Samuel Adams

Front matter

i

,•' ^0 aimmcan d&tate^men

JAMES K. HOSMER

Chapter I. The Youth And His Surkoundings

The Folk-mote, the fixed, frequent, access!^ ble meeting of the individual freemen for discussing and deciding upon public matters, had great importance in the polity of the primeval Teutons, and was transmitted by them to their English descendants. All thoughtful political writers have held it to be one of the best schools for forming the faculties of men; it must underlie every representative system in order to make that system properly effective. The ancient folk-mote, the proper primordial cell of every Anglo-Saxon body-politic, which the carelessness of the people and the encroachments of princes had caused to be much overlaid in England, reappeared with great vitality in the New England town-meeting.^

^ Tacitus, Germania, xi. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, Baud i. 4. Freeman, Growth of English Constitution, I

At the Revolution, in Massachusetts, then ii\» chiding Maine, and containing 210,000 white inhabitants, more than were found in any other American colony, there were more than two hundred towns, whose constitution is thus described by Gordon, a writer of the period : —

" Every town is an incorporated repubHc. The selectmen, by their own authority, or upon the application of a certain number of townsmen, issue a warrant for the calling of a town-meeting. The warrant mentions the business to be engaged in, and no other can be legally executed. The inhabitants are warned to attend ; and they that are present, though not a quarter or tenth of the whole, have a right to proceed. They choose a president by the name of moderator, who regulates the proceedings of the meeting. Each individual has an equal liberty of delivering his opinion, and is not liable to be silenced or browbeaten by a richer or greater townsman than himself. Every freeman or freeholder gives his vote or not, and for or against, as he pleases ; and each vote weighs equally, whether that of the highest or lowest inhabitant. . . . All the New England towns are on the same plan in general."

p. 17. May, Constitutional History of England, ii. 460. Phillips, Geschichte des Angelsachsischen Rechts, p. 12. J. Toulmin Smith, Local Self-Govemmeni and Centralization,' ■^. 29, etc. Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies. E. A. Free'san. /n^oc?. to Am. Jnstitut. Hist. H. B. Adams, Germanic Origin of N. E. Towns. Edward Channing, Town and County Government in the English Colonies of N. A.

Throughout the thirteen colonies, the folk-mote existed in well-developed form only in the New England town-meeting ; few traces of it can be found in the South ; nor in the middle colonies was the case much different. At the time of the Revolution, New England stood alone in having restored a primitive liberty which had been superseded, each of her little democracies governing itself after a fashion for which there was no precedent without going back to the folk-mote of a remote day — to a time before the kings of England began to be arbitrary, and before the people became indifferent to their birth-right.

The New England town is best presented at a point when it has had time to become fully developed, and before the causes have begun to operate which in our day have largely changed it. The period of the Revolution, in fact, is the epoch that must be selected ; and the town of towns, in which everything that is most distinctive appears most plainly, is Boston.

Boston was a town governed by its folk-mote almost from its foundation until 1822, more than one hundred and eighty years. In 1822, when the inhabitants numbered forty thousand, it reluctantly became a city, giving up its town-meetings because they had grown so large as to be unmanageable, — the people

4 SAMUEL AD AM 8.

thereafter choosing a mayor and common council to do the public business for them, instead of doing it themselves. The records of the town of Boston, carefully preserved from the earliest times, lie open to public inspection in the office of the city clerk. Whoever pores over these records, on the yellow paper, in the faded ink, as it came from the pens of the ancient town clerks, will find that for the first hundred years the freemen are occupied for the most part with their local concerns. How the famous cowpaths pass through the phases of their evolution, — footway, country-lane, high-road, — until at length they become the streets and receive dignified names ; what ground shall be taken for burying-places, and how it shall be fenced, as the little settlement gradually covers the whole peninsula ; how the Neck, then a very consumptive looking neck, not goitred by a ward or two of brick and mortar-covered territory, may be protected, so that it may not be guillotined by some sharp north-easter ; what precautions shall be taken against the spread of small-pox ; who shall see to it that dirt shall not be thrown into the town dock ; that inquiry shall be made whether Latin may not be better taught in the public schools, — such topics as these are considered. For the most part, the record is tedious and unimportant detail for a

THE YOUTH AND HI8 SURROUNDINGS. 5

modern reader, though now and then in an address to the sovereign, or a document which implies that all is not harmony between the town and the royal governor, the horizon broadens a little. But soon after the middle of the eighteenth century the record largely changes. William Cooper at length begins his service of forty -nine years as town clerk, starting out in 1761 with a bold, round hand, which gradually becomes faint and tremulous as the writer descends into old age. One may well turn over the musty pages here with no slight feeling of awe, for it is the record, made at the moment, of one of the most memorable struggles of human history, that between the little town of Boston on the one hand, and George III. with all the power of England at his back, on the other.

At the date of the Stamp Act, 1765, the population of Boston was not far from 18,000, in vast majority of English blood ; though a few families of Huguenots, like the Faneuils, the Bowdoins, the Reveres, and the Molineux, had strengthened the stock by being crossed with it, and there was now and then a Scotchman or an Irishman. As the Bostonians were of one race, so in vast majority they were of one faith. Independents of Cromwell's type, though there were Episcopalians, and a few Quakers and Baptists. The town drew its life from the sea, to which all its industry was more or less closely related. Hundreds of men were afloat much of the time, captains or before the mast, leaving their wives and children in the town, but themselves being on shore only in the intervals between the most enterprising voyages. Of the landsmen, a large proportion were ship-builders. The staunchest crafts that sailed slid by the dozen down the ways of tlie Boston yards. New England needed a great fleet, having, as she did, a good part of the carrying-trade of the thirteen colonies, with that of the West Indies also. Another industry, less salutary, was the distilling of rum ; and much of this went in the ships of Boston and Newport men to the coast of Africa, to be exchanged for slaves. It was a different world from ours, and should be judged by different standards. Besides the branches mentioned, there was little manufacturing in town or country ; the policy of the mother country was to discourage colonial manufactures ; everything must be made in England, the colonies being chiefly valuable from the selfish consideration that tliey could be made to afford a profitable market for the goods. In the interior, therefore, the people were all farmers, bringing their produce to Boston, and taking thence, when they went home, such English goods as they needed. Hence the town was a great mart. The merchants were numerous and rich ; the distilleries fumed ; the ship-yards rattled ; the busy ships went in and out ; and the country people flocked in to the centre.

Though Boston lost before the Revolution the distinction of being the largest town in America, it remained the intellectual head of the country. Its common schools gave every child a good education, and Harvard College, scarcely out of sight, and practically a Boston institution, gave a training hardly inferior to that of European universities of the day. At the bottom of the social scale were the negro slaves. The newspapers have many advertisements of slaves for sale, and of runaways sought by their masters. Slavery, however, was far on the wane, and soon after the Revolution became extinguished. The negroes were for the most part servants in families, not workmen at trades, and so exercised little influence in the way of bringing labor into disrepute.

As the slaves were at the bottom, so at the top of society were the ministers, men often of fine force, ability, and education. No other such career as the ministry afforded was open in those days to ambitious men. Year by year the best men of each Cambridge class went into the ministry, and the best of them were sifted out for the Boston pulpit. Jonathan Mayhew, Andrew Eliot, Samuel Cooper, Charles Chauncey, Mather Byles, — all were characters of mark, true to the Puritan standards, generally, as regards faith, eloquent in their office, friends and advisers of the political leaders, themselves often political leaders, foremost in the public meetings, and active in private.

Together with the ministers, the merchants were a class of influence. Nothing could be bolder than the spirit in those days of Boston commerce. In ships built at the yards of the town, the Yankee crews Avent everywhere through the world. Timber, tobacco, tar, rice, from the Southern colonies, wheat from Maryland, sugar and molasses from the West Indies, sought the markets of the world in New England craft. The laws of trade were complicated and oppressive ; but every skipper was more or less a smuggler, and knew well how to brave or evade authority. Wealth flowed fast into the pockets of the Boston merchants, who built and furnished fine mansions, walked King Street in gold lace and fine ruffles, and sat at home, as John Hancock is described, in " a red velvet cap, within which was one of fine linen, the edge of this turned up over the velvet one two or three inches. He wore a blue damask

gown lined with silk, a white plaited stock, a white silk embroidered waistcoat, black silk small-clothes, white silk stockings, and red morocco slippers." It is all still made real to us in the superb portraits of Copley, — the merchants sitting in their carved chairs, while a chart of distant seas unrolled on the table, or a glimpse through a richly curtained window in the background at a busy wharf or a craft under full sail, hints at the employment that has lifted the men to wealth and consequence.

Below the merchants, the class of workmen formed a body most energetic. Dealing with the tough oak that was to be shaped into stormdefying hulls, twisting the cordage that must stand the strain of arctic ice and tropic hurricane, forging anchors that must hold off the lee-shores of all tempestuous seas, — this was work to bring out vigor of muscle, and also of mind and temper. The caulkers were bold politicians. The rope-walk hands were energetic to turbulence, courting the brawls with the soldiers which led to the " Boston massacre." It must be said, too, that the taverns throve. New England rum was very plentiful, the cargo of many a ship that passed the " Boston Light," of many a townsman and " high private " who came to harsh words, and, perhaps, fisticuffs, in Pudding Lane or Dock Square. The prevailing tone of the town, however, was decent and grave. The churches were thronged on Sundays and at Thursday lecture, as they have not been smce. All classes were readers ; the booksellers fill whole columns in the newspapers with their lists ; the best books then in being in all departments of literature are on sale and in the circulating libraries. The five newspapers the people may be said to have edited themselves. Instead of the impersonal articles of a modern journal, the space in a sheet of the " Revolution," after the news and advertisements, was occupied by letters, in which " A Chatterer," "A. Z.," or more often some classic character, "Sagittarius," '• Vindex," " Philantlirop," ''Valerius Poplicola," " Nov-Anglus," or " Massachusettensis," belabors Whig or Tory, according to his own stripe of politics, — the champion sometimes appearing in a rather Chinese fashion, stilted up on high rhetorical soles, and padded out with pompous period and excessive classic allusion, but often direct, bold, and well-armed from the arsenals of the best political thinkers.

Of course the folk-mote of such a town as this would have spirit and interest. Wrote a Tory in those days : ^ " The town-meeting at

1 Sagittarius, quoted by Frothingham : " The Sam Adams'* Regiments," Atlantic Monthly, November, 1863.

Boston is the hot-bed of sedition. It is there tliat all their dangerous insurrections are engendered ; it is there that the flame of discord and rebellion was first lighted up and disseminated over the provinces ; it is therefore greatly to be wished that Parliament may rescue the loyal inhabitants of that town and province from the merciless hand of an ignorant mob, led on and inflamed by self-interested and profligate men." Have more interesting assemblies ever taken place in the history of the world than the Boston town-meetings ? Out of them grew the independence of the United States, and what more important event has ever occurred?

Massachusetts was unquestionably the leader in the Revolution.^ After the first year of war,

1 On this point, which local pride might dispute, a few au' thorities may be cited. Englishmen at the time felt as fol' lows : " In all the late American disturbances and in every thought against the authority of the British Parliament, the people of Massachusetts Bay have taken the lead. Every new move towards independence has been theirs ; and in every fresh mode of resistance against the law they have first set the example, and then issued out admonitory letters to the other colonies to follow it." Mauduit's Short Vieio of the Hist, of the N. E. Colonies, p. 5 See also Anburey's Travels, i 310. Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. Bay, iii. 257. Rivington, Independence the Object of Congress in America, London, 1770, p. 15. Lord Camden called Massachusetts " The rinir-leading Colony." Coming to writers of our own time, Lecky declares, Hist. ofXVIlIth Century, iii. 386 : " The Central and Southindeed, the soil of New England, as compared with the Centre and South, suffered little from the scourge of hostile military occupation. Her sacrifices, however, did not cease. There is no way of determining how many New England militia took the field during the strife •, the multitude was certainly vast. The figures, however, as regards the more regular levies, have been preserved and are significant. With a population comprising scarcely more than one third of the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies. New England furnished 118,251 of the 231,791 Continental troops that figured in the war. Massachusetts alone furnished 67,907, more than one quarter of the entire number. As regards the giving of money and supplies, without doubt her proportion was as large. There resistance to British encroachment began ; thence disaffection to Britain was spread abroad.

ern ColoDies long hesitated to follow New England. Massachusetts had thrown herself with fierce energy into the conflict, and soon drew the other provinces in her wake." Says J. R. Seeley, Expansion of England, pp. 1.54, 155 : " The spirit driving the colonies to separation from England, a principle attracting and conglobing them into anew union among themselves, — how early did this spirit show itself in the New England colonies ! It was not present in all the colonies. It was not present in Virginia ; but when the colonial discontents burst into a flame, then was the moment when Virginia went over to New England, and the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers found the power to turn the offended colonists into a new nation."

As Massachusetts led the thirteen colonies, the town of Boston led Massachusetts. " This Province began it," wrote General Gage,^ — "I might say this town, for here the arch-rebels formed their scheme long ago." The ministers of George III. recognized this leadership and attacked Boston first. So thoroughly did the forces of revolt centre here that the English pamphleteers, seeking to uphold the government cause, speak sometimes not so much of Americans, or New Englanders, or indeed men of Massachusetts, as of " Bostoneers," as if it were with the people of that one little town that the fight was to be waged. Even in the woods and wilds the preeminence was known. When Major George Rogers Clark was subduing the Mississippi valley, he found that the British emissaries, rousing the Indians and simple French hahitans against him by using the terms they could best understand, had urged them ''to fight Boston." Boston led the thirteen colonies. Who led the town of Boston? He certainly ought to be a memorable figure. He it is whose story this book is designed to tell.

The progenitor in America of the Adams family, so numerous and famous, was Henry

1 To Lord Dartmouth; quoted in Diary and Letters oj Thomas Hutchinson, p. 16.

Adams, who, with a family of eight children, settled at an early period near Mount Wollaston in Quincy. The inscription on his tombstone, written by President John Adams, describes him as having come from Devonshire, in England. English families of the name trace their descent from a remote Welsh ancestor ; there is a possibility, therefore, of a mixture of Celtic blood in the stock. Grandsons of the emigrant Henry Adams were Joseph Adams, a citizen of Braintree, and John Adams, a seaeaptain. The former was grandfather of President John Adams ; the latter was grandfather of Samuel Adams, the subject of this memoir. The second son of Captain John Adams was Samuel Adams, born May 6, 1689, in Boston, where he always lived, and where he was married at the age of twenty-four to Mary Fifield. From this union proceeded a family of twelve children, three only of whom survived their father. Of these the illustrious Samuel Adams was born September 16, O. S., 1722.

The theory that great men derive their powers from their mothers rather than their fathers may, perhaps, be regarded as exploded. It will receive no support, at least, from the case of Samuel Adams. Of his mother no mention can be found except that she was rigidly pious after the puritan standards ; his father, however, was a man of most noteworthy qualities, and filled a large place in the community in which his lot was cast. He was possessed, at first, of what for those days was a large property, and in 1712 bought a handsome estate in Purchase Street, extending two hundred and fifty-eight feet along the thoroughfare and running thence to the low water line of the harbor. The mansion, large and substantial, fronted the water, of which it commanded a fine view. Samuel Adams, senior, early made impression, passing soon from a purely private station into various public positions. He became justice of the peace, deacon of the Old South Church, then an office of dignity, selectman, one of the important committee of the town to instruct the representatives to the Assembly, and at length entered the Assembly itself. His son called him " a wise man and a good man." He was everywhere a leader. In 1715, largely through his influence, the " New South " religious society was established in Summer Street. About the year 1724, with a score or so of others, generally from the North End, where the ship-yards especially lay, he was prominent in a club designed " to lay plans for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power." It was known as the " Caulkers' Club," hence, possibly, one of the best known terms in political nomenclature. As a representative he signalized himself by opposition to that combative old veteran from the wars of Marlborough, Shute, in whose incumbency the chronic quar= rel between governor and legislature grew very sharp. The tastes and abilities, indeed, which made the son afterwards so famous, are also plain in the father, only appearing in the son in a more marked degree and in a time more favorable for their exhibition.

"Sam" Adams (to his contemporaries it was affectation quite superfluous to go beyond the monosyllable in giving his Christian name) has left but few traces of his boyhood. There is a story that as he went back and forth between home and the wooden school-house in School Street, just in the rear of King's Chapel, his punctuality was so invariable that the laborers regulated their hours of work by him. One is glad to believe that this tale of virtue so portentous has no good foundation. Undoubtedly, however, he was a staid, prematurely intelligent boy, responding to the severe Puritan influences which surrounded him, and early developed through listening to the talk of the strong men of the town, for whom his father's house was a favorite meeting-place. Of his college life, too, there is almost no mention. He was a close student and always afterward fond of quoting Greek and Latin. His father's earnest wish was that he should studytheology. Whitefield, as Sam Adams came forward into life, was quickening wonderfidly the zeal of New England. It would have been natural for the parents and the sober-minded son to feel a warmth from so powerful a torch. A minister, however, he could not be. He received the degree of A. B. in 1740, and when three years after he became Master of Arts, the thesis which he presented showed plainly what was his true bent. " Whether it be Lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved," was his subject, which he proceeded to discuss in the presence, not only of the college dignitaries, but of the new governor, Shirley, and the Crown officials, who sat in state near the young speakers at Commencement, as do their successors to-day. What he said and what effect he produced is not recorded. No one knew that as the young man spoke, then, for the first time, one of the great Revolutionary group was asserting the right of resistance by the people to arbitrary oppressors. Shirley was perhaps lost in some far - away dream of how he might get at the French ; and when thirty years after, in his retirement at Dorchester, he asked who the Sam Adams could be. that was such a thorn in the side to his successors Bernard and Hutchinson, he was quite unconscious of the fact that he himself had had the benefit, close at hand, of the first scratch.

In the Harvard quinquennial, where the names in the provincial period are arranged not alphabetically, but according to the consequence of the families to which the students belong, Sam Adams stands fifth in a class of twenty-two. As he reached his majority his father became embarrassed, and while misfortune impended, Sam Adams, whose disinclination to theology had become plain, began the study of law. This his mother is said to have disapproved; law in those days was hardly recognized as a profession, and the young man turned to mercantile life as a calling substantial and respectable. He entered the counting-house of Thomas Gushing, a prominent merchant, with whose son of the same name he was destined afterwards to be closely connected through many years of public service. For business, however, he had neither taste nor tact. The competition of trade was repulsive to him ; his desire for gain was of the slightest. Leaving Mr. Gushing after a few months, he received from his father £1,000 with which to begin business for himself. Half of this he lent to a friend who never repaid it, and the other half he soon lost in his own operations. Thriftless though he seemed, he began to be regarded as not unpromising, for there were certain directions in which his mind was wonderfully active. Father and son became partners in a malt-house situated on the estate in Purchase Street, and one can well understand how business must have suffered in the circumstances in which they were presently placed.

The times became wonderfully stirring. In 1T45 Sir William Pepperell led his New England army to the capture of Louisburg. Boston was at first absorbed in the great preparations ; while the siege proceeded the town was in a fever of anxiety, as it had good cause to be ; for brave though they were, whoever reads the story must feel that only the most extraordinary good luck could have brought the provincials through. When the victory was at length complete, and the iron cross from the market-place was brought home by the soldiers in token of triumph, never was joy more tumultuous. In all this time Samuel Adams, senior, was in the forefront of public affairs. He sat in the Assembly, and was proposed by that body for the Council or upper house, but was rejected by Shirley. He was a member of most of the mdlitary committees, in that day the most important of the legislature ; there are facts showing that his jiidgiiient was especially deferred to in affairs of that kind.

Encouraged by the success at Cape Breton, the colonists planned still further enterprises against the French, in all which Massachusetts, stimulated by Shirley, who had the heart and the head of a soldier, took part with enthusiasm. When in 1748 the magnificent fruits of New England energy were all resigned at the peace of Aix la Chapelle, a deep resentment w^as felt.

In matters relating to peace and war the elder Adams was much concerned. The son meantime, trusting himself more and more to the element for which he was born, figured prominently in the clubs and wrote copiously for the newspapers. One can easily see how business must have been carried on with some slackness, since the two partners were marked by such characteristics.

In 1748 Samuel Adams, senior, died, bequeathing to the younger Samuel a third of his estate, — his sister and his brother (who is mentioned about this time in the town records as clerk of the market) receiving their shares. In 1749 he married Elizabeth Checkley, daughter of the minister of the " New South," established himself in Purchase Street, and gave himself, with a mind by no means undivided, to the management of the malt-house.

CHAPTER 11.

THE PRE-EEVOLUTIONARY STEUGGLB.

Leaving ''Sam, the Maltster," to wait through the years that must mtervene before the hour shall really strike for him, we must make a survey of the institutions into the midst of which he was born, and of the momentous dispute in which he was presently to stand forth as a figure of the first importance.

According to the original charter, which was that of a mere trading corpoi'ation, vaguely drawn, and which was converted without color of law into the foundation of an independent state, the affairs of Massachusetts were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to hold monthly meetings for that purpose. These officials were to be elected, and a general oversight to be exercised, by the stockholders of the company to whom the charter was granted. The colonists were " to enjoy the rights of Englishmen," but had no share in the direction of affairs. The company was transferred, however, very soon, to New England, and the settlement, instead of being subject to stockholders across the water, became then self - governed, an arrangement quite different from that at first contemplated.

For the first half century, through a provision of the General Court enacted in 1631, no man was to become a freeman unless he were a church member. Since not a fourth part of the adult population were ever church members, the democracy had many of the features of an oligarchy. Among themselves the freemen cherished a spirit strongly democratic ; but towards those outside, the spiritual aristocracy preserved a haughty bearing.

At the end of fifty years, beneath Charles II. and James II., came a crisis. When at length in 1692 Sir William Phips, a rough and enterprising son of the colony, appeared as governor, he brought with him a document which was far from pleasing to the people, who had hoped from the protestant champion, William III., a restoration of the old institutions. High notions of his prerogative, however, were entertained by the new king, and were not opposed by even the wisest among his advisers. Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Maine were comprehended under one jurisdiction. New Hampshire being left independent. The old freedom of Massachusetts was to a large extent suspended.

THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE. 23

The theocracy, too, was abolished ; toleration was secured to all religious sects except papists ; and the right of suffrage, once limited to church members, was bestowed on all inhabitants possessing a freeliold of the annual value of forty shillings, or personal property to the amount of j640. The appointment of the governor, lieutenant-governor, and colonial secretary was reserved to the king. The governor possessed the power of summoning, adjourning, and dissolving the General Court, and a negative upon all its acts. He was dependent upon it, however, for his salary by annual grant. Two boards, as before, were to constitute the legislature or General Court, a Council and House of Representatives. The members of the latter body were to be chosen annually by the towns, and had the important power of the purse. The Council was to consist of twenty-eight members, who in the first instance were to be appointed by the king. Afterwards, a new Council for each year was to be chosen by joint ballot of the old Council and the Representatives, the power being given to the governor of rejecting thirteen out of the twenty-eight. To all official acts the concurrence of the Council was necessary, and to the king was reserved the power of annulling any act within three years of its passage.