Adams, Samuel (1722–1803), radical patriot and political agitator, described by Thomas
Jefferson as “truly the
Man of the revolution.”A
Boston native and Harvard graduate (1740), Adams, after several business failures and an interlude as a tax collector, gained prominence as a brilliant polemicist and popular leader in opposition to the
Stamp Act (1765–1766) and the Townshend Duties (1767–1770). He was elected a member (1765–1774) and then clerk (1766–1780) of the Massachusetts legislature. Instrumental in drafting the Circular Letter of 1768, Adams energized the revolutionary movement during the so‐called years of quiet by helping form the
Committees of Correspondence (1772) and selectively publishing the incriminating correspondence of colonial officials including Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson. A planner of the
Boston Tea Party in 1773, Adams led the opposition to the Coercive Acts and supported the radical Suffolk Resolves endorsed by the Second
Continental Congress in 1774. Acknowledging his central role, General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Boston, excluded him from the general amnesty he issued in 1774.
A member of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1781, Adams signed the
Declaration of Independence. His influence diminished thereafter, although he served in the convention that drafted the Massachusetts state constitution in 1779–1780, and was lieutenant governor (1789–1794) and then governor of Massachusetts (1794–1797). His neglect among the pantheon of revolutionary heroes might be explained by his prominence in state rather than national politics. More agitator than statesman, Samuel Adams was nevertheless a preeminent early leader in the independence movement. He gained posthumous celebrity in the late twentieth century when a popular Boston beer bore his name.
See also
Revolution and Constitution, Era of.
Bibliography
John C. Miller , Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, 1936.
Pauline Maier , The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams, 1980.
Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy