Dan Snow's History Hit - Samuel Adams

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Samuel Adams was a political force of nature. Stacy Schiff tells Don how Adams, fuelled by discontent under British rule, instilled a revolutionary spirit in his peers. The result was the Declaration of Independence - and the fight to earn it.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

It's near midnight on April 18, 1775. Paul Revere rides from Boston at speed, galloping along the dark roads of rural Massachusetts. His mission? To warn fellow patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British regulars, dispatched by General Gage, are marching from Boston to arrest them. Revere locates the men in the town of Lexington and advises them to leave. In the early morning, Adams and Hancock slip away as British troops enter the town, seizing weapons and munitions, inadvertently provoking the revolution they had intended to prevent. As shots are fired in the early light, the famous battle at Lexington ensues. But Adams and Hancock are long gone, soon able to gather with fellow representatives from the other colonies in the Second Continental Congress, as together they plot the path to American independence. Hello all, thanks for tuning in to another episode of American History Hit.

I'm your host, Don Wildman. So glad to have you. Upon the early political landscape of this nation, there was once a force of nature, and his name was Samuel Adams. Sam Adams. And no, he did not brew beer. That comes much later, and he had nothing to do with it. But he had everything to do with fomenting the revolutionary spirit that eventually came to a head in a hard-fought fight against the British crown. Born in 1722, died in 1803, his life encompasses the entire revolutionary period, from its unhappy origins and frustrations with the motherland to open warfare with our sworn enemy, and finally to the founding of the nation we are privileged to enjoy today, the United States of America.

The subtler aspects of the revolution are often lost in the headlines of that early history, the big triumphs and failures, the highs and lows. But in between are the year-to-year complexities, those events, those nuts and bolts events when resistance against tyranny had yet to become revolution. And central to this story is Samuel Adams, who, though a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence, is too often left out of the conversation, even though he is now a major brand name in every local grocery store. So let's fix this. I am honored to be joined today by biographer, author, Pulitzer Prize winner Stacey Schiff,

whose 2022 publication, The Revolutionary, Samuel Adams, puts this founding father squarely in the center stage spotlight where he really belongs. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, Stacey. Hello, Don. I'm delighted to join you. You know, in prepping for this interview, I discovered I was one of those who needed a refresher. Why do you think Sam Adams' story has been so neglected? Well, for starters, he was a very diffident man, more comfortable not in the spotlight, more comfortable in the wings, happier to ease other people towards center stage. Obviously, he hails from the no-fingerprint school of sedition, so there's a certain amount of self-protection and of wanting to protect his

confederates involved and kind of erasing all traces. And I think what he represents to a large extent is a part of the revolution that, by definition, everyone was eager also to erase afterward, which is to say that very anarchic, provocative years of street theater that weren't necessarily as high-minded as what was going to come later. So I think he is in part complicit, but I think there were other reasons afterward as well. A very, very smart man. I mean, really smart. And has everything to do with the real foundational thinking behind the revolution. He's in the Thomas Paine world of why are we doing this? What's behind this larger than just we're angry about losing money and taxation and all that sort of thing. He's a real thinker, isn't he? He is. And I think what's particularly astonishing is how early he comes to some of those ideas. He's by no means alone, obviously, on this bandwagon, but he's wrestling

with this question of how much loyalty do subjects owe the crown if the crown is not respecting the subject's rights as early as his time at Harvard. So in the early 1740s, he's already beginning to think about these questions, to think about the sovereignty of the colonies, to think about where to draw the line between parliamentary authority and colonial authority. And then he has an exceptional gift, and you see this over and over again, at sort of wrestling these very inchoate ideas onto the page in very digestible form. And it's largely in that respect that he's sort of first on the bandwagon in the sense that he's really the most articulate expressor of these ideas. Yeah, he's in the world of Ben Franklin in that regard. I mean,

a lot of these guys were incredibly articulate and great writers for one thing, but you're right, he's the sort of popular version of that in terms of his newspaper stuff. But let's get to that in a moment. Born in 1722, this is a Boston guy through and through, a son of privilege. He ends up going to Harvard. His dad was very successful. Am I correct about that? That's right. And that's something that I think often gets forgotten about Samuel Adams, who made something of a profession of his poverty. He's born to a very wealthy home. He's extremely well-educated. He has the best education the colonies had to offer at the time,

gets a master's degree at Harvard as well. But while he is a student, the family is ruined by, in fact, an act of parliament. And so he will lose what remains of the fortune. He never really amounts to anything professionally, but he is very much, in an unusual way, a downwardly mobile man at this point. So that later when his enemies will say, oh, he's just a desperado, he's just a bankrupt, this is a man of disappointed ambition, What they fail to factor in is that he's someone who came from wealth and has chosen to devote himself to politics and to embrace his poverty. There's an aspect of Sam Adams' life which endears him to me, which is that he really only hits his stride later in life. I totally relate. I think we all do. I feel entirely the same way. It really is a charming thing about him and has to do with also his long life, which is lucky, too.

But he's really a man of action. And when he engages with the American Revolution, as it builds up steam and momentum, that's really where he finds his purpose in life. Prior to that, he's sort of this Deacon Adams son and living that life of trying to find his feet. The event that happens that I think you're referring to is this land bank crisis, they call it, which is very interesting to me. And certainly before I prep for this interview, something I'd never heard of before. This is an unfortunate event that happens to his father. Can you explain the basics of this? Sure. It's a little bit of, in miniature, a kind of dress rehearsal for what's going to come later. Massachusetts, like many of the colonies, suffered from a shortage of hard currency through the 1730s. And in 1740, nine Massachusetts men got together

and essentially established a bank of which they would issue currency backed by land. And Adams's father was one of the nine directors of this bank. And they're all of them prominent men. They're not among the most prominent men in the colony, but they're all of them justices of the peace or well-placed individuals. The bank is initially encouraged by the then governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who immediately upon its establishment gets a tremendous amount of blowback from the merchant elite in Boston, who don't particularly want to be trafficking in these bills, which are, of course, worthless to their English creditors, to their London creditors. And so impose upon him to shut down the bank. The governor, in a sort of hysterical

mode, applies to London for direction. And to make a very long story short, in a draconian edict, Parliament shuts down the bank while making its nine directors jointly and severally liable for the bank's debts. So essentially ruining Samuel Adams Sr., who had invested much of his fortune anyway in this venture, and leaving our Samuel Adams ultimately liable for his father's debts. It's fascinating to me to trace the roots of the revolution into these individual lives. Be they men or women, their purpose in creating and joining the momentum of this revolution often has this personal aspect of it. And it's different in each one of them, really. But in this case, it's undeniable. When you see your parent, your father, in this case, taken down by the government, essentially,

it plants a big seed of resentment, at least, and maybe even more of a purposeful feeling of everything's out of whack in this situation. Do you think that's true in his case? I would hesitate to draw a bold line between the land bank fiasco and where Adams ends up. But I think you're entirely correct in that there is a real personal animus here against that little merchant elite I just mentioned, that sort of intermarried circle of elite, very wealthy merchants, and in particular, Thomas Hutchinson. And I feel as if there is a personal grudge against Hutchinson and Hutchinson's family that animates a number of

people in Boston, Samuel Adams and John Adams, perhaps most of all. I mean, John Adams devotes pages and pages to his hatred for Thomas Hutchinson, who is lieutenant governor in the 1760s and will go on to become the royal governor, and who seems to him to be the emblem of everything that both Adams men, in fact, dislike and whom Samuel Adams will turn into sort of the face of tyranny. So I do think that there is a great deal of personal affection or disaffection behind the scenes here. Yes. It's so exciting to talk to somebody who knows this stuff, has studied this stuff. And I'm really, really interested in where these revolutionary ideas come from in these

particular individuals. This is a time when there are no models for this. There haven't been any big revolutions to sort of study and say, oh, we want to do this. The American Revolution later becomes the model for other revolutions. So where did these guys get this idea? It's really absolutely a miracle, isn't it? In a way that you can say we're going to now create something which has never, it has existed, but has never really endured. The short answer to your question is the Harvard College Library to some extent. I mean, Adams, as you can tell from his later writing, is very influenced by Rousseau and by Locke and by Hobbes in particular, and by Humes and by Montesquieu. The classical illusions across the board, and this is true up and down the American

coast, are very rich. All of the basically leading Americans of the time, all of the well-educated Americans of the time have largely appealed to the same classical texts. And it was said jokingly later that you could blame the revolution on Samuel Adams' town meetings and the Harvard College Library. But in fact, that is from where these ideas do derive. And it's interesting, you can see whole globs of this sometimes. I just sent a piece of Adams' to a friend and he said, I didn't expect to find the Leviathan staring out at me from within the piece. So yes, you can see enormous passages just migrated from an Enlightenment text or a classical

text into what Samuel Adams will be publishing in the newspapers, in fact. And that's what I mean about that ability to integrate these larger ideas into something that was very digestible and very contagious in the papers. I suppose the revolution in England had a lot to do with this as well. I mean, that was a sort of stirred the pot in terms of individual rights and relationship to the crown and so forth. So it's ironic, but that was probably one of the seeds planted. So let's talk about his life and how he comes out of school and becomes a worker in the world. He is a natural born writer. So early on in the 1740s, and these are the years when, as we said, he amounts to very little and

he's having trouble sort of getting traction. He is part of a short-lived newspaper called The Independent Advertiser, which has in it a lot of appeals to individual rights, a lot of very rousing anthems. The pieces are all of them unsigned. In many cases, we can't be certain whose are whose. There is a whole series that are written in the guise of a very poor cobbler, and a cobbler would have been sort of at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in Boston at the time. And those pieces are clearly Adams's, but those seem to be his first series of published pieces. And then in the years that follow, obviously, he's made some impression with his literary gifts, and he will begin to help to, as he puts it, burnish and polish

the prose of friends who are in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. I referred in the opening to these events that happened sort of in the 1740s into the 50s. Much of what the American Revolution is stirred up by is the French and Indian War, which is 1757 into the 1760s. At that point, the British government needs to pay off this huge debt that they've incurred because of this colonial war that they fought, at least over here. And so George III, the British crown, begins to create these taxations, this set of laws, sometimes known as the coercive acts or intolerable acts. This is what really rubs Sam Adams wrong, among others. How does he deal with this in terms of creating the network that becomes the beginnings of revolution, really?

From London's point of view, the colonies appear to be flourishing madly. So the idea that they should be somehow taxed for their own protection or for the cost that London has sunk into their protection doesn't seem terribly far-fetched. From the American point of view, the economic situation is not entirely rosy, particularly not in Massachusetts or in Boston, where in fact, as I said, things are in a state of some economic deterioration. And moreover, there are already so many regulations in place which hobble American trade. I mean, you couldn't print a Bible in the colonies. You couldn't move a bolt of cloth from one colony to another. So already there's this feeling of being hemmed in. And to that come these new regulations, which essentially indicate that parliament has the

right to legislate for and tax the colonists. Something that had interestingly never really been, there's an enormous amount of vagueness around this question, which is sort of astonishing that in the 1760s, no one had actually really resolved this issue. The word parliament is actually not in the Massachusetts Bay Colonies Charter. And Adams is from the start utterly convinced that the colonists are not represented in parliament. So therefore they participate in that government as much as they would in appointing the emperor of China. There's absolutely no relationship between the two countries. And as he puts it, since their governments are parallel, it makes just as much sense for the colonies to tax Great Britain as for Great Britain to tax her colonies.

So yes, from the start, there is an enormous uproar. The Sugar Act is 1764, but the Stamp Act is really the thing that gets the ball rolling in 1765, an act that, in fact, is never enforced because there was such enormous opposition in the colonies. Right. They impose these taxes and then there's reaction and sometimes they pull them back. And thus we go on for years and years until things get really dire, which is when you end up in the 1770s with, you know, famously the Tea Tax? Exactly. I mean, it becomes less a question of taxing than of asserting the right to tax. The Declaratory Act is really just there. So it's sort of a placeholder, just so you remember who's boss here, who's in charge here.

But yes, by the time of the Tea Act, London has lost sight of the fact that the right in question is what is sticking in the craw, not the actual tax. So that lowering a price on something or lowering a duty as the Tea Act would have done doesn't really matter to the Americans who are obsessed with the very question of rights and privileges. So these colonists, such as Adams, such as his cousin, John Adams, begin to communicate with other colonists in other colonies, you know, other Americans, and therefore begin to create these networks. You know, other Americans and therefore begin to create these networks. How much was Adams, Sam Adams, an engine of this movement? I'm talking about the Conference of Committees and the beginnings of the Loyal Nine. Fascinating things better name. But from the beginning, he is thinking not about independence, which doesn't seem to really be on his radar, although many people

like Thomas Hutchin will say that was what motivated him from the start. What he's thinking about is colonial unity. And he's trying to reach out initially throughout New England, ultimately through to the other colonies as well, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page about where the colonies stand, that they broadcast their sense of their rights, and that they are all of them united in the support of those rights, so that any attempt to suppress rights in one colony will be understood to be an attempt to suppress rights in them all. And he starts out in a fairly modest manner. He reaches out to Rhode Island. He reaches out to a friend in South Carolina. But finally, in 1772, he indeed manages,

after many attempts, to get a set of committees off the ground in every hamlet in Massachusetts, ultimately in New England, and finally throughout the colonies, which will ultimately be like an underground network. Exactly. It's a very subversive institution. It's faster than the Postal Service. He's really wired the continent for rebellion. And this is under the nose of the royal governor at that time is Thomas Hutchinson, who at first just snorts with disdain at the idea. I can't see what Adams is doing, but he does realize that it's a dangerous concept.

And then Hutchinson throws his hands up several months later when he sees that this idea has actually taken off and it has spread like wildfire and that suddenly there are committees throughout the continent. We'll be back with more American History Hit after this short break. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades.

Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. How much was the British Crown aware of such kinds of things? I mean, had they dealt with these kinds of movements in other places, or was this a first time for them? Well, Boston is always the most restive town in the colonies. Massachusetts is the worst behaved among the colonies. And Adams is very much the most wanted man in Boston.

At several junctures, there is an attempt to discuss arresting Adams, because the feeling early on is that if this one scuff law could be arrested, the entire opposition effort could be quashed. No one has yet realized, grasped in London, that it has spread in fact. And the feeling is that if Adams and a few others could simply be removed, all would go back to normal. And by the time orders finally do arrive to arrest Adams, it's too late. At that point, the commander in Boston, Thomas Gage, realizes that any attempt to arrest Adams essentially amounts to a detonation of a rebellion of some kind. Is there a moment, a certain aha moment in his life when he realizes and his colleagues realize that war is imminent?

Is that something or even inevitable? Is that something that is traceable to a certain meeting somewhere? I wish I could say yes. The word independence was obviously a very potent word and a very dangerous word. I think if you look at all of the founders, they will say that people shied from the very word until 1775 or 1776. Thomas Hutchinson will say that Adams was the first to embrace the idea of independence, but there is nothing in any of Adams's papers that indicates as much. He will draw his line. Many people draw Rubicons at many different places. Adams will personally say, after Lexington and Concord, he believed the revolution had already begun and doesn't understand why it will then take 15 or 16, whatever months it is, until the Declaration of Independence. He will spend that year saying,

we are clearly already at war with the mother country. Why are we taking so long to say as much? By the time we get to Lexington, which comes a little later in this conversation, he's been serving in a very official capacity on behalf of Massachusetts. Take us through the times of him basically going from common man to member of the Congress. The Massachusetts delegation heads to the Continental Congress with John Adams very much worried that he is going to be of the measure of the very established men he's about to meet. These men are the foremost men in the other colonies.

John feels himself very provincial. He worries that he doesn't have the understanding of the world or the proper manner or the proper grasp of even the law to be on par with these other individuals. We hear none of that hesitation from his cousin Samuel. Samuel is older than John. He seems to have been very much in his element when he first gets to Philadelphia. Several other delegates who are not admirers of Samuel Adams will assume that some of the first measures Congress takes were measures that Samuel Adams had actually negotiated behind the scenes before Congress even sat down, which would be very much true to his style. And we do know that his first

act is a very telling one. Congress sits for the first day and discusses whether it shouldn't open with a prayer. And someone makes the objection that they can't possibly open with a prayer because, of course, they all hail from different places and observe different religious practices. And Adams says, you know, we may well be Quakers and Baptists and Presbyterians and Anglicans, but I, for one, would be very happy to hear from, and then he names Duce, the very eminent Anglican minister in Philadelphia. I would be very happy to listen to this minister, who I hear is a terrific minister and who will give us a marvelous sermon. And it is seen as this very welcoming, ecumenical, masterful gesture on Adams' part, because of course, he's come to this Congress knowing that

the New Englanders have a reputation as being chauvinistic and closed-minded, and here he has opted for someone else's religious authority to step in. That is his first sort of public gesture, and it is seen to be something that's very indicative of how Adams is going to comport himself. He really follows a route towards this whole thing. I mean, he basically is a well known editorialist in the newspaper or the broadsides that he's publishing or part of. Then he is the creator or part of the Boston Town Meeting 1774. That's followed by the committee in the Massachusetts House. This is all in the course of becoming part of the Continental Congress. The first one in September 1774, is that correct?

That's right. And that's followed by the second in 75. This is the beginnings of what will really cause the most famous incident in his life, which is part of the mythology as well, but begins the story of the Revolution, which is Revere's Ride. All the while along the way, he has developed quite a reputation in the colonies, in the political circles of these colonies. He's a real, rabble-rouser is the wrong word for it. He's just a very direct and very intelligent man, but this sometimes rubs people the wrong way. Yes. It's a lot of strong-arming. You see it, for example, during periods where he and his friends have tried to

organize boycotts and pickets in Boston. Essentially, the idea was that if you could just keep Great Britain from shipping you these goods or keep from buying these goods, you could make your point economically that you couldn't make politically. And you see Adams often strong-arming importers who fail to sign on to these kinds of efforts. You see it again when a meeting is held to meet after the destruction of the tea, and a meeting is held in Boston to discuss whether or not the town should reimburse the East India Company for its losses because not everyone is completely sold on this massive destruction. And Adams turns that meeting very cleverly from one that is meant to be about the

reimbursement of the East India Company into one about whether there should be a convention of the colonies of some kind, either in New York or Philadelphia, so that everyone can discuss what has been America's fate. Was the Boston Tea Party his idea? It's impossible to say whose idea it was. You see him all over it, certainly. He mentions weeks earlier to a London correspondent that he's about to, if something doesn't change soon, he's going to be reporting soon on a, as he puts it, non-trifling incident. After the tea has sailed overboard, Thomas Hutchinson will say that Adams was never in greater glory than he was in its wake. He is very active in the meetings that lead up to the destruction. We have actual quotes of him

from those days. He's made it very clear that since he doesn't trust to the private virtue of his fellow citizens to cease from drinking the tea, he prefers to trust to their public virtue in rejecting the tea. He certainly calls it essentially destruction of property. He turns into a noble defense of liberty afterwards. He says that everything had proceeded with decency, unanimity, and spirit, which is an interesting take on an act of vandalism. with decency, unanimity, and spirit, which is an interesting take on an act of vandalism. So his fingerprints are all over it. When people are deposed finally weeks later in London, all of them will name him as a prime mover behind the events of that evening.

No way he was dressed as a Mohawk, right? I should have said, then we know precisely where he was. As the tea was being thrown overboard, he and John Hancock and a few other Confederates were very conspicuously still back at the Old South Meeting House, which also is an indication of something. Talk to me about the relationship between Sam Adams and his cousin, John. Very different kinds of men. Very different kinds of men. John is just over a decade younger, a brilliant young lawyer whom Samuel essentially recruits

to the cause. lawyer whom Samuel essentially recruits to the cause. They don't seem to have spent very much time together until the early 1760s when John will say that they first come together and immediately agree that there is no greater threat to American liberties than Thomas Hutchinson, which is an interesting statement since he's not looking to London as a threat to American liberties. He's looking to somebody on the domestic front. And John will be really starry-eyed in his admiration for Samuel through these years. He's the one who leaves us, I think, the best description of a man who is enormously dignified and affable and prudent and, as John says, of genteel manner and exquisite erudition, as opposed to this sort of sprawling rabble-rouser, which I

think is what most of us come to the story thinking of Adams as. Sam Adams' story is so complex and vast and a long life is lived. But smack in the middle of it, of course, is the beginning of this revolution. And he figures centrally into the events of Lexington and Concord. Let's take this apart because it's a very interesting episode that most Americans don't realize he was the centerpiece of. Why were the British even going towards Lexington in Concord? What was sparking this situation? General Gage, who's the commanding officer in Boston, has realized for some time that the countryside has become more radical and Boston has become

a more moderate place, that everyone who is essentially a Tory at this point has flocked to Boston, but the countryside is where he needs to make his mark. And that's a fairly dangerous proposition to march his men out into the countryside. He receives orders, which had been long delayed, in fact, in their passage from London, to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock at this point. And those orders seem to have been intercepted in some way by Adams and Hancock's friends, one of whom is the person who actually dispatches Paul Revere on the night of April 18th, 1775. And as the town of Boston can see that clearly General Gage is organizing a sortie of some kind, rides as fast as he can to Lexington, where Adams and Hancock are on a break from the

provincial Congress, to warn them that they are either about to be arrested or assassinated. So that is really Revere's mission that night, which I think we've lost. I think most of us just think he rides off and warns house after house what's about to happen. But his real goal that evening is to reach Adams and Hancock as quickly as he can. And understandably so, since that was the orders, was that their arrest was the first item on the agenda. I'm so glad to hear you say that, because I think that's the problem. And this country is facing a mountain of celebration. 250 is coming in a few years. And thus, the reevaluation of so much of certainly the revolutionary period.

Why did it happen? What really made it tick? And when you take an event such as Paul Revere's ride, mythologized by Henry Wadsworth's Longfellow's poem that I learned in fifth grade or whatever, so much American history is distilled down to the bare necessities of storytelling. And actually, the good stuff is lost. The fact that Adams and Hancock are being pursued by the British, very specifically so, seems to me the main story. And yet, until I was getting ready for this interview, I'd forgotten it completely, you know. And yet it's such an important moment when you think that Adams and certainly Hancock are these real thinkers and real engineers of what is brewing and going to become open rebellion in short order. And thus, these British soldiers are sent dispatched out there. I always think it's to go get the munitions, whatever that means, but it's actually a more specific mission. You're not alone in that. And that's why the book does open with Revere's Ride,

because it just suddenly occurred to me, I don't think any of us really thinks, what's his destination exactly that night? I mean, wasn't there something more specific? And I think it's hard to argue with Longfellow, who's embedded in all of our minds. Even at the time, even within years of the revolution, John Adams is going on about how all of these events are likely to be misremembered. And other associates, Benjamin Rush is sort of saying, you know, given the way the revolution is being written up in such an erroneous fashion, should we even believe Thucydides or Livy? Are all of the ancients as flawed as I can see that these accounts of our revolution already have begun to be? At the moment, at the origin, we already have a lot of concern

about how these events are going to be represented and who is going to be most represented, for which, of course, John Adams has a million opinions. And Revere's ride works. He is not arrested that night. How do they get away? There's a tussle between Samuel Adams and John Hancock that evening. Hancock is unwilling to leave the house in which the two of them are staying. He thinks he should stay and fight. Adams finally convinces him, or actually Revere on a second visit convinces him that they absolutely must flee.

The two of them are trundled off in carriage to a nearby town where they seem to be crouching in the woods in hiding as the first shots are fired in Lexington. They miss that clash in any event. They're not on hand. Very quietly, they are then conveyed to Worcester, from which they will leave for the Continental Congress. And this is at a moment when all of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, or at least its eastern part, seems to be in motion. Shots have been fired. No one knows what's really going on. No one knows who's fired first. The roads are thick with carriages. It's utter chaos. And through that, Adams and Hancock slip to meet the other Massachusetts Bay colony

representatives and to head again south to Philadelphia to see how the other colonies intend to address this military collision. Given his personality, I'm always surprised that Sam Adams wasn't at a barricade somewhere with a musket. I'm surprised he didn't fight, given who he was. The line that comes down to us, and I would take this with a grain of salt, is him clapping John Hancock on the back and saying, you know, you know that our place is in the cabinet. Our place is in the government. We're not meant to be out there, as John Hancock is very assiduously oiling his

gun. A year later, he signs the Declaration of Independence. How much did he have to do with that document, the writing of it? Much of those months is cloaked in secrecy. There are very few records, obviously, of what's going on. There is one account, again, from a non-admirer, which says that Samuel Adams gave a pivotal speech just before the final vote was taken, and that it was that speech that actually produced the majority vote was taken, and that it was that speech that actually produced the majority vote that put everybody on the same page that resulted in the Declaration. That's one account. I'm not sure that we can really take that one account as gospel. There's definitely a great deal of working behind the scenes in the months preceding,

because as I said, he's convinced that independence dates really from Lexington. He has everything to do with the creation of this nation, even after the revolution. I mean, he goes on to become the governor of Massachusetts. He really lives out the most foundational years of this nation. Was he part of the constitutional structure as well? He has trouble with the constitution. And here you begin to see a man who was very much at the forefront, very much the prime mover for 12 or 15 years, really sort of parting ways with the country and where the country was moving. He is very reluctant to sign the Constitution. And we know that one of the reasons is that it doesn't have a Bill of Rights, which he feels strongly that it ought to have.

to have. And two of the issues that particularly concern him are he feels that the abolition of slavery should be included in that document, and that there should be a clause specifically addressing freedom of the press. And without some of those clauses, he believes that the document is incomplete. And so there's a great deal of concern that he will, in fact, after all of his hard work, upset the apple cart and refuse to sign, but he ultimately does sign. Boy, when I think about Sam Adams, I mean, for some reason I have the sensation of fresh air. There's something about him that is such an antidote to so many sort of, well, I guess the metaphor I'm looking for is the spider webs. You know, the old fashioned view of America is actually addressed by looking at this man and understanding his outlook, or even his manner, even, is so

refreshing to me. I couldn't agree more. And it's that emphasis on integrity and austerity. And as you say, why is he not well-remembered? Because he didn't believe he had to issue advertisements for himself. And that in itself seems to me so deeply old world and highly appealing. I mean, he's very idealistic, which is also the reason probably why he fails to find a place in the new America that he has helped to create, because he's too much wed to his ideals to be able to really fit into the new political landscape. Did he die a happy man? From what we can tell, and we know this mostly from John Adams, he seems to have succumbed to some kind of senility toward the end and seems to have outlived himself and been aware that he was

outliving himself. So I think those last years are fairly pathetic years. He's confined really to a very small social circle and confined to his home. He is for years after the revolution, a sort of port of call for aspiring revolutionaries from other countries. He's a sort of relic from this golden age. But I think he does succumb to some kind of dementia toward the end. And he lives to a very advanced age for his time in a fairly frail physical as well as, I think, mental state. The book is The Revolutionary. Samuel Adams, the author, is the esteemed Stacey Schiff.

I really encourage people to read this. I mentioned during this conversation that there are big years ahead coming. And that's kind of why we're excited about covering events like this. 2026 is 250 years of America. That's only three years away as I speak. So start reading books like this one and start thinking about this whole idea of this founding of this nation, because this is the chance for new generations to learn this. Thank you very much for writing it, and thank you for joining us here. Thank you, Don. It was a pleasure. to learn this. Thank you very much for writing it. And thank you for joining us here. Thank you, Don. It was a pleasure.

Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.