The Eric Metaxas Show - #190 - Ira Stoll

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

An excerpt from a Socrates In The City conversation with Ira Stoll. Watch more at socratesinthecity.com.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to Socrates in the city, the city in which we find ourselves. Really, it's greater Boston, technically, and we're in Lexington, which is not a city. But it's extraordinary to be here. We will now be doing yet another of our conversations on The Examined Life. This is part of our Revolution series to celebrate our 250th supercentennial anniversary as Americans. and I'm thrilled today to have as my guest for this conversation, Ira Stoll, who spent a lot of time in New York but currently lives in Boston. Let me see if I can tell you a little bit about him.

First of all, he is mostly for the purposes of our conversation today. The author of an extraordinary book came out in 2008 on the life of Samuel Adams. Only because I wrote my book on The Revolution did I become fully aware of this magnificent human being to whom we owe so much as Americans named Samuel Adams. So the book is Samuel Adams A Life by Ira Stahl. We'll be discussing that and the life of Samuel Adams. Ira is also, while he was vice president, managing editor of the New York Sun, which he helped to found. Extraordinary newspaper, he was a consultant to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, North American editor of the Jerusalem Post, and on and on it goes, became managing editor of the forward, reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

He's a graduate of Harvard, which we won't hold against him, because it turns out John Adams and Samuel Adams were also graduates of Harvard. He was president of the Harvard Crimson, which tells you he's kind of brainy, which we will allow. I am really thrilled to have you, Ira. Welcome to Socrates in the city. Thanks for having me. And thank you for not leaving during that introduction. I always make people.

I was so excited to discover who Samuel Adams was, and part of that involved discovering your book. So I'll start with the, as an author, there's the standard question we authors get. You know, what in the world possessed you to take the trouble? Because it's considerable trouble to write a book, especially biography. To write the book on Samuel Adams, how did that begin for you? Yeah, well, there's a saying that all novels are actually autobiographical. This is nonfiction, but I felt a certain affinity personally. towards Samuel Adams

in that he was from Massachusetts and he went to Harvard and religion was a core part of his identity not like a hobby or something that he just did it wasn't just a tribalist identity yeah no it was it was it was central

to what he was was and who he was and what he did. And so I also grew up, yeah, I grew up around here and visiting some of these revolutionary sites as a kid. And when I wrote this, it was a period of interest in the founding fathers. I mean, there was David McCullough had written this biography of John Adams. It was about to come out. This is around 2008 was when your book came out. Yeah, I started working on it actually much earlier. Well, not much earlier, but a few years.

A book takes a while, as you know. And Walter Isaacson had written this biography of Benjamin Franklin. So there was a resurgence of interest in the founding fathers. And I felt that Samuel Adams was kind of, like a value stock. He was underappreciated. These other founders were getting a lot of attention, but Samuel Adams, who I think was just as important, maybe more important than any of the other ones, people thought of them mainly as a brand of beer. And so I thought there was an opportunity there. So that's why I wrote the book. The greatest challenge for me, because I've,

just come out with this book on The Revolution or just finished writing it, the greatest challenge for me in these conversations is to shut up because I will find myself, as I do now, agreeing violently almost with what you're saying. And it's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to you for having written this book, because it is so true that Samuel Adams has been undervalued. and I know in some interview you were asked, you know, why you wrote about Samuel Adams. And part of the answer, which being the author of biographies myself, I get that question, you're making a, it's an interesting judgment call, isn't it? That you want the, you don't want the subject to be so obscure that no one in the world cares that you've written a book.

but if the subject is too known, people have the attitude. Well, why do we need another book on, you know, so-and-so? So talk about that calculation a little bit, because that's an interesting calculation that authors make, not always well, but in your case, I think, very well. Yeah, so you're totally right. There's a sweet spot between somebody who's obscure enough that there's an element of surprise,

that it's news to the readers how significant the person actually was, but not so obscure that there's a reason they're so obscure, which is they're not that important. At the time I wrote this book, Samuel Adams, was in that sweet spot. And I hope that because of the attention the book got, that that's less so now. I mean,

this book got a lot of attention eventually. So it actually, a lot of people now know about Samuel Adams who didn't. Well, there's so much to know about him. I'll start with the quote on the cover of the hard cover book. It says, this is John Adams, who was the second cousin to Samuel Adams. John Adams said, without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written. That's so true that it's almost an understatement. There are many, many other quotes from Adams and others who are making the case that Samuel Adams was the central figure of the revolution.

if by revolution we mean the run up to the revolution before the revolution, what enabled us to have the revolution. But in writing a book about somebody who was at least somewhat obscure, you do partially have to answer, and I think you do, why they haven't been more well-known. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because if he's such a big deal and he is, I mean, I don't think there is a bigger deal, frankly,

than Samuel Adams at all. I don't think anybody that's a bigger deal than Samuel Adams, if we're talking about this thing called the revolution. So it's at least somewhat surprising that we have to say that, that everybody doesn't already know that. So what are some of the reasons that we might not all have been raised as kids growing up in America to know the centrality of Adams? Yeah, well, so I'll give three reasons. reasons. The first is that he was never president of the United States. So after the revolution... What? I can't believe we didn't know that. After the revolution, he became lieutenant governor

and then governor of Massachusetts. So, you know, there's no shame in that. Like, you can get a lot done at the state and local level. There's less gridlock. But in a weird way that it's funny that you mention that. The only reason, I mean, I want to hit pause for a second is because... We know that, yes, John Adams became president of the United States, but even before that, he was a very central big deal figure. So it is interesting in a way that you're saying that he doesn't, he kind of, he does his best work really before 1776 or immediately after 1776. So you're, but you do think that it's. Yeah, although I wouldn't slight him as governor of Massachusetts or as, as, as, uh, as, uh, she's,

shaper of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. So part of it is just coincidence when you're born. He was a little bit older than John Adams or Jeff. What year was he born? I mean, so. I guess it was 23. Put me on the spot. I think it was 1723.

So he's older than Washington. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's older than Adams. Yeah. And he had absolutely nothing to do with when he was born. Exactly. You can't blame him for that. So, so, that's one reason.

The other reason is that he was so religious and concerned with piety and, you know, writing about the rights of the colonists as Christians. And so American public schools, the Supreme Court decided at some point that you couldn't talk about religion. American public school. So modern, you can't in K to 12, in a lot of public schools, they think that you can't talk about that. And so it's been written out. Okay.

They think that you can't talk about that. But you and I know that's wrong. Yeah. So I totally agree. But the reality is that if you try to talk about that stuff in a, in a, you know, a New York City or a Boston public school, you know, the ACLU will be on your case and the teachers union will be on your case and people will complain and the textbooks won't get approved by the governors in some states. And so it doesn't happen. It's easier to talk about other stuff.

So an unconstitutional animus toward religion. in our lifetime since, I guess, the 60s, early 60s, is part of the reason for his obscurity. Yeah, I mean, I think the kinder interpretation would be that it's a misunderstanding, right? People said, we don't have an established religion in the United States, so people took that to a total extreme to say, like, you couldn't even teach about religion

because people would get confused and think that that was a government endorsement of a particular religion. But, you know, I'm against it. I think it's ridiculous. But so that's the second reason. Is this secular trend? That was happening not just starting in the 1960s with the liberal Supreme Court, but even in Massachusetts, and I write about this in my book at the end, where the congregationalists were becoming starting to become universalists and the importance and sort of intensity of religion was fading.

And so in that way, people at the time, the federalists were talking about Samuel Adams as kind of a throwback. Yes, exactly. So imagine it's the 1780s or the 1790s and you're being considered a throwback. I mean, it's kind of funny. But let's, I want to give some context because not everybody's going to be tracking with that. So Samuel Adams, somebody wrote a biography about him, I think called The Last of the Puritans. I don't remember.

But he really was out of that 17th century Boston Puritan stock, which became the congregational church. That's right. And so people forget, like, one of the main reasons that Europeans came from England to Massachusetts, the pilgrims originally and then the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay Colony was for religious freedom. They were Protestants who didn't want to be part of the Church of England,

and they wanted the congregations to decide and hire the ministers not to have them be appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is a big thing, and I only touch upon it in my book, but that idea that there was, even though, you know, John Winthrop and others come here in 1630, there is this persistent over the decades effort by the English to kind of pull them back when they send Sir Edmund Andros over here. And a lot of the Puritans are, I think, rightly suspicious that they are trying to. trying to get the Church of England to come here as a way of pulling us back into their monarchical system. Right. And so it's not just the K to 12 education system that is not so hip to this, but even like academic, if people teaching history in the colleges and universities are much more interested in finding ways to portray the

Americans as European settler colonialists who are enslaving people and committing genocide against the Native Americans and oppressing women and, you know, all this revisionist fault-finding about the founders.

Whereas to think about it in the dimensions of church history, It's just not something that somebody who got a PhD in an American university, you know, people aren't really set up to think that way. They don't have the, it's a big leap for people to think they're very attuned to these categories of class and race and gender and ethnicity. but to think about things in religious categories or religious categories that are more subtle than just Christian or non-Christian, but, you know, to think, you know, okay,

like the Church of England versus Congregationalists versus Unitarians, you know, versus the Anglicans in Virginia. Like that whole language, you know, you lose people when you start when you go there. On the other hand, for journalists and academics to lose that perspective is pretty inexcusable when it comes to history, which is I think why we need books like yours. It's amazing to me that that level of ignorance or secular bias took over some people have called it a long march through some institutions, but it really does

skew things that eventually need at least some correction. And your book goes a long way toward helping us understand that. You mentioned before we go further that already in the 18th century Unitarians and others were taking some ascendance over the congregationalist. But it is interesting that there was a Jonathan Mayhew who was a pretty famous preacher-pastor in Boston. He preached a sermon in 1750 that John Adams said everyone was familiar with that sermon because it was a kind of a refutation of the standard interpretation of the New Testament Book of Romans chapter 13 that says that if you are serious about your faith, you need to be pietistic, which is to say, don't be involved in politics. And so you have

the Unitarians and the congregationalists and others pretty much agreeing that their faith would lead them to stand against tyranny. And I think that's, well, that's certainly Samuel Adams' view. Yeah, for sure. And at the same time, the British troops who they were fighting against also had their religious dimensions to what they were doing. But that was part of the, that was part of the clash. When we look at the headlines coming out of Iran and Israel right now, the fog of war is real. It's hard to know whom to trust. That same feeling of confusion often hits home when you're trying to navigate Medicare. There are so many bad actors in this space looking to capitalize on confusion rather than provide clarity. That's exactly why I am proud.

to partner with Chapter. Chapter acts as a trusted advocate, helping you cut through the noise to understand your Medicare options. Unlike most agents who only show you a few plans, Chapter looks at every plan nationwide. They're completely unbiased and focus on what's best for you, not the insurance companies. If you're turning 65 or just have questions about your current coverage, give them a call at 571-421-1253. That's 571-4-21-1-125. It's free, it's quick, and it's the kind of honest guidance we need more of today. Call chapter and get the peace of mind you need. You said there were three things.

So the first thing was the secular bias that kind of causes teachers not to talk about religious stuff and teaching American history. The second thing was the move kind of away from congregationalists like Samuil, Adams already in the 18th century. And what was the third thing? Well, just, well, they're just the Washington versus the state, you know, that Nat, that, that he was no, he wasn't president in the United States. And then the other thing is that he wasn't a villain in these class and race and sex dimensions. He's actually, I think you could argue something of a hero. So he, he doesn't, If you're trying to, if you're trying to, it's much more convenient to talk about Jefferson, um, have sleeping with the slaves at Monticello or Washington as a slaveholder.

If you have Samuel Adams, who's actually good on these race and sex and class issues, you know, he doesn't, if your goal is to demonize the American past and impose guilt, which is the goal of a lot of people currently writing about American history, then Samuel Adams is of no use to that project. That's really funny. I hadn't thought of that. if only he had owned slaves and abused women, we'd all know he'd be on the $50 bill. Well, it's funny to bring that up because it was in my own research, I was astonished to see how, you know, the group that I think of as the Boston or Massachusetts Puritans, that stock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and James Otis Jr., particularly were explicit and vocal about their opposition to slavery.

and very what we would think of as liberal in their views of whether women ought to be educated or whether Native Americans ought to be educated. And it's kind of interesting that because they got all that right to think that that's why they didn't get more attention. Because sometimes I feel the same way about John Adams, that he should get 100 times more attention than Jefferson, but he doesn't. So many, I didn't prepare a list, but so many of the people that we think of as, you know, the biggest names of the revolution, sing the praises of Samuel Adams and really hold him up as absolutely central as the figure of the revolution. One of the things you didn't mention, or I don't think you did just now, about why he might not be more well-known. want your reaction to this, is that I think he was so committed to the cause, so selfless in the best way and so committed to the cause that he was very happy not to be known, very happy to be secret

about his efforts, and also practically speaking knew that because he was such a force, he would get in trouble if there was evidence of his involvement. Definitely of the Massachusetts revolutionaries, the one who had the big ego and would be happy to have been known as the father of the American Revolution would be John Hancock. And you can see that

from the size of his signature on the Declaration of Independence. And, you know, the image that I have in this book is, you know, John Hancock would roll up at some inn between here and Philadelphia with an

elaborate carriage drawn by a parade of white horses and Samuel Adams would be on his own horse riding, you know. It's just like the contrast is really... In a brown homespun suit. Exactly. Really dramatic. And, you know, you could see that even also in, if you go to the Museum of Fine Arts

in Boston, there are portraits of the two by Copley and Hancock. is got these ruffled sleeves, and he's pictured with his account book, like basically counting all the money he's got. And Samuel Adams is in a much more plain outfit. It's actually a suit that when he went off to Congress, the people of Boston had to take up a collection to buy for him. I think what you see in the picture is actually like a, a, a quill and the declaration of the rights of the columnist. Something intellectual substantive that Adams... Are you referring to this portrait?

Yeah, yeah, there you go. There's no quill in this portrait. Let the record show that the author of the book... No, but it's kind of funny because this... You brought it up before I was going to, but since you brought it up, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, very different, and yet... very close, principal figures in the revolution before the revolution. We are here, amazingly, in Lexington, where they were being sought by the British on April 18th and 19th.

It is amazing that relationship that they had so different. Samuel Adams, and I want to talk a little bit about his early years, but he really was in many ways a mentor to John Hancock. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, they were rivals and also collaborators or partners in this work. Hancock financing some of it and providing like leadership. And Samuel Adams more on the. writing and organizing and communicating side. And I think Samuel Adams was probably more liked in Philadelphia by the other members of the Continental Congress who could be put off by Hancock's ego and ambition.

But, yeah, I mean, there were moments when both of their lives were at stake right here in Lexington, just hiding out. And that's what helped to start it all, Lexington and Concord. I mean, the British were coming out from Boston to try to find arms that had been hidden. by the colonists, but they also were trying to capture Adams and Hancock, yeah. Who were hiding here. Yes. I mean, right here, not in this room, but close by, because they knew that they were marked men. Yeah.

And they were about to embark on a journey to Philadelphia to go to Carpenter's Hall for the first. gathering of the Continental Congress. It's an amazing moment in history, or I'm sorry, the Second Continental Congress to Independence Hall, rather. But they were hiding here because they knew if they were in Boston, however 15 miles away, they might well get pinched by the British. Yep. So they were here. But let's talk about the run-up to 1775 in Lexington and Concord. Samuel Adams early in life. How does he begin life? Where does he begin life?

What does he think he will be when he grows up? We know what became of him, but where does he think he'll end up? And what are his early years? Yeah. Well, ironically enough, after Harvard, he was a tax collector. and tax collector at that time was a elected town job in Boston, and he saw that it was hard for, it was hard to collect taxes. Like the way it worked was a tax collector actually got a cut of what he collected.

It was a commission-based job. I think Thomas Payne was also a tax collector. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think Zakias was a tax collector. Forgive me. So, so, so, um, You know, we talked a lot about the religious stuff, but there's an economic dimension to all this, too, which is resonant in modern politics as well, which is that on some dimension, the American Revolution was a tax revolt. And it was a revolt against taxation without representation.

But working as a tax collector, you get to see that. And so he, he, he, it wasn't like, his youth wasn't like, oh, this is someone who's destined for greatness. He bounced around. He reminds me, I mean, I just mentioned Thomas Payne, who was also a tax collector at some point, but he reminds me of Thomas Payne and of other people in that he was, I guess we would say today a little lost. He did not find himself until later on,

although he was awake to these ideas already at Harvard. He was awake to the ideas of liberty, to, you know, John Locke. This was something that mattered to him early on, even before I think he knew where he would be going. That's right. That's right. And, you know, the curriculum at that time in Boston Latin School, where he went before Harvard and at Harvard, it was a classical curriculum. So they were reading the stuff about the Greeks and the Roman Senate and stories about war and virtue. and they were also reading the Bible.

And he was going to church with his family. And he had a lot of ministers in his extended family, cousins, and eventually he married the daughter of a minister. So that was the environment that he grew up there. And he was writing essays very early on. I mean, it's amazing to me. In the 40s and 50s of the 18th century already, he's writing, because we don't think of anybody doing that.

We think that started in the 60s. He was early on, again, awake to these things, which I just find fascinating because we don't think of people as anybody thinking about this kind of stuff before the stamp act. Yeah. Yeah, well, there were various tension points all along. involving self-rule, and he was definitely alive to all that.

At some point, he really seizes the reins of leadership in the 1760s. Obviously, the sugar tax is 1764, the Stamp Act 1765, and he, undeniably leads the way in opposing it with a spate of essays that he writes in the Boston Gazette and in, I don't know what the word is, inciting seems too strong, but kind of organizing the political theater that leads to the August 14th mob riot and then the August 26th mob riot. Can you tell us about that? Because again, he didn't want to be too known for that, but it seems clear that he is the ringleader. Yeah, I mean, I would push back a little bit against the word mob riot. I mean, I don't want to...

Which word? I guess both. You know, the British tried to portray what was going on in Boston as mob riots. but Samuel Adams in particular was quite concerned about property damage and rule of law. And, you know, the argument he was trying to make was that the British were violating the Constitution by stealing the colonists stuff through unlawful taxes. Well, I think we would agree with him on that. I would certainly agree with him on that. just kind of interesting how you have these different, there are these different elements in the

opposition. I mean, for folks who are unfamiliar with it, you know, England had won the French and Indian War. They had incurred outrageous debt. And they said, hey, we got to get the colonists to help us pay for that. So we need to tax them. And they proposed the Stamp Act, the Stamp Tax, which was really, I think, startling to the American Congress. colonists. They thought, what in the world is this? What do we do about this? And Samuel Adams helped them think about what we ought to do, which is oppose it with everything we have. Right. And he was an elected, he was a member of the Boston town meeting, and he was an elected member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. And so from his perspective, those were the

bodies that ought to be deciding the taxes in Boston, not some faraway parliament and king. because that was taxation without representation. And that was the core issue for him. It might as well be slavery. And so he reached to those metaphors. So to be clear, to use the cliche, it wasn't about the money. People often say, well, it was about the money and it was about the taxes. But it really was the principal antecedent to the issue.

That's right. And, you know, that's not just us saying it wasn't just about the money, because at some point, Parliament backed down and they just, they said, okay, you know, we'll take off the taxes. We'll just have a declaratory act declaring that we have the right to impose these taxes. And for Samuel Adams, that was not okay either. Like, the principle was important. Today's show is brought to you by Grace Precious Metals. In an industry that can be confusing, grace believes in doing business differently with Christian values, transparent pricing and a focus on straightforward gold and silver bullion, not high markup

collectible coins. They even publish their spreads directly on their website so you can see the numbers before speaking with anyone. Learn whether physical precious metals may fit your financial plans at metaxismetals.com. That's metaxismetals.com. the well so there's this moment of course in 1765 the the the mob riots or whatever we call them it starts as political theater of course and i i just find this it's really magical to think that the you know that um you have atoms and others clearly behind the scenes thinking we've got to do something before the stamp act takes effect which would be November 1st of 1765. So they're writing endless essays mostly in the Boston Gazette, getting people talking about it, but also planning political theater. It's interesting to me that that was a very

big part of the story. Yeah. Well, so just like today, you might have a social media account that posts at the same time to Instagram, YouTube, X, TikTok. Don't forget Truth Social. True Social, exactly. Samuel Adams had a multi-pronged approach. So he was working politically in the Boston Town meeting in the Massachusetts House of Representatives through formal. He was working in the press, as you point out,

the Boston Gazette, that was a really important thing at that time. There was no internet. So newspapers were super important, and he would actually go to the newspaper office with Eads and Gill, who owned that newspaper, at the night that the newspaper was scheduled to come out, and he would go. He would help print it, and he would, you know, help write the head. This really resonated for me as a newspaper person. And then he would also be in the taverns, the coffee houses, and working with informal groups called the Sons of Liberty and people who may not have a college education, people who were artisans, they would have songs, they had this Liberty tree that they set up.

And so you're right. There was a dimension of street theater political demonstrations that was a part of that. And that eventually you get later the Boston Tea Party. But he was careful not to be personally involved with anything that could be. described as mob violence. And that came up after the Revolution too. Yeah, we don't have video

of him actually punching anyone. But it is it's interesting that he was really the ringleader. I mean, there's no doubt that he was the leader of the movement. And so some of it he could control some of it

when he taps Ebenezer Macintosh to be, I mean, it's an interesting thing that kind of the muscle, right? I mean, because they have these mobs in Boston, the South End Mob and the North End Mob. And he knows that he wants people. He wants bodies. He wants something. But I agree with you.

I don't think that he wanted violence. Yeah. But there was some violence, clearly. Governor Hutchinson's house was raided. Yeah. And Samuel Adams was public. publicly, if I recall correctly, like, you know, negative on that. Like, you know, we have to be careful here. And, and, you know, he was also, he had the committees of correspondence,

which were writing letters to other towns. I remember this wasn't just a Boston mob phenomenon. This became a throughout New England, throughout all the colonies phenomenon. So they had to communicate through these letters and also there were sermons being preached in the churches. So, you know, again, I think you could chalk some of this up to

liberal historians. You know, oh yeah, let's make this all about mob violence. Like as if the American Revolution was just, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement. Or the French Revolution. Exactly. But, you know, just as important was letter writing and newspaper columns and sermons.

Yeah. You know, so, you know, I don't want to minimize the importance of what was happening in the streets. But I think where Samuel Adams was really important was in that revolution in the hearts and minds of men. That was a revolution of ideas. Well, you always have sort of fringe elements, and it's an interesting thing because there is this egalitarian aspect to it, that the working class tufts of Boston hate, you know, the dissolute, wealthy, British elites. They may not hate them in a sophisticated way, but they have a sense of imbalance or a sense that they're, that their rights are not being respected. So it falls to such as Samuel Adams and others to articulate that.

Yeah, but they were also allied with George Washington and John Hancock, who were very wealthy. I mean, John Hancock was a wealthy merchant living in a fancy townhouse. And, you know, the idea that the American Revolution was some sort of class-motivated anti-aristocratic, you know, thing. It's just, if that was the real motive, then why wasn't there a revolution at that time in London where the inequality of wealth was much more obvious?

I mean, you can walk down here on Brattle Street in Cambridge and look at the houses of the fanciest people at the time. and, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're, their, their night's houses, there may be three stories tall, high, they maybe have three or four bedrooms, but they're not like that castles that there were in, in, in, in the British countryside at that, at that time. Well, that, to me, that's what's so interesting about it. And I want to get to that in, in a moment, um, that the difference between, let's say the French Revolution or, such revolutionary

movement as there was in England, which there was some, differed from ours in that those were either secular or anti-clerical, but ours essentially, thanks to figures like Samuel Adams, had God at the center. You can't really get away from that, that it wasn't just us against them. It was this idea that this is right.

And it's a sacred cause. Of course, it comes to be called a sacred cause. So Samuel Adams, you know, as the ringleader. And the ringleader, it's one of those words that has slightly negative connotations, but I say it in a positive sense. He was deeply committed to the cause and happy to be anonymous if that could help the cause, which shows how much he cared about the cause. The circular letter that was sent to the,

after the Townshend Acts, when they decide we're going to send a circular letter to the other 12 colonial assemblies. That was a big deal at the time. It was, at least Parliament thought of it as really incendiary and borderline tyrannists. But that was a moment of celebration. for the Boston Patriots. I don't know if you wanted to mention that. I know in the book you mentioned

that when they vote not to rescind. Do you want to touch on that or we can skip ahead to 1773? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of these organizing, underappreciated dimensions where Samuel Adams really was a contributor, which is that he was able to anticipate where this was going. going and realize that if it was just going to be Massachusetts versus Britain, you know, unite or unite or die. Like the colonies were in a much stronger position if they were able to have a united front. And that eventually became the United States of America. And so in that way, he really was a founding father. And that began not just with the Constitution or not just with the Declaration, not just with the Continental Congress, but it started, as you're pointing out, earlier with that circular.

Oh, no, he is in every sense of founding father. And that's, again, one of the joys of. It seems obvious in retrospect. But it's, you know, at the time, it didn't need to know. necessarily go in that direction. Well, right. And it was contingent. Yes. That was a big moment. But what I find funny about the whole story is that you never know where it's going to go or which way it's going to go. And it's funny that the language that they use in 1768 and just in case people aren't tracking. So thanks in large part to Samuel Adams, the Stamp Act is repealed.

So huge celebrations in Boston. And everybody seems to think, well, that's over. And of course, it's not over because you mentioned the declaratory act. Parliament pretty cynically says, okay, you know, we may not punch you in the face, but we just want to be on the record legally that we can if we want to. We just won't right now. So then the townshend acts come in and they send troops. So the next moment is what we're touching on, that they decide it's time to contact the other 12 colonial assemblies.

Not really thinking that this is going to backfire in Parliament and that Lord Hillsborough and others are going to lose their minds with anger and threatened to shut down. RSA. It's really kind of a crazy moment, but they vote in Boston to ignore Parliament's threat. We are not going to rescind the circular letter. We are not going to stand down. It's his famous vote, 92 to whatever, 17 or something like that. So that's a great moment of celebration. But I want to leap ahead to 1770 and 1773. I can't remember what role Samuel Adams had in the Boston Massacre. I don't think anything... Well, he gave it the name the Boston Massacre, I claim in this book,

that it could have just been called the Boston mistaken shooting or the Boston confused clash, but the label of the headline, you know, massacre is that, you know, that's... Okay, so this, I mean, this gets to part of his role. The branding of it as the Boston... We have to think of a better word, because Goebbels gave propaganda a bad name.

We have to think of a word, what do we call, you know, public relations? Reagan was the great communicator. There we go. There we go. Samuel Adams understood the supreme value of communicating our version of the narrative. So even 10 days before the Boston Massacre, March 5th, at the end of February, there's a something happens and this 11-year-old is killed. and Samuel Adams organizes a funeral for this 11-year-old Christopher Seidel.

And it is a picture of Adams's genius, political genius, to, I mean, talk a little bit about that because it's kind of amazing. He's clearly the guy behind trying to unite Bostonians over this tragedy. Yeah, I mean, just all those multi-pronged efforts that I was talking about before. the newspaper columns. And, you know, he was writing, as you point out, under a pent name. It wasn't like these articles were all signed Samuel Adams. None of them were. None of them were.

But he would write under five or six different pen names. So it looked like, you know, oh, everyone agrees. Right, right. And, you know, sermons from the ministers and letters from, you know, to other people explaining what was happening and a choreographed funeral. with songs and and like a diagram in the newspaper of, you know, exactly the parade at the, at the funeral and, you know, if there was any ambiguity about who had started the, you know, if the kid had thrown something out the window at the soldier, you know, it was very, very, you know, it was very, very,

you know, there was how that was told. And, you know, it went to the story of what were these British troops doing in Boston to begin with. Like, you know, that became one of the grievances in the, in the declaration of independence. That, you know, the quartering of, you know, why do these troops need to be here? Who are they, who are they, they're not, they weren't there to protect the colonists from the Indians. Right. They were there to impose, impose faraway rule. And so when you have a hostile armed force in your midst, it felt like an occupation.

Yeah, well, and it was. So anyway, he leads the way in ginning up the support against the British troops. with the killing of Christopher Seidel. And then 10 days later, of course, the explosion of what we call the Boston Massacre. But as you say, he was the one, I mean, I feel like I wrote a very important chapter in my own book on what we call the Boston Massacre.

To explain precisely what actually happened. And when you know precisely what actually happened, you realize it was not a massacre. It was not a good thing, but it was definitely not a massacre. But instantly, Samuel Adams and others seized the narrative. Right. And there was a, there was, became a trial in the, in the, in Boston of the British troops.

And it actually, it's a famous thing in the world of law, right? Can you represent somebody who you disagree with? And so John Adams actually represented as a lawyer, the British soldiers. All of them. So there's some suggestion like, well, it was sort of orchestrated so that they wouldn't have the best defense. But from the patriotic perspective, you could see it almost as a betrayal by John Adams. How can you represent these bad guys? But Samuel Adams' role in the aftermath of the massacre was, again, to,

organize a very elaborate funeral for those who were killed. And then also newspaper coverage shaping the narrative of what had happened. I mean, I think he did it so successfully that you could argue that that's what forced the British troops to leave. I mean, that that's finally Hutchinson and others, you know, said, we better get out of here because it's not going to go well. For the moment. for the moment. Okay, so we have three years of relative peace, which leads to the cynical act by parliament to say, hey, we can sell these colonials some tea at, we're going to make them an offer they can't refuse, unaware that they will refuse it because they have what I think is foreign

to a lot of the British elites at that time, a thing called principles, actual principles. So Samuel Adams, if ever he covered his tracks, it's amazing. Even unto this day, we barely know how the Boston Tea Party, which it came to be called, was orchestrated. But if anything was meticulously orchestrated, it was the destruction of the tea in December of 1773. What do you know about his role? Or what do you guess?

Yeah, well, so there was a meeting. It actually happened in the church in Old South Church and, you know, about what to do about this tea because the ships were there on the wharf. And Samuel Adams gave the order to start the Boston Tea Party. So he didn't actually go down there with an axe, but it was set up. And that also was done very carefully so that nobody stole the tea. The tea was just dumped into the harbor. And even the ships, they could have burned the ships, but that wasn't the program either.

It was meticulous. And it was very respectful deliberately. Yeah. Very, I mean, almost amazingly. So, but I mean, I mean, you know, Some people know that, yes, Samuel Adams gives this, whatever it was. There's nothing more we can be done that can be done, he says, and there's a war whoop of, you know, all of the, everybody dressed as Mohawk Indians,

and then they all go down. But obviously that had been rather meticulously planned in advance, which is what I find amazing, that they clearly spent some time in a room discussing how we're going to do this and why we're going to do it. So he's shaping the narrative, even the idea that they're dressed as Indians to sort of represent America. Yeah. So they become, they were the Native Americans, essentially. And the British were the foreigners, essentially.

And my favorite thing about Samuel Adams in the Boston Massacre is that, as I wrote about this for the Wall Street Journal, there's a letter that's, and I spoke about it actually, on the anniversary of the 250th anniversary of the Tea Party, Samuel Adams wrote to Arthur Lee on December 31st, 1773, immediately afterwards, he said, you cannot imagine the heights of joy that sparkles in the eyes and animates the countenances as well as the hearts of all we meet. It was like a happy revolution. And, you know, So the idea of the pursuit of happiness that we later see in the Constitution, you think of revolutionaries as bitter or violent. And there was violence in the Revolutionary War.

I don't want to erase that. But Samuel Adams was happy about how that Tea Party had. played out because I think by that point he saw that that independence was the only way out of this for the colonies. And he saw that event as advancing that and advancing in advancing in the direction of self-rule rather than taxation without representation. in a way that would preserve the God-given rights of the colonists. And so he got a lot of satisfaction and joy from that. And the way that it was done, I find it even more telling that John Adams, who you could imagine tisking at some things along the way

that maybe Samuel Adams would have approved of, John Adams is thrilled with the destruction of the tea. He just sees it as a moment. I think he calls it, I don't know what he calls it, but he calls it something, he can sense that something very positive has been affected by the dumping of the tea into the, he approves wholeheartedly.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of this underdog moment, right? You have these colonists who are taking on the British monarchy, which is a great military and imperial power. And they're, you know, they're just like little colonists in Boston, and it's the king of England. And so they, but they're, it was a winning moment for them. Mercy Otis Warren in her 1805 two-volume book on The Revolution says that Samuel Adams' mind was replete with resources that dissipated fear. He stood forth early and continued firm through the great struggle and may justly claim a large share of honor due to that spirit of energy which opposed the measures of administration and produced the independence of America.

through a long life he exhibited on all occasions, an example of patriotism, religion and virtue, honorary to the human character. I really think you can't really say enough about the role that Samuel Adams played, particularly early on. I want to go to the Continental Congress of, I guess it was in 1774, the prayer, where he sort of, you know, encourages, duchet to pray. Do you want to say something about that? Yeah, yeah. So we talked a little before about how Massachusetts was originally a Puritan colony, which became Congregationalist Christianity. If you take all 13 colonies, it got a little more complicated. There were a lot of different religions. Now, Virginia was Anglican,

And there were other kinds, there were Baptists, there were other kinds of, there were other varieties. Quakers, Anabaptists. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So when they all came together at the Continental Congress, there was a question of, you know, who is going to lead the prayer? And Samuel Adams kind of gave the okay for someone who wasn't a congress. But first, somebody objects.

I think John Jay and one of the Rutledge is like, well, we can't have a prayer because they're so worried that it's going to be divisive. Yeah. And he steps up. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, he's just basically like if it's good enough for, if he's, you know, it's okay with me basically. Like, you know, we're happy to have, we're happy to have his help.

That's just to me a huge moment. And it pushes against this kind of secular enlightenment narrative. because I think, you know, they were all Christians, and I think they were forced maybe by secular Enlightenment, French Enlightenment criticism of Christianity to think more deeply about what do we really, really care about. And what they really, really cared about was what I think they would say was a fundamental biblical principle called religious liberty. Yeah, and human dignity and freedom. Right. So that's an amazing moment that. the Congregationalist, the Puritan Samuel Adams, most far removed from Church of England,

says, I would be delighted for this Church of England minister to pray. It's a signal moment, I think, in the run-up to the revolution. Totally. And then, of course, in Independence Hall, Samuel Adams gives a speech, a sermon on August 1st, 7th. 1776, so a lot of people have the chronology kind of confused and they forget that, yes, we voted for independence on July 2nd and 3rd and 4th, but the actual signing of the officially embossed version was not until August 2nd. And the day before, Samuel Adams gives a speech, which I just, I was in awe of

again, of so many places in his life, how central he was. But in that speech, he uses the phrase, we have this day restored the sovereign, capital S, God. That's a big thing, because he's bringing us back to the Sinai covenant. It's inescapable, that this is about the Israelites in Sinai. And most of the men in the revolution understood that narrative, including Jefferson and Franklin. Yeah, I mean, there's an element in which Samuel Adams and some of his peers basically saw the British monarchy is a kind of idol worship.

Like, you know, that the real king of kings is God. Or, you know, Jesus for them. You know, so they, that was key to what they were doing. And it motivated them because they knew that if, like, if that was the cause, like, it was, was a sacred cause. It was worth sacrificing for, like many people had done in the past for, and they also, they knew that God was protecting them, because how else could you account for the idea that this band of militia men basically could defeat the British redcoats with

their with their battleships and their cannon and it was sort of a David and Goliath sort of underdog victory sort of thing like Moses versus Pharaoh or you know fill in your

explicitly Moses versus Pharaoh explicitly yeah explicitly yeah so so that totally gave them strength yeah And it isn't interesting because when you talk about, you know, some Supreme Court rulings, I guess, really just before we were born, but that narrative has been mostly excised from the cultural conversation and needs to be restored. That that is how pretty much everyone in the Continental Congress saw the whole thing, that this was not some parochial congregationalist. view from Boston. Well, I mean, the classic example is, you know, endowed by their creator

with certain inalienable rights. And creator, was that in scare quotes? Well, I mean, so you could look in, you know, in some U.S. history textbooks or when you find some politicians quoting that speech now, they'll just say endowed with certain, endowed dot, dot, dot, dot with certain, if you're lucky you'll get the dot, dot, dot, dot and down with certain ineliable rights, they'll leave the creator out of it. But, you know, if you actually read the Declaration of Independence and go back to the primary sources, like, it's there. I mean, it's, who do they think they're talking about? Well, but I mean, what's interesting to me, or at least most interesting to me, is that everyone signed off on this. This was not, you know, a tough vote. Jefferson and Franklin saw the

narrative in these terms, when they were asked to design a seal for the new country, the two people most notably pointed out as deist leaning, where they came up with the picture of the Israelites in the wilderness with the pillar of fire. And you think that's Jefferson and Franklin. Right. Yeah, I mean, look, people want to... argue about how traditionally religious Jefferson or Franklin or Washington were like, you know, I've read all those arguments. Like one could have the argument about deism or, you know, what kind of God they believed in. for me the interesting thing about Samuel Adams is that is that you know he was going to church and singing with the choir every Sunday like he he was not that was not Samuel Adams and

Samuel Adams was a very important figure in this whole thing like he was he was the ringleader as you put it well but not just that but I think that for example in in I mentioned 1776 he is chosen uh you know he doesn't insert himself he is chosen to give this principal speech on the eve of the official signing of the Declaration of Independence. He is chosen and it is as explicitly religious as any speech could ever be. It is effectively a sermon given to Congress. And they all, it seems to me, accept his narrative. They're looking to him in a sense for clues on how do we take this. And then there's a before we close, there's another moment.

I guess in 1778, Congress has been finally chased out of Philadelphia. And I don't know if they're in York or Lancaster, but Adams gives a speech there. And it is really so magnificent and inspiring and beautiful because you can see less brave souls cringing at what looks like imminent destruction. And he will not have one iota of that. And not only won't he have it, but he gives this outrageously inspiring faith-filled exhortation. And I was in awe of it. And I thought he didn't give this to a few friends. He gave this to Congress to buck them up at this nadir. So his role really cannot be overstated in the American Revolution.

And there's so much more that we could say. Any final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I just think Samuel Adams was a key figure in the American Revolution. And his faith was a key motivator for him. And, you know, I think. we can learn from that about our country and how it started. And it's not a relic of the past. It's these are our founding documents.

I mean, it's the Declaration of Independence. It's the ideas and war that started our country on the road that we remain on. On the sad path of oppression, lo, these 250 years. No, it really is, it's, I think, an important moment for us as a nation to re-examine the founding, and that's why I'm excited. I've been excited to have this conversation with you, because it's important to go back and to think, was this just some, is this some anachronism, or is this something that still has relevance? And you've done a great job in this book and elsewhere in helping us understand.

that either what Adams and others are saying is true for all time or we can ignore it. And it is true for all time, at least I think we would say that it is. So thank you for the book and for all you've done to help us appreciate not just Adams, but what he cared about and represented. I just decided I want to write a book on the American Revolution because this is extremely important. Unless Americans know our story, we cannot possibly continue to keep the Republic.