Adams, Samuel

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Samuel (1722-1803), a native of Boston. Samuel Adams was a second cousin of John Adams. He was graduated at Harvard in 1740. Adams became a merchant, but attended to the people's business to the neglect of his own. Sam Adams, as he was familiarly called, took so prominent and determined a part in opposing the Stamp Act, in organizing the Boston Tea Party, in addressing public meetings, and in organizing opposition to the British generally, that he had the distinguished honor of being one of two men exempted by name from a general pardon offered by the British government in 1775. Adams was a member of the first Continental Congress, 1774; he signed the Declaration of Independence, 1776. He was a member of the state senate and a member of the state convention which ratified the Federal Constitution in 1778. In later politics he was a Jeffersonian, as opposed to the Federalists, thus becoming a political opponent of John Adams. He was elected governor of Massachusetts, 1794, and was reelected twice. Adams was an incorruptible patriot. Among the Revolutionary figures of Boston, Sam Adams is the popular hero. Well educated and well connected, he was decidedly a man of the people. John Adams, with whom he was not always in accord, credited him with merit and talent, saying of his writings that they contained "specimens of a nervous simplicity of reasoning and eloquence that have never been rivaled in America." Sam Adams understood the value of the town meeting and impromptu discussion. He knew how to further his purpose by calling the citizens together and getting them to carry out his plans, thinking they were doing their own will. He was a shrewd and beneficent political "boss." For instance, as early as 1772, at a town meeting held in Faneuil Hall, he moved the appointment of a "Committee of Correspondence." This committee had no legal or official existence. The British authorities could get no hold on it, but it had the public behind it. The idea took all over New England. It caught in Virginia, and led to the Intercolonial Committee of Correspondence. In this way Adams may be said to have engineered and made possible the American Revolution. See Revere ; Caucus