Samuel Adams and the Flames of Freedom

The following is an excerpt from the book, Promises of the Constitution: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, by author Pamela Romney Openshaw, #3.1, page 40.

A central force exists in every movement, without which it would not survive. That force in revolutionary America was Samuel Adams. Without him, there might have been no American independence. He lit the flame and fanned it until it burst into the powerful fires of freedom.

Samuel Adams of Massachusetts was a kind, deeply religious man whose life was governed by unfailing integrity. His heart was in politics. With his instinctive understanding of the process, he was the political conscience of the patriot cause. He was unyielding and fully confident in the cause of liberty. He was quick to understand and calm in the clashes of the political world. Though he was of the upper middle class and Harvard-educated, he knew most of the fifteen thousand citizens of Boston by name, trade, and political preference. He accepted them as equals. His political positions were not tainted by personal ambition or self-interest.

English rule in the 1700s left the colonists largely in control of their own governments under Crown-appointed officials. In Massachusetts, there were two governing councils, the equivalent of our modern-day House of Representatives and Senate. They made and passed laws for the colony. Tariffs and import duties were paid to England, but only if the colonists could not evade them and the authorities enforced them (smuggling by American merchants was a respectable form of colonial enterprise).

In 1764, the British Parliament disregarded the provisions of the Massachusetts Bay Charter and imposed the Stamp Tax. Samuel Adams demanded that Parliament abide by the charter laws, which required colonial consent for taxation. Once Parliament started taxing, he reasoned, where would it stop? His message: “We have a charter. You will abide by it.”

The American revolution thus began in May 1764 in Boston’s Faneuil Hall, with Samuel Adams standing at the rostrum as its director. Through the next twelve years, he challenged every infringement of the Massachusetts charter, never letting the issue rest. He wearied each of the three successive governors with his unyielding tenacity. He railed at every injustice. He urged the colonists on when they grew tired and would haveslid into apathy. Constantly recruiting those who could aid in the cause,he was the genius uniting the colonies into concerted action.

Initially, neither he nor his contemporaries had independence in mind. By 1774, he, along with his cousin John Adams, realized that there was no other option.

His powerful writing became the voice of the revolution, as well as its flame. He wrote voluminous essays, often under assumed names, as was common at the time. His articles appeared frequently in the weekly four-page periodicals of the day, especially the patriotic Boston Gazette. These colonial newspapers made the five-week voyage to England and informed the American sympathizers in influential British circles of progressive American resistance.

Samuel Adams did not keep a journal. He destroyed most of his correspondence to protect those mentioned within from the proofs of treason, in case their cause failed. Hence, there is little written about him compared to his contemporaries.

He was the vortex of rebellion against tyranny. From him came the passion for freedom, igniting others who joined the cause.