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or wherever you get your

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to an airwave media

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podcast. Hello, and welcome

0:36

to Ben Franklin's World

0:38

revisited. A series of

0:41

classic episodes that bring

0:43

fresh perspectives to our

0:45

latest episodes and had

0:48

deeper connections to our

0:50

understanding of early American

0:52

history. And I'm your

0:54

host, Liz Kovart. This month,

0:57

we commemorate the 250th anniversary. of

0:59

the battles of Lexington and Concord,

1:01

the shot heard around the world

1:04

that ignited the Revolutionary War.

1:06

But before those battles, and before

1:08

the revolution became a war for

1:10

independence, the revolution was a movement,

1:12

a fight to secure more local control

1:14

over government. And no one worked harder

1:16

to transform that movement into a

1:19

revolution than Samuel Adams. A skilled

1:21

political strategist and master

1:23

of revolutionary rhetoric, Samuel Adams

1:25

was instrumental in shaping colonial

1:28

resistance. and uniting the American

1:30

colonies in opposition to British

1:32

rule. But how did they do it? How

1:34

did he turn protest into a revolution?

1:37

To help us investigate, we're

1:39

revisiting our conversation from

1:41

episode 350 with Pulitzer

1:43

Prize-winning historian Stacey Schiff,

1:45

author of the revolutionary Samuel

1:48

Adams. In this episode, we'll

1:50

explore what we know about Samuel

1:52

Adams' life and education, how Adams

1:54

made politics his career. and how

1:56

he navigated both the successes and

1:58

failures he experienced. and the

2:01

crucial role Samuel Adams played

2:03

in transforming debates over imperial

2:05

taxation into a full-fledged revolution

2:07

for independence. Samuel Adams was

2:09

a revolutionary long before the

2:12

shots rang out in April

2:14

1775. So are you ready

2:16

to revisit his story? Let's

2:18

go get reacquainted with Stacey

2:21

Schiff. Our

2:33

guest is a multiple award and Pulitzer

2:35

Prize winning author who has written six

2:37

books. Her books include The Witches, Salem,

2:40

1692, and her George Washington Book Prize

2:42

and Ambassador Award winning book, A Great

2:44

Improvisation, Franklin, France, and The Birth of

2:47

America. Our guest has held fellowships from

2:49

the Guggenheim Foundation and from the National

2:51

Endowment for the Humanities. Today she joins

2:53

us to discuss her latest book, The

2:56

Revolutionary, Samuel Adams. Thank you so much,

2:58

Liz. Now, Stacey's latest book, The Revolutionary,

3:00

traces the life of one of the

3:02

more famous founders from Boston, Massachusetts, Samuel

3:05

Adams. Stacey, I wonder if we can

3:07

start with what drew you to research

3:09

and write a biography about Adams, and

3:11

what your research revealed about how we

3:14

should refer to him? Was he Samuel,

3:16

Sam, or just Mr. Adams? I would

3:18

say two things really converged, and I'm

3:20

not sure with which I began. It

3:23

was 2016, so as... were many of

3:25

us, I was thinking a lot about

3:27

the origins of America and what we

3:29

meant when we talked about democracy. And

3:32

I had gone back for various reasons

3:34

to look at a book I had

3:36

written years ago on Benjamin Franklin and

3:38

was surprised to find Samuel Adams lurking

3:41

there. He has a cameo in that

3:43

book. I had sort of introduced him

3:45

and not really gone into any depth

3:47

with him, which was sort of a

3:50

curious thing to me. Usually I'm fairly

3:52

familiar with the supporting cast. In this

3:54

case, I was somewhat taken aback by

3:56

this surprising presence. to that thought was

3:59

the fact that I was coming off

4:01

of this book on the Salem Witch

4:03

Trials, the witches, and I had been

4:05

really pondering the question of who had

4:08

the courage at the end of 1692

4:10

to raise a hand and object to

4:12

the witchcraft court, which was a very

4:15

dangerous thing to do as soon as

4:17

you expressed any skepticism about witchcraft that

4:19

year, you were generally rewarded with an

4:21

accusation of witchcraft. So it was not

4:24

something that one did lightly, and the

4:26

first people who spoke up... quietly, anonymously,

4:28

delicately. And one of those people, it

4:30

was Thomas Brattle, reminded me as I

4:33

began to read about Samuel Adams, of

4:35

Adams, in the sense that these were

4:37

men of staunch and firm opinions with

4:39

moral compasses that were sort of beyond

4:42

compare. And so those really, really, the

4:44

two robes that converged, I will add

4:46

that it was particularly mortifying to me

4:48

to discover how little I knew about

4:51

Samuel Adams, because I was born in

4:53

Adams Massachusetts. So you'd think I might

4:55

have had some inkling as to what

4:57

he had done with his life. And

5:00

in answer to your question about the

5:02

name, he seems always to be addressed

5:04

by his contemporaries as Samuel. He becomes

5:06

Sam Adams when he's derided later by

5:09

his critics. He becomes Sam Adams when

5:11

he's derided later by his critics. He

5:13

becomes Sam Adams on the declaration as

5:15

Sam period with a little squiggle for

5:18

the rest of the name in very

5:20

much the same way that... Thomas might

5:22

sign his name T-O-M with a little

5:24

squiggle for the rest of Thomas, and

5:27

so I think people just assumed that

5:29

he was signing his name Sam, but

5:31

he does seem to have been addressed

5:33

by his contemporaries as Samuel Adams. And

5:36

it's always interesting to point out how

5:38

the same Adams on the beer bottle,

5:40

if you really look at it, looks

5:43

like Samuel Adams' face, photoshopped onto John

5:45

Singleton Copley's portrait of Paul Revere. I

5:47

mean, he looks very much like an

5:49

artisan there. It does seem to be

5:52

one of those like creatures you took

5:54

out of the little children's flip books

5:56

where you put the tail of one

5:58

creature onto the beak of another exactly.

6:01

Now it's the revolutionary is a biography

6:03

and biographies. to start at the beginnings

6:05

of their subject's lives, I think we

6:07

should start there too. Would you tell

6:10

us what we know about Samuel Adams'

6:12

childhood and early life? He is written

6:14

off later by his critics, by most

6:16

of the crown officers, as something of

6:19

a desperado, as a penniless man whose

6:21

ambitions have not panned out. But in

6:23

fact, he's a very different creature. He's

6:25

a man who grew up amid wealth.

6:28

He grows up in a sort of

6:30

splendid house overlooking Boston harbor with a...

6:32

beautiful orchard and observatory and a wharf

6:34

with the Adams name on it, goes

6:37

to the best schools. He's educated at

6:39

Boston Latin. He will later go to

6:41

Harvard and get a second degree as

6:43

did many people, has a master's from

6:46

Harvard as well. He is when he

6:48

is at Harvard, which is ranked very

6:50

carefully. Massachusetts is a very hierarchical place

6:52

at this point. He is in the

6:55

top quarter of his class, which says

6:57

something about one's father's stature. So his

6:59

father was a justice of the peace

7:01

for that reason he ranks. amid the

7:04

top boys in his class. So he

7:06

grows up really amid privilege, but is

7:08

fairly soon thereafter, downwardly mobile for reasons

7:11

we can talk about. He gets the

7:13

best education available in the colonies in

7:15

those years. It's an education which goes

7:17

long on the classics. He's really steeped

7:20

in Homer and Livian Salas and Cicero.

7:22

He learns how to write a syllogism.

7:24

He's translating back and forth between the

7:26

Latin and the Greek. He takes the

7:29

obligatory. course at Harvard in Hebrew, so

7:31

he really has a very classical education

7:33

and you will see the accents and

7:35

the illusions of that education often much

7:38

later in his writing. I'm glad you

7:40

brought up his ranking at Harvard because

7:42

that was based on wealth of his

7:44

father. And even today we think of

7:47

college as an opportunity to network and

7:49

build relationships with people who you can

7:51

really call on throughout your life and

7:53

career and it was certainly viewed as

7:56

that even back in the 18th century.

7:58

And as Boston was such a small

8:00

town in the 1740s, was there anyone

8:02

that we would know in Samuel Adams'

8:05

Harvard class that would have been there

8:07

to help Adams during his years as

8:09

a revolutionary. Interestingly, no. And he seems

8:11

to have been the sole revolutionary in

8:14

his class. Obviously, that will change later.

8:16

One thing that I did to get

8:18

a sense of the preoccupations and the

8:20

politics of Boston in those years was

8:23

to look very carefully at something which

8:25

has been researched before, which is the

8:27

subjects of the master's thesis at Harvard.

8:29

And if you actually look at those

8:32

thesis, You see that Adams, who picks

8:34

for his subject a very political topic,

8:36

is in the minority. Most people are

8:38

not actually picking political subjects. They're much

8:41

more tending toward the religious. And those

8:43

topics in themselves are a kind of

8:45

x-ray of the colonial mind. They're really

8:48

fascinating. And they can make it seem

8:50

as if on the one hand, some

8:52

questions are eternal, like, you know, do

8:54

the ends justify the means? Do we

8:57

meet our friends when we go to

8:59

heaven? And on other counts as if

9:01

the 18th century is a very great

9:03

distance away. I mean, somebody writes on

9:06

the question of whether vegetables breathe. There

9:08

are a lot of feces on the

9:10

existence of angels. The question comes up

9:12

about whether the Pope is indeed the

9:15

Antichrist. Was the sun inhabitable? I mean,

9:17

the questions are, you know, to our

9:19

minds, extremely far-fetched in many ways. But

9:21

to have picked a political topic in

9:24

Samuel Adams' age, which is to say,

9:26

in 1743, was quite unusual. And that

9:28

fits with what other scholars have said

9:30

about Samuel Adams, that he was very

9:33

drawn to politics at an early age,

9:35

and so I think it's both interesting

9:37

and makes perfect sense, right, that he

9:39

would write his master's thesis about politics.

9:42

Now, as you've done a lot of

9:44

research into these Harvard theses and specifically

9:46

Samuel Adams' thesis, in episode 152, we

9:48

spoke with historian Bernard Balen about the

9:51

ideological origins of the American Revolution, which

9:53

is this book that argues that argues

9:55

that argues that The American Revolution was

9:57

primarily caused by ideas about politics. So

10:00

historians like Bailon argue that revolutionaries like...

10:02

Daniel Adams were classically educated and really

10:04

had a deep understanding of Greek and

10:06

Roman ideas about democracy and politics and

10:09

that's what led them to seek reforms

10:11

and revolution within the British Imperial and

10:13

colonial government. So Stacey, did you get

10:16

a sense from your reading of Adams'

10:18

thesis or in any of his other

10:20

papers about how his readings of Livy

10:22

Kato and his other Greek Hebrew and

10:25

Latin readings shaped how he view and

10:27

thought about politics? With Adams in particular,

10:29

it's hard to draw a direct line

10:31

because we have so little from his

10:34

early years. We know the subject of

10:36

that thesis, we see what I'm quite

10:38

sure is a longer version of it

10:40

in one of his early newspaper pieces

10:43

in the independent advertiser in the 1740s,

10:45

and then we see him sort of

10:47

blossoming completely with the sugar in the

10:49

stamp acts. So there's a somewhat, I

10:52

guess I would say there's a sort

10:54

of perforated line among those three. Very

10:56

early on, he is a proponent of

10:58

the idea that no man should stand

11:01

above the law and no man should

11:03

stand below it, and that ambition and,

11:05

as he puts it, avarice, are the

11:07

enemies of good government, and probably along

11:10

those same lines, that the power of

11:12

the government should stand in perfect equipoise

11:14

with the rights of the subjects. That's

11:16

really the gist of where he is

11:19

in the 1740s, and pretty much all

11:21

we will know about his political convictions

11:23

until the 1760s. But those are the

11:25

ideas with which he seems to be

11:28

playing and the independent advertiser pieces. There

11:30

are a lot of sort of variations

11:32

on the theme, obviously. Those are all

11:34

that unusual for writings of the time.

11:37

He's by no means the only one

11:39

who's on that page. When we read

11:41

Stacey's book, The Revolutionary, we'll learn that

11:44

Samuel Adams came into his adulthood during

11:46

the 1740s, and that after he graduated

11:48

from Harvard with his master's degree in

11:50

degree in 1743 in 1743, What did

11:53

Adams do after writing his thesis and

11:55

attending Harvard? And what do we know

11:57

about his? courtship and marriage to Elizabeth

11:59

Checkley. Let me talk about Elizabeth first,

12:02

and this is one of those disappointments

12:04

to the biographer. When two people are

12:06

in the same place for an extended

12:08

period of time, they don't write to

12:11

each other. And so the record goes

12:13

cold. So we know relatively little about

12:15

the first Mrs. Samuel Adams. She is

12:17

the daughter of the Adams family's minister.

12:20

The two families have been very close.

12:22

Samuel Adams Sr had helped the Reverend

12:24

Checkley to actually come to his post

12:26

at their church. Adams probably had known

12:29

Elizabeth most of her life. They would

12:31

have been several blocks from each other

12:33

through most of their early years. It

12:35

seems as if it's a very happy

12:38

marriage. He's clearly bereft when she dies

12:40

over a very short marriage of over

12:42

a very short marriage of essentially eight

12:44

years. They lose four children and have

12:47

a son and a daughter who do

12:49

survive, which is pretty much part for

12:51

the course in those days. And he

12:53

waits a very long time to remarry

12:56

which is somewhat interesting and for which

12:58

we have no real explanation. Paul Revere

13:00

waits for five months between wives and

13:02

Samuel Adams goes seven years as a

13:05

single parent before he remarries. But we

13:07

have only little traces of Elizabeth Checkley

13:09

Adams. What he does during those years,

13:12

we have a little bit more of

13:14

a record of, and it's truly an

13:16

undistinguished record, he essentially seems able to

13:18

squander any amount of money quickly. So

13:21

he inherits a certain sum of money

13:23

from his father, which he loses. He

13:25

briefly works in an accounting house. It's

13:27

run by Thomas Cushing, who's a very

13:30

popular Bostonian and a friend of the

13:32

families, and very quickly Cushing determines that

13:34

Adams is a very capable young man,

13:36

but is wholly obsessed with politics and

13:39

unable to deal with the ledgers in

13:41

the accounting firm, and he essentially invites

13:43

Adams to leave. So he loses that

13:45

position. And he really is sort of

13:48

casting about living on what seems to

13:50

be air, safe for some minor Boston

13:52

town positions. over these years. His family

13:54

has been wrecked financially, so there's no

13:57

real fortune. to fall back on through

13:59

these years. How was it that Samuel

14:01

Adams, who seems to be this very

14:03

intelligent well-read individual, squandered away the money

14:06

that put him in the top 25%

14:08

of his Harvard class, which as you

14:10

mentioned, was really a rank based on

14:12

one's economic wealth? It sounds like Adams

14:15

came from a really well-to-do family that

14:17

really should have enabled him to parlay

14:19

his family's wealth into greater wealth, so...

14:21

Why was he so broke and bad

14:24

with money? I think there are two

14:26

things at work here. The first of

14:28

them is insofar as he demonstrates pride,

14:30

and he's a very humble and modest

14:33

and diffident man. He's proud of the

14:35

fact that he has neither many earthly

14:37

possessions nor any sort of great ambition.

14:40

There's a purity to that, which is

14:42

a purity he always applauds in other

14:44

people. He really almost foams of the

14:46

mouth sometimes when he sees people accumulating

14:49

fortunes. And he does seem to believe

14:51

from a very early point that the

14:53

honest politician, the effective politician, the politician

14:55

who has the common will at heart

14:58

is the impoverished man, or is the

15:00

man who is in no way profiting

15:02

in any case from his position. But

15:04

the other answer to your question is

15:07

the land bank. Samuel Adams Senior is

15:09

one of nine directors of a banking

15:11

venture, which begins in 1740, essentially to

15:13

address the problem of there being no

15:16

hard currency in New England. and this

15:18

has been a long time problem, many

15:20

solutions had been proposed, it has very

15:22

much crippled the New England economy, which

15:25

is already on the decline through these

15:27

years. And so to address that problem,

15:29

Adams and these other eight men come

15:31

up with the idea of securing a

15:34

new form of currency with land, because

15:36

they're very rich in land, but very

15:38

poor in currency. And they run this

15:40

idea past the then governor, Governor Belcher,

15:43

who is a great proponent of it,

15:45

and they get the venture off the

15:47

ground, and no sooner have they done

15:49

so. very successfully in fact, then the

15:52

merchant elite in Boston begin to complain

15:54

about the land bank for two reasons.

15:56

First of all, because it has... opened

15:58

up the hierarchical ranks of who's important.

16:01

I mean suddenly there are these inkeepers

16:03

and glass industry people who want in

16:05

with the real elite of Boston and

16:08

also because they of course don't want

16:10

these bills which are worthless for them

16:12

to use with their English creditors. So

16:14

this is watering down the monetary supply.

16:17

And they complain to Governor Belcher who

16:19

does his best himself to quash the

16:21

land bank but also writes in a

16:23

very historyonic way to London to say

16:26

you know This is just further proof

16:28

of how obstreperous these Americans have become.

16:30

The government is going to be overturned

16:32

if you don't stop this. He invokes

16:35

comparisons to the South Sea Bubble, and

16:37

he basically demands that Parliament instantly shut

16:39

down the land bank, which is done

16:41

in a very peremptory piece of legislation,

16:44

which will bankrupt Samuel Adams Senior, because

16:46

he's deeply invested in the bank. And

16:48

essentially, each of those directors, each of

16:50

those nine men, is held responsible jointly

16:53

and severally for the debts of the

16:55

bank. So this leaves Samuel Adams Jr.

16:57

after the death of his father, essentially

16:59

having to fight off the creditors who

17:02

try to essentially repossess the home in

17:04

repayment for the land bank debt. So

17:06

for a good decade afterwards, everyone is

17:08

trying to untangle the very complicated accounts

17:11

of the land bank quite unsuccessfully, but

17:13

no one is fighting it quite so

17:15

vociferously as is Samuel Adams. We're going

17:17

to come back to the land bank.

17:20

But first, you said earlier that Adams

17:22

was a fairly humble individual and... When

17:24

you walk through downtown Boston today and

17:26

you see the colonists giving Freedom Trail

17:29

tours, you can often overhear them telling

17:31

their guests that Samuel Adams was a

17:33

very devout Puritan and actually a tea

17:36

toler. He didn't really drink alcohol a

17:38

whole lot according to these guides. Stacey,

17:40

I wonder if you could discuss the

17:42

role that religion played in Adams' life

17:45

because he does seem to be based

17:47

on what you've said, a pretty devout

17:49

individual. You know, the tea tolling, the

17:51

only thing I can trace it to,

17:54

there's a remark of John Adams. John

17:56

Adams and Samuel Adams are second cousins.

17:58

John is younger and John does remark

18:00

on the fact. that Samuel is very

18:03

abstemious. In Philadelphia as well, it will

18:05

be said that he doesn't eat very

18:07

much, that he's very careful. He seems

18:09

to live on ideas at all times.

18:12

But I have no evidence. He's a

18:14

perfect he totally, just in his defense.

18:16

If indeed, that's a defense. In terms

18:18

of the religion, it seems to be

18:21

everywhere absolutely with him. He's immensely devout.

18:23

When critics want to make fun of

18:25

him later, they will refer to him

18:27

as the Psalm of a king. central

18:30

to his thinking. He's very fond of

18:32

religious allegory and religious remarks. He often

18:34

cites scripture in his letters. So it

18:36

does seem an organizing principle for him,

18:39

as it does, I think, for many

18:41

of his friends, for much of his

18:43

circle in Boston in the sense that

18:45

Republicanism is a kind of secularized Puritanism.

18:48

So it seems like religion must have

18:50

fueled and informed a lot of Adams'

18:52

political ideas. Even when he's writing about

18:54

his marriage, he tends to make religious

18:57

illusions. It really does seem very much

18:59

an organizing principle. His letters are really

19:01

rich in religious illusions. Now in 1747,

19:04

Samuel Adams began his life in public

19:06

service. The townspeople of Boston elected him

19:08

their market clerk. Stacey, we need to

19:10

take a quick moment to thank our

19:13

episode's sponsor, and then I'd really like

19:15

for us to investigate what it is

19:17

that Adams did as the market clerk

19:19

and... Whether he even ran for this

19:22

office or the townspeople just elected him

19:24

to it. Stacey, what did the office

19:26

of Market Clerk require of Adams? And

19:28

was this even an office that Adams

19:31

stood for election for or did his

19:33

fellow townspeople just elected to this position?

19:35

You know, I should say before I

19:37

mention the Market Clerk, that is something

19:40

that does distinguish him from his peers,

19:42

which is that he has no occupation,

19:44

he has no profession, which makes it

19:46

harder later. for people to mock him

19:49

when he begins to pick up lots

19:51

of Tory critics. They really have no

19:53

way to sort of quantify who this

19:55

person is because he does devote himself.

19:58

100% to politics. He really is sort

20:00

of a first professional politician in that

20:02

respect. He takes a job as a

20:04

market clerk, which was a very minor

20:07

Boston position. Massachusetts has this incredibly intricate

20:09

set of public offices. Everything is surveilled

20:11

by one keeper or watcher after another.

20:13

And a market clerk would have been

20:16

sort of the initial point of entry.

20:18

It was a very lowly position. It

20:20

would essentially have been incumbent on him

20:22

to. check that prices were correct, that

20:25

weights were correct, that everything was orderly

20:27

and fresh in the marketplace, it would

20:29

have sent him out into the streets,

20:32

which may account for the beginnings of

20:34

how well he knows his fellow townsman

20:36

because he does seem to be one

20:38

of these people who could connect the

20:41

educated elite with the man in the

20:43

street. We have no sense of how

20:45

well he performed that job. It was

20:47

not unusual for someone who was a

20:50

Harvard graduate to take that position. He

20:52

doesn't then begin to climb the ranks

20:54

as one might have done after that.

20:56

But he does hold other elective offices.

20:59

He uncommonly for a Harvard graduate becomes

21:01

a tax collector. And at that he

21:03

manages to fail spectacularly. There's probably no

21:05

position for which he could have been

21:08

so splendidly unsuited in the sense that

21:10

he really did not have any mind

21:12

for counting. As I said, he probably

21:14

takes the tax collecting position. It's very

21:17

unclear why he would have accepted it.

21:19

it was the kind of town position

21:21

that one generally paid a fine rather

21:23

than having to accept nobody wanted to

21:26

be the person who had to collect

21:28

taxes. Very likely he took it because

21:30

at this point he has a young

21:32

family to support and he really does

21:35

need some source of income. It is

21:37

hinted that perhaps he took the position

21:39

or was put up for the position

21:41

because his goodwill could be relied on

21:44

and everybody wants a very indulgent tax

21:46

collector. The way that the position worked

21:48

at the time was that a tax

21:50

collector got a premium on the monies

21:53

that he collected. But on the other

21:55

hand, if he failed to deliver those

21:57

monies, he actually needed to supply them

22:00

himself. was actually a debt to be

22:02

paid if he failed in his collecting.

22:04

But I should say in his defense

22:06

as well, Adams takes this on at

22:09

a time when there is economic distress

22:11

in Boston, but in his ward in

22:13

particular, there is a smallpox epidemic and

22:15

a fire. So it's a very difficult

22:18

time. But that said, he does manage

22:20

to run up twice as much debt

22:22

as the next most delinquent collector, his

22:24

debt at a certain point is 8,000

22:27

pounds, extraordinary sum of money, which some

22:29

friends help him defray because the amount

22:31

is so ridiculously ridiculously high. but he

22:33

will in fact be in trouble at

22:36

several times nearly essentially sued by the

22:38

colony because he has failed to produce

22:40

these money. So he either was an

22:42

incredibly ineffective or a very indulgent collector

22:45

but either way it did not bode

22:47

well for his future. You know there's

22:49

this urban legend in Boston that the

22:51

people kept electing Samuel Adams as their

22:54

tax collector because he just never collected

22:56

the taxes. Well there is this question

22:58

of why since he's failing at it

23:00

so brilliantly he just ups again a

23:03

year after year for I think it's

23:05

six years in fact. So yes, there

23:07

may well be some truth to that.

23:09

Many biographers of American founders work to

23:12

identify moments when the person in their

23:14

study turned into a revolutionary. In Stacey's

23:16

biography, the revolutionary is really no different.

23:18

Stacey, like Samuel Adams' younger cousin, John

23:21

Adams, you trace Samuel Adams' transformation into

23:23

a revolutionary and attribute that transformation to

23:25

the Massachusetts Land Bank fiasco of 1740

23:28

and 1741. So would you tell us

23:30

a bit more about the Massachusetts Land

23:32

Bank fiasco and how well you think

23:34

it was this event that played a

23:37

large role in transforming Samuel Adams into

23:39

a revolutionary? I would be a little

23:41

bit careful of drawing a direct line

23:43

from one to the other. Certainly it

23:46

sets up the kind of confrontation with

23:48

parliamentary authority that he will find so

23:50

objectionable later. This is precisely the kind

23:52

of overreach, the idea that Parliament can

23:55

reach across the ocean. in a single

23:57

gesture can shut down. an American venture.

23:59

That seemed obviously objectionable to him. It

24:01

obviously has a parallel later with the

24:04

Sugar in the Stamp Acts. You know,

24:06

can the colonies who have no representation

24:08

in London really fall under British legislation

24:10

in this way? But he himself never

24:13

connects the two. The only connection that

24:15

gets made is made actually by both

24:17

John Adams and Thomas Hutchinson later in

24:19

comparing the uproar and the unrest that

24:22

the stamp act will provoke with the

24:24

kind of... bitterness that the land bank

24:26

catastrophe will unleash as well. So I

24:28

would draw sort of a perforated line

24:31

between those two. Certainly the sensitivity to

24:33

colonial rights, the sense that these are

24:35

liberties that are on the one hand

24:37

hallowed and on the other hand easily

24:40

curtailed or undermined, is there from the

24:42

start. So what line do you think

24:44

we can trace for how Samuel Adams

24:46

becomes a staunch revolutionary? How does he

24:49

go from his ideas about parliamentary overreach

24:51

with a land bank? to what would

24:53

happen in the 1760s with the stamp

24:56

act and the sugar act and the

24:58

T act. Because my understanding of Adams

25:00

in the revolution is exactly something that

25:02

you stated in the book, The Revolutionary,

25:05

which is that Samuel Adams was a

25:07

stage manager of the revolution, that he

25:09

orchestrated and fomented not only the revolutionary

25:11

spirit in Boston, but also elsewhere in

25:14

the colonies. You see him in his

25:16

first act, really around the time of

25:18

the sugar in the stamp acts, where

25:20

he is. a little bit behind the

25:23

scenes still, but he is polishing the

25:25

prose of James Otis, who really is

25:27

his political mentor at that point. And

25:29

that's where Adams begins to sort of

25:32

come out from behind the curtain. He

25:34

is the first to write a salvo

25:36

against imperial authority when he sees this

25:38

legislation coming down the pike and is

25:41

the first to essentially question how this

25:43

can possibly apply to the colonies. And

25:45

he draws that equation, of course, with,

25:47

you know, if stamps can be imposed

25:50

upon us, if paper can be taxed.

25:52

Why can our land not be taxed?

25:54

And if our land is taxed, why

25:56

not our lives? Everything we obtained from

25:59

the land. He opens the whole question

26:01

up to make it more accessible so

26:03

that everyone can see that this is

26:05

a much larger issue and begins to

26:08

wrestle these ideas really onto the page.

26:10

It's with the stamp act that he

26:12

is first elected to the Massachusetts House

26:14

of Representatives almost as it seems anyway

26:17

as a direct fallout to becoming the

26:19

voice of this opposition. And once in

26:21

the Massachusetts House, and this we know

26:24

from the governor and the crown officials,

26:26

the House begins to speak largely with

26:28

his voice. And that's where you really

26:30

begin to first get a sense of

26:33

him, sort of massaging ideas and trying

26:35

to align men and maneuvering quite a

26:37

bit behind the scenes. And some of

26:39

the answer to your question is why

26:42

we think of him as a stage

26:44

manager is that that's largely the way

26:46

he's painted, not only by Thomas Hutchins

26:48

and the Francis Bernards, but also by

26:51

Thomas Jefferson later at the Continental Congress.

26:53

But one of his first acts on

26:55

entering the Massachusetts House is with friends.

26:57

he will arrange for a gallery to

27:00

be built in the House of Representatives.

27:02

The idea being that the people should

27:04

be able to observe their elected representatives

27:06

in action, and the representative should know

27:09

that they are being observed by their

27:11

constituents. And, you know, it seems to

27:13

us it's like putting cameras in Congress,

27:15

it seems to us like a fairly

27:18

natural evolution, but it was at the

27:20

time, especially to the royal governor. quite

27:22

a shocking thing. And Francis Bernard, who's

27:24

then governor, essentially asks if this means

27:27

that the House of Representatives will now

27:29

become a theater because the representatives now

27:31

tend to sort of speak to the

27:33

gallery and to perform for the gallery.

27:36

And to make matters worse, Adams keeps

27:38

inviting his friends to sit in the

27:40

gallery. So, you know, how is that

27:42

shaping Massachusetts government and Massachusetts opinions henceforth?

27:45

I don't think many of us knew

27:47

that Jane's Otis Jr. Could you tell

27:49

us more about James Otis, who's this

27:52

really fascinating figure and was the person

27:54

that John Adams later identified as a

27:56

catalyst of the revolution when he argued

27:58

the writs of his... case in 1761

28:01

and writs of assistance were this blanket

28:03

type of search warrant that did

28:05

not need approval from a judge to

28:07

enact and basically allow crown officials to

28:09

search any and all property

28:11

and premises where someone was

28:14

suspected of smuggling. So Otis is actually

28:16

a little bit younger than Samuel

28:18

Adams but seems to have been

28:20

his mentor insofar as Adams had

28:22

a mentor and certainly Adams comes to

28:24

the forefront in as I said

28:26

in burnishing the pros of Otis. who

28:29

is a verbally pyrotechnic speaker, a brilliant

28:31

lawyer, as we know argues the writs

28:33

of assistance case brilliantly in front of

28:35

Thomas Hutchinson of all people, but who

28:38

will then slowly begin to succumb to

28:40

some kind of mental illness. It's hard

28:42

to say what it is, but it

28:44

sounds from all accounts like some kind

28:46

of mania, which will leave him both unable

28:49

to contain his incredible verbal gift, so he

28:51

can speak for as John Adams tells us

28:53

hours on end without drawing breath, but also...

28:56

simultaneously on both sides of the aisle. So

28:58

he'll have Tory days and he'll have wig

29:00

days. He'll have days where he talks about

29:02

how loyal he is to the king and

29:05

then days where he, you know, is shooting

29:07

pistols out his window madly and then days

29:09

where he essentially is undermining the stamp act

29:12

and days where he's supporting the stamp act.

29:14

So he becomes a kind of wild card

29:16

and it is incompetent upon Adams to

29:18

both contain the damage. to maintain the

29:20

deference of their mutual friends. There's

29:23

a very poignant letter in which

29:25

he talks about how one should

29:27

be very gentle with Otis, to assign

29:29

Otis to committees where he can do

29:32

relatively little harm, and to

29:34

continue the cause that obviously the

29:36

two men had shared at one

29:38

point without in any way either

29:40

offending Otis or compromising him. Until

29:42

about 1768, Otis is referred

29:44

to by the Crown officers who

29:47

dislike him as the... Chief incendiary

29:49

and after 1768 Adams really takes

29:51

over that role that that point

29:53

notice has really kind of taken

29:55

second place to Adams. So timeline

29:58

wise, we're now in the mid to late. The

30:00

Sugar Act came down in 1764. The

30:02

stamp act crisis took place in 1765.

30:04

And we can now picture Samuel Adams

30:07

at this point in time as someone

30:09

who is representing his constituents in the

30:11

Massachusetts General Court or its House of

30:14

Representatives and as someone who is learning

30:16

the art of colonial and imperial politics

30:18

from James Otis Jr. And while he's

30:21

learning this art, he is also someone

30:23

who is sharpening his revolutionary rhetoric and

30:25

prose. by writing for newspapers. He's honing

30:27

his arguments, as they say. So it

30:30

sounds like that by 1770 or so,

30:32

Stacey, Adams would have been in a

30:34

good position to take over this role

30:37

of major leader in fomenting revolution and

30:39

spreading revolutionary rhetoric and ideas in both

30:41

Boston and in Massachusetts more broadly. I

30:44

think perfectly positioned, in fact, in 1768

30:46

because of much of the street protest

30:48

and the unrulyness generally in Boston, troops

30:51

will be dispatched to calm the town.

30:53

So they arrived in the fall of

30:55

1768. Adams will very soon thereafter with

30:58

friends found a kind of news service

31:00

to propagate stories. Most of them it

31:02

would seem fictitious of encounters between the

31:04

soldiers and the poor martyred citizens of

31:07

Boston, in which of course the soldiers

31:09

always look like the aggressors and the

31:11

citizens look like innocents. And he and

31:14

his friends will write these sort of

31:16

lurid accounts of women sort of harassed

31:18

and man-agressed upon and scuffles in the

31:21

street and they will send them throughout

31:23

the colony so they will dispatch them

31:25

first in New York where they're published

31:28

and from there to Philadelphia and then

31:30

only later where those accounts come back

31:32

to Boston. So he found this sort

31:35

of uncannily modern kind of new syndicate

31:37

to make it seem and this is

31:39

really on his mind very early on

31:41

to bind the colonies together to make

31:44

Boston's fate. something which the other colonies

31:46

can relate to. His feeling being that

31:48

if one colony is under duress if

31:51

one colony finds that it has been...

31:53

the other colonies should rise in sympathy.

31:55

And it seems he had some success

31:58

with that in binding the colonies together,

32:00

particularly when we look at the Boston

32:02

Massacre of March 1770. It's my understanding

32:05

that Sam Adams played a really big

32:07

role in helping all the colonies and

32:09

posterity to think about those shootings on

32:12

King Street as a real one-sided massacre

32:14

where the British Redcoats just shot down

32:16

a bunch of unarmed colonials. I think

32:19

that's probably the best example of... Adams

32:21

at his protean best. He does seem

32:23

to have helped to have named the

32:25

evening. He very early on was active

32:28

in helping to collect depositions of what

32:30

had happened that night. There's really this

32:32

race to get to Great Britain, the

32:35

first accounts of what actually had happened

32:37

in those few minutes on King Street.

32:39

And obviously it's a blur, very few

32:42

accounts actually tell the same story. He

32:44

and his friends will race their depositions

32:46

to London. They aren't the first to

32:49

get those letters there. And then after

32:51

the trials. Adams will spend six months

32:53

vigorously retrying the case in the course

32:56

of the trials all but two of

32:58

the soldiers are exonerated. Adams will essentially

33:00

re-litigate the entire case in the Boston

33:02

Gazette and sometimes the Boston Evening Post

33:05

as if the trials never happened. So

33:07

that as one of his opponents says,

33:09

you know, are you really trying to

33:12

say that four judges and 24 jurors

33:14

were wrong and you alone are correct?

33:16

And the answer seems to have been

33:19

yes. That seems to be what he

33:21

was trying to imply. but he will

33:23

impugn the jurors, he will impugn the

33:26

witnesses, he will go to any length

33:28

to prove that this was a horrid

33:30

massacre. You can see his long arm

33:33

as well, and this is perhaps the

33:35

most effective tool he uses afterwards in

33:37

the massacre orations, which he helps to

33:40

organize, so that every year after the

33:42

massacre in March, there was a very

33:44

lackromose and very well-attended and later published

33:46

speech about what had happened that evening.

33:49

and it becomes a kind of rallying

33:51

cross. in many ways. John Adams will

33:53

tell us that no one ever read

33:56

those orations with a dry eye. He

33:58

was usually delivered by a very promising

34:00

young man whom Adams had helped to

34:03

recruit. We have one hilarious description of

34:05

him trying to recruit John Adams, in

34:07

fact, to deliver a massacre oration. So

34:10

he's retailing this in every possible way

34:12

to enforce the cause and to keep

34:14

up the spirits of the people and

34:17

to keep resistance alive. Now it seems

34:19

like every Boston and Massachusetts revolutionary who

34:21

has a name that we remember. has

34:23

at least one confrontation with Thomas Hutchinson.

34:26

And by the late 1760s, Thomas Hutchinson

34:28

is the chief justice of the Massachusetts

34:30

Superior Court, the highest court in the

34:33

Bay Colony, his lieutenant governor, and he's

34:35

also going to later be the governor

34:37

of Massachusetts. And when you read either

34:40

contemporary accounts by revolutionaries or even accounts

34:42

today, Hutchinson is the guy that is

34:44

almost always painted as a villain. So

34:47

Stacey, could you tell us? about Massachusetts'

34:49

most famous loyalist and about the confrontations

34:51

that Samuel Adams had with Thomas Hutchinson.

34:54

I could go on at such length

34:56

about Thomas Hutchinson by which I'm wholly

34:58

fascinated. Hutchinson and Adams have the world

35:00

in common. They are both of them

35:03

fifth generation sons of Massachusetts. They have

35:05

the same education and they end up

35:07

on diametrically different sides. And I should

35:10

say that they start out at essentially

35:12

the same position. Hutchinson, although he is

35:14

Lieutenant Governor, will also believe that... the

35:17

stamp act is taxation without representation. He

35:19

just isn't in a position to be

35:21

able to say as much. He is

35:24

a very dutiful, very decorous man. He's

35:26

a terrific and diligent public servant and

35:28

he needs to uphold his obligations to

35:31

the crown. And that will lead him

35:33

obviously in a diametrically different direction from

35:35

Samuel Adams. There does seem to have

35:38

been from an early point. a scorn

35:40

for or a distaste for Thomas Hutchinson.

35:42

John Adams will tell us that when

35:44

he and Samuel meet for the first

35:47

time, which doesn't seem to have been

35:49

until the early 1760s, they will agree

35:51

from that very first meeting that no

35:54

one poses a greater... danger to American

35:56

liberties than did Thomas Hutchinson. Even Mercy

35:58

Otis Warren can't abide Thomas Hutchinson. There's

36:01

just a tremendous distaste for him. I

36:03

would assume, based on his success, he's

36:05

a marvelously successful businessman, he has a

36:08

thriving and close family, and he holds,

36:10

alas, many political offices. And it is

36:12

the aggregation of those offices that so

36:15

offends the Adams men, both John Adams

36:17

and Samuel Adams. at different points will

36:19

compose screeds against Thomas Hutchinson where they

36:21

just list all his offices and it's

36:24

basically like a long paragraph in each

36:26

case. And if anything, I think John

36:28

Adams is more epiplectic at Hutchinson's bouquet

36:31

of offices than is Samuel, but it's

36:33

oil and water. There's a definite disfavor

36:35

in both directions. Hutchinson for his part

36:38

is scornful of Adams because as I

36:40

said he sees him as a sort

36:42

of failure as someone who He's doing

36:45

this all about a disappointed ambition and

36:47

because he's panelists. And so there are

36:49

no real ideals in the picture as

36:52

Thomas Hutchinson sees it. It's just that

36:54

Adams hasn't found his place in society.

36:56

And so he decides he's just going

36:59

to kind of upset everything. And that

37:01

just seems to be his modus operandi.

37:03

He underestimates Adams and he misses the

37:05

fact that there are actually ideas floating

37:08

around which are rather potent ideas and

37:10

rather contagious ideas. And the ultimate showdown,

37:12

I suppose, is the morning after the

37:15

massacre. When Thomas Suchison is desperately trying

37:17

to calm the town, there are still

37:19

troops in Boston. Everyone is obviously frantic

37:22

after the blood in the streets of

37:24

the evening before. And a town meeting

37:26

early on will send Adams over to

37:29

the townhouse to confront Thomas Suchinson to

37:31

demand that he evacuate the troops. This

37:33

is an incident which comes down to

37:36

us mostly in the words of John

37:38

Adams who tells him much later in

37:40

a somewhat elevated style. He basically says

37:42

this was an encounter worthy of livier

37:45

Thucydides. but it is Adams essentially insisting

37:47

that the soldiers be removed. Hutchinson tells

37:49

him that he will remove one regiment

37:52

but not the other. Adams trekks back

37:54

to the town meeting who reject that

37:56

offer and Adams goes for a second

37:59

time and stands before Thomas Hutchinson, whom

38:01

he later will say with some glee

38:03

looked weak as water and seems to

38:06

tremble at the knees, and Adams successfully

38:08

gets Hutchinson to agree to remove all

38:10

of the troops from Boston. And this

38:13

is seen as an enormous triumph of

38:15

the people over the crown in the

38:17

form of Thomas Hutchinson at that moment.

38:19

But it does speak largely to the

38:22

antagonism between these two men who obviously

38:24

have been working together as members of

38:26

the same government for some time. Thomas

38:29

Hutchinson was a really successful imperial politician

38:31

while we're talking about... professional politicians in

38:33

this revolutionary period. And while he held

38:36

multiple colonial offices at the same time,

38:38

which is actually a big part of

38:40

the reason why Massachusetts to this day

38:43

has very strict ethics rules about holding

38:45

elective offices and working for the state,

38:47

Hutchinson in the end, he was forced

38:50

out of Boston. He didn't feel safe.

38:52

He resigned his governor and he sailed

38:54

to England. And while he's in England

38:57

in 1774, it was supposedly Thomas Hutchinson

38:59

who met with King George the third.

39:01

and identified Samuel Adams as quote, the

39:03

first to embrace American independence, end quote.

39:06

So Stacey, what do you make of

39:08

this story and Thomas Hutchinson's supposed claims

39:10

that it was really Samuel Adams who

39:13

was the first American to embrace independence?

39:15

Do you think this is a factual

39:17

quote or do you think this is

39:20

just another urban legend? That's such a

39:22

great question. We have that line from

39:24

Thomas Hutchinson himself. And I have to

39:27

say, I mean, you can say whatever

39:29

you will about Thomas Hutchinson for whom

39:31

I have a great weakness, he's an

39:34

immensely honest and objective historian. And he

39:36

comes home from that encounter with the

39:38

king. I should say he's just returned

39:40

to London. In fact, he's so newly

39:43

returned, he doesn't feel like he's properly

39:45

dressed and he's whisked off to meet

39:47

the king. So he's really not even

39:50

ready. He's just barely got off the

39:52

ship. And he spends this rather enchanted

39:54

time in the presence of the presence

39:57

of the king. So I would give

39:59

rather a lot of credence to that

40:01

report. The king doesn't realize that there

40:04

are several atoms as this is. obviously

40:06

a problem, not just for posterity, but

40:08

at the time it was very confusing

40:11

that there were all these Adams's. So

40:13

Thomas Hutchinson is in a position of

40:15

having to explain that there are several

40:17

people with the surname. And he describes

40:20

Samuel Adams to the king as being

40:22

a man of inflexible temper, and as

40:24

he puts it, pretended zeal for liberty.

40:27

And again, it's this failure to believe

40:29

that it's always a pretended zeal for

40:31

liberty. They could not have possibly have

40:34

been an authentic passion for liberty, because

40:36

he just the prime mover and the

40:38

first to advocate the idea of independence,

40:41

about which I have a hard time,

40:43

which I'll say in a minute, but

40:45

I would say Adams returns that favor.

40:48

I think Adams goes to his grave

40:50

believing that Thomas Hutchinson was probably the

40:52

man most singly responsible for American independence.

40:55

It's such a tricky thing. It's not

40:57

a word, obviously, anybody could utter. It

40:59

was too dangerous a word. It was

41:01

too combustible a word for a long

41:04

time. The general theory seems to have

41:06

been that Adams... settles on the idea

41:08

of independence in 1768 when he sees

41:11

those troops march into his hometown, there's

41:13

nothing on the record that would indicate

41:15

that he comes to that decision that

41:18

early and that really would have been

41:20

early. And for years, he seems bent

41:22

on redress rather than any kind of

41:25

revolution, certainly. When he mentions independence, he

41:27

mentions it as something which should make

41:29

Great Britain shudder. It's not something which

41:32

he's embracing as a kind of boogie

41:34

man in a way. And if you

41:36

actually look at the founders, every single

41:38

one of them I think as late

41:41

as early 1776 is shining away from

41:43

the word independence, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams

41:45

even, no one uses that word until

41:48

the very last minute. It really is

41:50

the third rail and obviously a final

41:52

rupture is something that nobody is really

41:55

advocating in the crown officers. I'm not

41:57

really sure he's thinking independence or an

41:59

actual rupture with Great Britain until the

42:02

1770s and the first time he really

42:04

says independent should be declared as the

42:06

morning after Lexington and Concord. As we're

42:09

speaking about perceptions of Samuel Adams as

42:11

a ringleader of the revolution, Jeremy is

42:13

curious to know what evidence we have

42:16

that Adams was involved with and possibly

42:18

even led the Boston Sons of Liberty.

42:20

And in Boston, you do still hear

42:22

stories about how if you ever needed

42:25

a mob in 1760s and 1770s Boston,

42:27

Samuel Adams was your man to organize

42:29

one. You know, there's a wonderful bit

42:32

of testimony. from a Boston innkeeper who

42:34

is paid for his information and is

42:36

deposed about what is happening in the

42:39

streets of Boston and under oath he

42:41

essentially says exactly that that Adams is

42:43

able to raise a mob in the

42:46

twinkling of an eye. There's no evidence

42:48

whatsoever that he is the founder of

42:50

the Sons of Liberty certainly or even

42:53

that closely allied with them. It's shrouded

42:55

in secrecy obviously. There is the occasional

42:57

hint of his involvement in things like

42:59

a summons. that the Sons of Liberty

43:02

might send to John Adams in which

43:04

they would like his legal advice and

43:06

that summons comes with a postscript and

43:09

the postscript basically says your cousin sends

43:11

his regards which is essentially a little

43:13

we're reminding you that you'll be doing

43:16

this for us kind of just to

43:18

nail that one home so he's clearly

43:20

closely involved the Boston clubs of which

43:23

there were many tend to overlap he's

43:25

very intimate terms with all of these

43:27

people but where he fits in that

43:30

constellation of clubs, I think really difficult

43:32

to chart, in some of the street

43:34

theater early on. I don't know how

43:36

complicit he is in the street theater

43:39

later, certainly around the time of the

43:41

massacre, around the time of various collisions

43:43

with Thomas Hutchinson. I would say he's

43:46

much more firmly in charge. Now as

43:48

Stacey mentioned, the American Revolution becomes a

43:50

war in April 1775 with the battles

43:53

of Lexington and conquered. And this shift

43:55

from revolutionary movement to war? causes to

43:57

re-jiggering among revolutionary leadership. Stacey, what? impact

44:00

of the revolution's transition into a war

44:02

have on Samuel Adams' leadership and ring

44:04

leadership in the revolutionary movement. I think

44:07

once the resistance moves out of New

44:09

England, Adams is relegated to a very

44:11

different place. You can see as the

44:14

entire New England delegation is making its

44:16

way to the first continental Congress, which

44:18

they do at a very leisurely pace,

44:20

you can see them realizing that they're

44:23

being told over and over again. that

44:25

New Englanders have this reputation with the

44:27

rest of the colonies as being hot-headed

44:30

fanatics, and that they're going to need

44:32

to be very careful once they get

44:34

to Philadelphia. And Adam seems to take

44:37

that very much to heart. He's already,

44:39

as we said, a stage manager, a

44:41

more recessive character, but he clearly realizes

44:44

that he's going to need to work

44:46

behind the scenes and prove that the

44:48

New Englanders are not the sort of

44:51

Goths and vandals that they are accused

44:53

of being there, not the sort of

44:55

small-minded, quaker persecutating. radicals whom the southern

44:57

colonies tend to believe them. So he

45:00

takes something of a second seat. John

45:02

Adams, of course, will later say that

45:04

this is the reason that the Virginians

45:07

write the declaration, why the declaration is

45:09

proposed by a Virginia, and why the

45:11

army, and why the army, and why

45:14

the army, the army, is commanded by

45:16

a Virginia, and why the army is

45:18

commanded by a Virginia, and why the

45:21

army is commanded by a Virginia, and

45:23

why the army is commanded. which was

45:25

always with such crystalline logic, everyone listened

45:28

very carefully. But he's much more conspicuous

45:30

for being in the background. Often other

45:32

delegates will talk about how they can

45:35

see the long arm of Samuel Adams

45:37

or how they suspect that something happened

45:39

because Adams caused it to happen because

45:41

it was all of it predetermined by

45:44

the time it got to the floor

45:46

of Congress. Could you tell us more

45:48

about Samuel Adams' continental congressman? Because Adams

45:51

did serve on several important committees, including

45:53

the committee that would draft the first

45:55

constitution of the United States. the articles

45:58

of Confederation. Exactly, and that can't happen

46:00

fast enough. for him. This is a

46:02

moment in his life when he says,

46:05

essentially, does my fate always to be

46:07

in a hurry, which had by no

46:09

means seem to have been his fate

46:12

for decades, but now at this crucial

46:14

moment is very much his fate. He

46:16

can't understand what is taking so long

46:18

on this front. Again, he's largely a

46:21

behind the scenes player. We know relatively

46:23

little of what he's doing, except there's

46:25

a great deal of deal making. We

46:28

have glimpses of him arguing congenially and

46:30

at great length with, for example the

46:32

Georgia delegates. We know that when Congress

46:35

first opens, he takes a rather masterful

46:37

stand. One of the first questions that

46:39

comes before the assembled delegates is whether

46:42

they should open with a prayer and

46:44

how they can possibly open with a

46:46

prayer when they hail from such different

46:49

religious backgrounds. And it is Adams unexpectedly

46:51

who proposes that there's a terrific Episcopalian

46:53

minister in town whom he hears is

46:55

a marvelous speaker. Why shouldn't the Reverend

46:58

Duché deliver the first blessing of the

47:00

Congress? And the fact that this of

47:02

course bigoted New Englander makes this gesture

47:05

toward ecumenicalism just cements what a masterful

47:07

statesman he is. That's a taste of

47:09

what he's clearly thinking. We have relatively

47:12

little on paper of how he operates

47:14

over the next years. I've been doing

47:16

some research into the records of the

47:19

Second Continental Congress and I really see

47:21

three paths for the men who serve

47:23

in Congress. One path is they served

47:26

their time in Congress and that's if...

47:28

they ever go to Congress. There's actually

47:30

a surprising number of people who are

47:33

elected to Congress and never show up.

47:35

But these men will be elected. If

47:37

they go to Congress, they attend Philadelphia.

47:39

And then after their term is done,

47:42

they just return home and kind of

47:44

fade into the background. They return to

47:46

whatever it is they were doing before

47:49

the war broke out. And then there's

47:51

this second path, which these men like

47:53

Samuel Adams' cousin John, seeking out and

47:56

being propelled into the national and international

47:58

spotlight. These are men who take on

48:00

roles such as ambassadorships and big offices,

48:03

national offices within the new fledgling government

48:05

of the United States. And then there's

48:07

this third path for congressmen, in that

48:10

they... return to their home states and

48:12

they assume state offices. And this is

48:14

exactly what we see Samuel Adams and

48:16

his sometimes friends, sometimes enemy John Hancock

48:19

doing when they return home to Massachusetts

48:21

and take on the roles of Lieutenant

48:23

Governor and Governor of the state. So

48:26

Stacey, would you tell us about Adams'

48:28

role in state building and building and

48:30

serving within the political and legal infrastructure

48:33

of the new Bay State? Adams was

48:35

very clear about what he wasn't good

48:37

at and it's really interesting he's sitting

48:40

in Congress and he's writing you know

48:42

he's on any number of committees and

48:44

he's constantly writing letters that say things

48:47

like I don't know anything about commerce

48:49

why am I on this committee and

48:51

I'm terrible at maritime affairs and why

48:53

have I just been charged with ceremonial

48:56

matters when I'm the world's least ceremonial

48:58

person so he's very much aware of

49:00

his limitations he's also not a committed

49:03

federalist and very parochial New Englander so

49:05

as we know about the Constitution, has

49:07

very mixed feelings about what has actually

49:10

been created after the revolution, he will

49:12

be harping for a long time on

49:14

old-world simplicity when the country is rushing

49:17

forward to sort of a new opulence

49:19

and a new commercialism, which is not

49:21

precisely what he had in mind. So

49:24

in terms of state building, his finest

49:26

hour is really behind him. He has

49:28

an additional problem when he goes back

49:31

to Massachusetts in that he and John

49:33

Hancock are on the outs. They have

49:35

had a very... on again off again

49:37

relationship for years but post revolution John

49:40

Hancock has done a great deal to

49:42

black in the reputation of Samuel Adams.

49:44

So he goes back to Boston but

49:47

is not necessarily hailed there in all

49:49

ways as the kind of patron saint

49:51

that he had been because Hancock will

49:54

for example imply that he was part

49:56

of a Conway cabal and had plotted

49:58

against George Washington and will do a

50:01

number of things really to damage his

50:03

reputation. So he becomes a sort of

50:05

relic in a way. of an earlier

50:08

America as opposed to a part of

50:10

this new Federation that he has helped

50:12

to found. Samuel Adams died on October

50:14

2, 1803, at the age of 81.

50:17

Stacey, how did Americans, and especially Americans

50:19

in Boston and Massachusetts, react to the

50:21

news that Samuel Adams had died, and

50:24

what did they think his legacy was?

50:26

How did they choose to remember him

50:28

at the time of his death? This

50:31

is the downside of having lived such

50:33

a long life. He has someone outlived

50:35

himself. He was already older than most

50:38

of the other revolutionaries, so he really

50:40

is sort of out of step with

50:42

his contemporaries. He has had the... poignant

50:45

privilege of reading the first histories of

50:47

the revolution, which is something you probably

50:49

should never have to do, because he

50:52

sees how little they correlate to the

50:54

revolution as he lived it. So in

50:56

fact, he reads in Dr. Gordon's history

50:58

of how he was involved in the

51:01

Conway Cabal, which he was not involved

51:03

in, to the point where Benjamin Rush

51:05

is saying things like, you know, what

51:08

does this mean about how history comes

51:10

down to us? If all history is

51:12

as contorted as contorted as this, what

51:15

do we to make of, you know,

51:17

you know, not really recognized in his

51:19

time. At his death, there seems to

51:22

be a scramble to get away from

51:24

having to deliver the eulogy even. There

51:26

are people who just don't want to

51:29

even have to figure out how to

51:31

make sense of this figure. There are

51:33

a certain number of members of the

51:35

House of Representatives who refuse to wear

51:38

black armbands in his honor. So it

51:40

seems to be a somewhat contentious legacy

51:42

that he leaves. For years he will

51:45

still be spoken of as someone who

51:47

was on a level with George Washington.

51:49

and for someone who cleared the way

51:52

for George Washington, and then later he'll

51:54

be largely forgotten as those sort of

51:56

anarchic rough and tumble days are better

51:59

forgotten and left to the more high

52:01

principled parts of the revolution. Your comment

52:03

about how New Englanders like Samuel Adams

52:06

and his associate Dr. Joseph Warren, who

52:08

died at the Battle of Bunker Hill,

52:10

about how these men were on par

52:12

with George Washington and how they worked

52:15

to pave the way for Virginians to

52:17

have significant power in the revolution. and

52:19

the new government. This is really an

52:22

off-told story in New England and in

52:24

histories written by New Englanders that without

52:26

a Yankees, there would be no independence

52:29

and the Virginians like Washington never would

52:31

have had a chance to shine and

52:33

rise to the point where they had

52:36

as much power as they did. I

52:38

mean, this is just repeated in history

52:40

after history and it's come up several

52:43

times today in our conversation. What's fascinating

52:45

when you look back at the papers

52:47

of John Adams is how many attempts

52:50

he makes to try to supplant the

52:52

Virginians, how essential it is to him

52:54

to be able to say... You know,

52:56

Samuel Adams and James Otis were doing

52:59

this, that, and the other thing, long

53:01

before Patrick Henry was born. I mean,

53:03

how important it is to him to

53:06

insist on New England preeminence, and how

53:08

much rivalry there really must have been

53:10

between those two colonies. And I'm not

53:13

sure the rivalry has really ended. Now,

53:15

before we move in at the time

53:17

warp, you've done a lot of research

53:20

about Samuel Adams, and I'm curious what

53:22

the one thing, Stacey. Could I have

53:24

two things? I guess the one thing

53:27

about Adams himself is how much he

53:29

fails to conform to the stereotype. I

53:31

think we all think of him as

53:33

this sort of rabble rousing fanatic. And

53:36

from every account, and particularly obviously from

53:38

John Adams, we have this description of

53:40

a very genteel, very erudite man who

53:43

is prudent and disciplined, who is of

53:45

universally good character, who is steadfast and

53:47

calm. And it's very much a description.

53:50

which is at odds with the perceived

53:52

notion. And the prudence I should add

53:54

is really crucial because he does really

53:57

have an intuitive sense of time. He's

53:59

constantly on guard, he's constantly vigilant, but

54:01

he really seems to know exactly when

54:04

to kind of twist the knife and

54:06

when to object most ardently. And I

54:08

guess the second thing I would say

54:11

is that he's committed very early on

54:13

to a point that I think he

54:15

more than adequately proves, which is that

54:17

people should never forget how much power

54:20

they have to change their own destiny.

54:22

This is a fun segment of the

54:24

show where we ask you a hypothetical

54:27

history question about what might have happened

54:29

if something had occurred. occurred differently or

54:31

if someone had acted differently. had chosen

54:34

to remain loyal to the British crown

54:36

and empire. How might the course of

54:38

the American Revolution have been different if

54:41

Samuel Adams had been a loyalist? This

54:43

is the kind of like off-road driving

54:45

you never get to do when you're

54:48

writing biography. Would there have been a

54:50

revolution without Samuel Adams, of course? Would

54:52

it have happened on the same timetable

54:54

and with the same vocabulary? Possibly not.

54:57

I mean Massachusetts is out in front.

54:59

And so the engine would have probably

55:01

been a little bit different? I think

55:04

that we could all probably agree that

55:06

the committees of correspondence, which he founds,

55:08

do more to unite the colonies and

55:11

to establish a kind of electrical current

55:13

along the coast of America, then does

55:15

anything else, and that that is the

55:18

reason why the revolution can take off

55:20

with such speed when finally it does.

55:22

But would someone else have had that

55:25

idea? I assume so. Stacey, what's next

55:27

for you? I hear rumors that there

55:29

might be a mini-series coming out on

55:31

Apple Plus TV coming in the fall

55:34

about Benjamin Franklin. I think I know

55:36

what you're talking about. So, probably in

55:38

the fall, we'll come out an eight-part

55:41

series based on my Franklin book, A

55:43

Great Improvisation, which is about the eight

55:45

and a half years that Benjamin Franklin

55:48

spends at the Court of Versi, soliciting

55:50

aid of munitions for the American Revolution,

55:52

and in which Benjamin Franklin will be

55:55

played by Michael Douglas. Is that who

55:57

you imagined would play Ben Franklin? I

55:59

can tell you that he looks, as

56:02

you will soon see, he looks astonishingly

56:04

like Benjamin Franklin, and that when John

56:06

Adams tells... Benjamin Franklin, how truly he

56:09

dislikes him. It sounds exactly like what

56:11

John Adams was saying to Benjamin Franklin,

56:13

because of course these are the words

56:15

we have from John Adams about how

56:18

much he disliked Benjamin Franklin. If we

56:20

have more questions about Samuel Adams, where's

56:22

the best place to get in contact

56:25

with you? My website, which is stacyshiff.com,

56:27

S. You can email me there, and

56:29

I answer all email, and you can

56:32

order books and sign books there as

56:34

well. Thank you for helping us better

56:36

understand the life and deeds of Samuel

56:39

Adams. Thanks so much Liz, this was

56:41

such a pleasure. Samuel Adams believed that

56:43

people should never forget the power they

56:46

have to change their own destinies. This

56:48

powerful idea wasn't just a belief of

56:50

Samuel Adams. It also seems to have

56:52

been an ideal and a code that

56:55

he lived by. As Stacy related, Adams

56:57

made his own destiny. Unable to settle

56:59

into work in a mercantile firm or

57:02

in an accounting house. Adams did something

57:04

that few born in the American colonies

57:06

ever did, which was to become a

57:09

full-time professional politician. Now politics as a

57:11

profession is something that we recognize today

57:13

as a professional calling. In our own

57:16

time, lots of people work as professional

57:18

politicians. But being a professional politician just

57:20

wasn't something that most British colonists would

57:23

have recognized as a profession. In fact,

57:25

politics was often seen as a hobby

57:27

or side pursuit of the wealthy and

57:29

learned it. Now being a professional politician

57:32

in Adams' time wasn't nearly as lucrative

57:34

as it can be today. The 18th

57:36

century wasn't a period of speaking fees,

57:39

board appointments, or book contracts. So Adams

57:41

never became wealthy as a politician. In

57:43

fact, he often seems to have just

57:46

barely kept his family afloat. Like many

57:48

politicians, Samuel Adams started by holding local

57:50

offices, such as market clerk and tax

57:53

collector. From there, he worked his way

57:55

up to an elective representative. of the

57:57

Massachusetts General Assembly or its House of

58:00

Representatives. there, Samuel Adams found himself elected

58:02

to both the first and second Continental

58:04

Congresses, and then his Lieutenant Governor and

58:07

Governor of the state and Commonwealth of

58:09

Massachusetts. Now despite the debts he accumulated

58:11

as Boston tax collector from not collecting

58:13

the taxes, Samuel Adams was an important

58:16

and successful politician. He may not have

58:18

had the national fame of his cousin

58:20

John Adams, but from what Stacey's research

58:23

revealed, Samuel Adams seems to have had

58:25

more fame than he may have wanted.

58:27

Samuel Adams was a real behind-the-scenes politician.

58:30

He was someone who knew which levers

58:32

had to be pulled at the right

58:34

time, someone who had the ability to

58:37

reach across aisles and build coalitions across

58:39

differences. Someone who would get his hands

58:41

dirty, so to speak, as he did

58:44

with the Boston Massacre. Adams did the

58:46

work he thought was necessary to transform

58:48

Boston protests against imperial governance and overreach,

58:50

into a colonial-wide revolution. to see his

58:53

vision and goals for a new independent

58:55

nation come to fruition. So how did

58:57

the revolution evolve from a series of

59:00

protests into a revolution? It was because

59:02

of the work of everyday Americans and

59:04

men like Samuel Adams, who worked to

59:07

organize his fellow citizens by crafting accessible

59:09

narratives about what was happening with imperial

59:11

politics and creating alliances between their diversity

59:14

of viewpoints. For more information about Stacey,

59:16

her new book, the revolutionary... Plus notes,

59:18

links, and a transcript for everything we

59:21

talked about today. View the Show Notes

59:23

page. Ben Franklin's World.com/350. Friends still friends

59:25

about their favorite podcasts. So if you

59:28

enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends

59:30

about Ben Franklin's world. Breakmaster Cylinder composed

59:32

our custom theme music. This podcast is

59:34

part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network.

59:37

To discover and listen to their other

59:39

podcasts, visit Airwave Media. Finally, I can't

59:41

stop thinking about Stacey's remark. about

59:44

how Samuel Adams

59:46

lived beyond his time.

59:48

time. It seems like

59:51

a really sad

59:53

thought to me me, and

59:55

I wonder how often

59:58

this happens to

1:00:00

people. people. What do

1:00:02

you think? Who do

1:00:05

you think may

1:00:07

have also lived beyond

1:00:09

their time? their Let

1:00:11

me know. know. Liz at

1:00:14

Ben Franklin's .com. Ben Franklin's World

1:00:16

is a production of

1:00:18

Colonial Innovation Studios. Studios.