitutional convention. The Massachusetts General Court had proposed a new constitution the previous year, but voters rejected it, and so a convention was held to try again. Adams was appointed to a three-man drafting committee with his cousin John Adams and James Bowdoin. They drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, which was amended by the convention and approved by voters in 1780. The new constitution established a republican form of government, with annual elections and a separation of powers.
In 1781, Adams retired from the Continental Congress. He returned to Boston in 1781, and never left Massachusetts again.
Return to Massachusetts
Upon his return to Massachusetts, Adams served as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, and was elected to the state senate. In 1787, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention met to revise the Articles of Confederation. However, instead of revising the Articles, they created a new United States Constitution with a much stronger national government. Although Adams was one of "Anti-Federalists", he was elected to the Massachusetts ratifying convention which met in January 1788.
Later life and death
In 1789, 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, Adams was elected as governor in his own right, the first of four annual terms.
Adams played a major role in getting Boston to provide a free public education for children, even for girls. He was one of the charter members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Samuel Adams retired from politics in 1797. He died at the age of 81 on October 2, 1803, and was interred at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.
Legacy
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Adams's contemporaries regarded him as one of the foremost leaders of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, for example, characterized Adams as "truly the Man of the Revolution." Leaders in other colonies were compared to him; 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".
Adams's name is used by a pair of non-profit organizations, the Sam Adams Alliance and the Sam Adams Foundation. These groups take their names from Adams in homage to his ability to organize citizens at the local level to achieve a national goal.
Personal life
In October 1749, Adams married Elizabeth Checkley, his pastor's daughter. Elizabeth gave birth to six children over the next seven years, but only two lived to adulthood: Samuel (born 1751) and Hannah (born 1756). Of these two, only Hannah married and had children, and all of Samuel Adams' known progeny descend from her.
Samuel Adams, Jr. died at just 37 years of age. The younger Adams had served as surgeon in the Revolutionary War, but had fallen ill and never fully recovered. The death was a stunning blow to the elder Adams. The younger Adams left his father the certificates that he had earned as a soldier, giving Adams and his wife unexpected financial security in their final years. Investments in land made them relatively wealthy by the mid-1790s, but this did not alter their frugal lifestyle.
In July 1757, Elizabeth died soon after giving birth to a stillborn son. Adams remarried in 1764 to Elizabeth Wells, but had no other children.
Interesting facts about Samuel Adams
- Adams was a second cousin to President John Adams.
- Adams's parents were devout Puritans. Adams was proud of his Puritan heritage, and emphasized Puritan values in his political career, especially virtue. He believed that if republican leaders lacked virtue, liberty was endangered.
- In 1756, the Boston Town Meeting elected Adams to the post of tax collector. He often failed to collect taxes from his fellow citizens, which left him liable for the shortage. By 1765, his account was more than £8,000 in arrears. Adams was compelled to file suit against delinquent taxpayers, but many taxes went uncollected. In 1768, his political opponents used the situation to their advantage, obtaining a court judgment of £1,463 against him. Adams's friends paid off some of the deficit, and the town meeting wrote off the remainder.
- Adams couldn't afford to pay for the trip to attend the First Continental Congress. As a result, his friends bought him new clothes and paid his expenses for the journey to Philadelphia.
- Adams suffered from what is now believed to have been essential tremor, a movement disorder that rendered him unable to write in the final decade of his life.
Samuel Adams quotes
- "We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them."
- "Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason."
- "It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail."
- "All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should."
- "Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”"
See also
In Spanish: Samuel Adams para niños
