Episode 862: Founding Fathers – Samuel Adams

The lives of these men are essential to understanding the American form of government and our ideals of liberty. The Founding Fathers all played key roles in the securing of American independence from Great Britain and in the creation of the government of the United States of America. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
On this episode of This World. The lives of these
men are essential to understand the American form of government
and our ideals of liberty. The founding fathers all played
key roles in securing American independence from Great Britain and
in the creation of the government of the United States
of America. And now the life of Samuel Adams. When

(00:40):
you go back to the beginning, you realize that Samuel
Adams was almost born to be a rebel and a troublemaker.
In college, he was reprimanded for missing morning prayer. His
senior year, he was caught drinking on campus, a much
more shocking event back then, although his father owned a brewery,
so maybe drinking on campus wasn't all that surprising. He

(01:02):
was born to a very wealthy and religious family on
September twenty seventh, seventeen twenty two. He was the tenth
of twelve children. We tend to forget sometimes both how
many children colonial family said, and also how many they
had lost. Only Sam ladamson. Two of his siblings made
it past childhood. That's three out of twelve. Nine did

(01:24):
not survive childhood. His father, Sam Ladams Senior, was a
deacon of the Congregational Church, ran a brewery and was
deeply involved in politics. Remember, by the way, that back
at a time when we did not have clean, drinkable water,
beer really matters and its very significant fact. Guinness Stout
was one of my favorite beers. Was actually invented in

(01:46):
Ireland as a health drink because it was better for
you than either hard liquor or water. The founder of
Guinness Stout actually got an award for doing something involving
public health. So when you talk about people running brewers,
it's a much different world. In the eighteenth century, Sam
Adams is growing up and he loved politics. Now, I

(02:08):
think that's a key part of this. You know, this
is the guy who likes people, He's involved with people.
He's also pretty well educated. And when he was young
he attended the Boston Latin School, which has historically been
a remarkably good school. He learned Latin and Greek. He
attended Harvard College at the age of fourteen. He earned
his undergraduate degree in seventeen forty and a graduate degree

(02:31):
in seventeen forty three. This is this smart guy and
a pretty learned guy. Although unlike John Adams, his central
impact in history is not because of his calculated writing
and his calculated capacity as a literary person, but rather
because he could really organize and arouse people. Now, his

(02:51):
father attempted to establish a land bank in Boston. He
was popular in the colonies, but the British Parliament opposed
it and ruled the bank illegal in seventeen forty one,
which led to the Adams family going bankrupt dealing with
the lawsuits that followed, and that may have been part
of why you begin to get the strong sense in
Sam Adams that the British Parliament is anti American. He

(03:15):
writes his Master's Thesis on quote whether it be lawful
to resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise
be preserved. Notice, he's intellectually laying the base for the
principle that in order to protect Americans' rights they may
have to, in fact, to use his language, resist the

(03:36):
Supreme Magistrate. Of course, the Supreme Magistrate automnly is the King,
and he's questioning in his Master's Thesis whether England really
legally has the right to impose taxes on the colonies.
Part of what's happened, of course, is when the English
win the French and Indian War, or the Sevent Years
Wars it's called in Europe, and the French are driven

(03:57):
out of Canada all of a sudden, the Americans aren't
faced with any kind of significant threat, and at the
same time, the British have this huge debt they've run
up in fighting the Seven Years War, which was a
genuinely worldwide war started by the way by George Washington
as a very young man in western Pennsylvania. They want

(04:18):
to raise taxes at the very moment that the Americans think, hey,
everything's worked out fine, we don't need your protection and
we don't need to give you money. So Sam Adams,
in that sense, coming off the grievance of the British Parliament,
having destroyed his father's family wealth, decided that he would
in fact become more and more militant in favor of freedom. Now,

(04:39):
when he did graduate, he was going to practice law,
which his cousin John Adams does do brilliantly. But his
mother was against Sam Adams becoming a lawyer, so she
convinced him to become a clerk at accounting house Centsia Bank.
His father tried to get his son into business by
giving him a thousand pounds to start his own business,
but Adams wasn't the businessman. He lost the money because

(05:02):
that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to focus on politics,
and while he's working at the brewery, Adams, at the
age of twenty six, and a group of his friends
started Quote The Independent Advertisers, a newspaper where anonymously they
questioned England's rule and demanded more rights for the colonies.
Paper lasted about a year. The first edition of the

(05:24):
paper was published in Boston on January fourth, seventeen forty eight.
The first edition started with the following quote, upon the
encouragement we've already received and agreeable to our printed proposals,
the Independent Advertiser now makes its entrance into the world,
And as it will doubtless be expected upon its first appearance,

(05:44):
that we should more fully explain our design and show
what the public may expect of it, we would accordingly
observe that we shall be no means endeavor to recommend
this out paper by depreciating the merit of other performances
of the same kind. Neither would we flatter the expectations
of the public by any pompous promises which we may
not be likely to fulfill. But this our reader may

(06:06):
depend upon. That we shall take the utmost care to
procure the freshest and best intelligence, and publish it in
such an order as that every reader may have the
cleanest and most perfect understanding of it. And for the
benefit of those who are unacquainted with the geography of
foreigner parts, we may insert such descriptions as may enlighten them.
Therein now part, what they're saying is Boston is a

(06:28):
great port. People are showing up in Boston. Ships are
coming into Boston from all over the Atlantic, and what
they want to do is they want to get the
news before anybody else print it, so you can learn
what's happening around the world because of that. Now, he
also makes a political commitment in this very first newspaper.
He says, quote, as our present political state matter for

(06:51):
a variety of thoughts of peculiar importance to the people
of New England, we propose to insert everything of that
nature that may be pertinently and wrote for ourselves. We
declare we are no party, neither shall we promote the
private and narrow designs of any such. We are ourselves free,
and our papers shall be free, free as the Constitution

(07:12):
we enjoy, free to truth, good manners, and good sense,
and at the same time free from all licentsious reflections,
insolence and abuse. Now notice here, becauseus will come up
again and again. And Sam Adams is one of the
people who is a great propagandist. The emphasis on free,
the word free. We are ourselves free, our paper will

(07:35):
be free, free as the Constitution we enjoy. I notice
he's already claiming that there's a constitution, and in British
tradition it's unwritten but understood. Free to truth, good manners,
and good sense, and at the same time free from
all licentious reflections, insolence and abuse. So think about that.
In this one paragraph that comes back to the word

(07:56):
free again and again, and he asserts, but there is
a constitution, which is why when the British Parliament begins
to impose taxes, they are violating an already existing constitution.
The Americans, in their view, do not have to fight
for liberty. They are born into liberty. They are born
into a constitution. Now, as an activist and somebody who

(08:19):
was very good at working with people in seventeen forty seven,
Adams is elected to his first political position as one
of the clerks of the Boston Market, where he served
for nine years. A year later, seventeen forty eight, both
his parents died, leaving him with their estate and in
charge of the family's brewery business. He was also left
with the numerous lawsuits connected to the land bank that

(08:41):
his father had tried to establish. Adams just not a
good businessman. He's unable to make ends meet. He loses
the brewery business. The government foreclosed in his family's estate,
but Adams used his ability in writing to threaten potential
buyers and was able to keep the estate while the
government was trying to sell it. People this wouldn't buy it.
In seventeen forty nine, Samuel Adams married Elizabeth Checkley. According

(09:04):
to adams quote, she was a rare example of virtue
and piety, blended with a retiring and modest demeanor and
the charms of elegant womanhood. Three years of junior. Elizabeth
was the daughter of Samuel Checkley, his pastor at the
Old South Meetinghouse. The couple had six children, only two
of which reached maturity before Elizabeth Adams passed in seventeen

(09:26):
fifty seven due to complications of childbirth. After her death,
Adams immersed himself in politics. He worked briefly as a
tax collector in seventeen fifty six, but since he often
failed to collect the required taxes and was leaning with
many who could not pay higher rates, he was fired
and held liable for the lost income. Once again he's

(09:46):
angry at the government. However, this gave him the change
to establish connections which served him in the future. He
went his second wife, Elizabeth Wells, in seventeen sixty four.
Wells was the daughter of his good friend Francis Wells,
a successful Boston merchant. The couple had no children together,
but she embraced her chip children as her own and
supported her husband throughout his political career. In seventeen sixty four,

(10:11):
the British government, trying to pay for the debts that
had build up, passed the Sugar Act. As a member
of the town Meeting, Adams was vocal against the Act.
On May twenty fourth, seventeen sixty four, he wrote to
the representatives of Boston, quote, for if our trade may
be taxed, why not our lands? Why not the produce
of our lands and everything we possess or make use

(10:33):
of this, we apprehend, annihilates our charter right to govern
and tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges, which,
as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common
with our fellow subjects who are natives of Britain. If
taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our
having a legal representation where they are laid, are we

(10:53):
not reduced from the character of free subjects to the
miserable state of tributary slaves. So here you have already
seventeen sixty four. The core argument. The argument is we
are British by definition, we are part of the British Constitution.
The British Constitution, of course, goes all the way back
to the signing of the Great Charter the Magna Carta,

(11:15):
and therefore people are not allowed to be taxed unless
they give their approval. And so they see this as
an assault on existing rights. They're not claiming new rights.
They're claiming that their rights go back in history for
hundreds and hundreds of years, and it is the government
which is assaulting them. A year later, got worse. The

(11:51):
British government passed the Stamp Act again an effort to
get money to pay off all these various debts. Adams
at that point took the streetsited political party, the Country Party,
with two opposing parties, North Boston and South Boston, led
by John Hancock and James Otis, to form the Sons
of Liberty. Noticed again the language the Sons of Liberty.

(12:13):
Adams wrote Instructions of the Town of Boston to its
representatives in the General Court in September seventeen sixty four,
and he's really laying out their argument. They are alarmed
and astonished at the attack called the Stamp Act, by
which I very grievous and we apprehend unconstitutional tax is
to be laid upon the colony. So notice they are

(12:36):
literally arguing that they already have what they called are
invaluable rights and liberties, and so they see this as
an attack on existing rights. They're not arguing for new rights.
They are defending what they see as old rights. That
rebellion led to the Stamp Act Congress, where all but
four of the colonies demanded that the King repeal the

(12:58):
tacks worked. The British gave up in seventeen sixty six
and never collected the taxes. Adam was elected that year
in seventeen sixty six to the House of Representatives as
a clerk. As clerk, he was responsible for basic record
keeping and communicating with the colony's agent in London and
with other legislative assemblies in other colonies. This is where

(13:20):
he met John Hancock for the first time. Although most
representatives did not receive a salary adam as clerk did
and had a steady income, this allowed him to focus
even more on politics. In seventeen sixty seven, Parliament approved
a series of taxes on items imported in the colonies,
known as the Townshen Acts. This act also created an

(13:40):
American Board of Customs Commissioners to enforce collection, which established
their headquarters in Boston. It's almost as though the Parliament
is so desperate for money, and their reasoning is pretty simple.
They had fought a large war against France in part
to protect the Americans. They borrowed all this money in
order to wage the war to protect the Americans and

(14:01):
the Americans and other beneficiaries of having Canada to the
north be a British colony. So why weren't the Americans
grateful and generous? And apparently in Parliament they just couldn't
get through their head how much this was infuriating and
alienating the Americans. When news of the towns and Acts
reaches Massachusetts in the autumn of seventeen sixty seven, Adams

(14:24):
immediately employed the Boston Town Meeting to organize protests in Boycott's.
In January seventeen sixty eight, he motioned the General Court
to draft a petition to the King urging that he
respects the charter rights of Massachusetts. Notice they're not creating rights.
They want the King to respect existing rights. The motion

(14:45):
faced opposition from rural town representatives who aligned with the Parliament,
so Adams waited until the end of the legislative session,
when many of those who opposed departed back home, before
putting the motion forth. It easily passed. So here you
see him maneuvering thinking, becoming a pretty effective politician. The
General Court sent the letter the petition with the letter

(15:05):
to other colonies. It was known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter,
which Adams was one of the authors alongside James Otis.
The letter read, quote, the House of Representations of this
Province have taken into their serious consideration the great difficulties
the must accrue to themselves in their constituents by the
operation of several acts of Parliament imposing duty and taxes

(15:28):
on the American colonies. So they are really into this
issue of the Constitution, which they assert already exists, and
they are really into the concept that the British Parliament
is now usurping their powers and threatening them in very
very serious ways. And they assert, quote, in all free states,

(15:49):
the Constitution is fixed, and as the Supreme Legislative derives
its power and authority from the Constitution, it cannot overleap
the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation. That
the Constitution ascertains and limits both sovereignty and allegiance. And
therefore His Majesty's American subjects, who acknowledge themselves bound by

(16:09):
the ties of allegiance, have an equitable claim to the
full enjoyment of the fundamental rules of the British Constitution.
That it is an essential, on alterable right in nature,
and grafted into the British Constitution as a fundamental law,
and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within
the realm, that what a man has honestly acquired is

(16:32):
absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot
be taken from him without his consent, That the American
subjects may, therefore, exclusive of any consideration of Charter rights,
with a decent firmness, adapted to the character of free
men and subjects, assert this natural and constitutional right. So

(16:53):
they're saying, we literally have under natural law, we have
achieved this. This is the forerunner of what Jeff Person
will write in the Declaration of Independence when he says
we are endowed by our Creator with certain honorable rights,
among which your life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well,
that's exactly what Adams is beaten to drift towards. That

(17:13):
these rights existed outside of any kind of specific contract.
They are inherent their part of being British. And the
result was that they had put together a real opposition.
There was a threat to the core of the British system.
Lord Hillsborough, who's the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
received the letter and then ordered that the letter be

(17:35):
taken back. Hillsborough threatened them said if they refused, he
would order Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to dissolve the General Court.
Despite that threat, the legislative voted to refuse to rescind
the letter by ninety two to seventeen. Governor Bernard, in response,
dissolved them. They did not reconvene for another year. In

(17:56):
other words, faced with a direct order from the British government,
by ninety two to seventeen, the legislatures are voting to
defy the British government. Now this is the beginning of
really moving towards a serious confrontation. Troops arrive in Boston
on October first, seventeen sixty eight, and while they're arriving,

(18:18):
Adams is authoring over twenty newspaper articles, usually under the
pen names Index and Candidas, using the pseudonym Index. In
the Boston Gazette in December seventeen sixty eight, he writes, quote, well,
the spirits of the people is yet unsubdued by tyranny,
on awed by the menace of arbitrary power, submit to
be governed by military force. No let us rouse our

(18:42):
attention to the common law, which is our birthright, our
great security against all kinds of insult and oppression, the law, which,
when rightly used, is the curb in the terror of
the haughtiest tyrant. So he's really putting together the core
argument about the nature of freedom and the idea that
freedom belongs to you. It's not given to you by

(19:04):
the government. Freedom starts with you, and then you may
loan part of it to the government, but the center
of us always you, the individual citizen. And Adams advocate
that Boston merchants just refused to import all British goods
for a year. They didn't get one hundred percent support
for it, but they got enough that all of a sudden,
the British merchants are complaining to Parliament that the alienation

(19:27):
is getting to be expensive to them. And so where
the British Parliament had thought, oh, this would be pretty easy,
they'll obviously have to pay the taxes. What this discovering
is every time they take a step to oppress those
who are angry, there are more people angry, and so
there's a whole process underway here in which people are

(19:49):
gradually banding together to oppose what the British are doing.
Adams wanted to extend it beyond one year, but it
just wasn't possible. On February twenty second, seventeen seventy, when
harassed by a mob, a minor customs official named Ebenezer
Richardson accidentally shot and killed eleven year old Christopher Cedar.

(20:10):
Although probably an accident, Adams used this as an opportunity
to call out the presence of British troops. Adams organized
a public funeral that was attended by over two thousand
people for this young eleven year old who'd been killed.
By March fifth, seventeen seventy nine, British soldiers faced off
a mob of several hundred angry citizens. They fired into

(20:30):
the crowd, killing five and wounding six citizens. That began
to be the Boston massacre. On March sixth, Adams led
a committee to demand the removal of British troops in
an emergency session. After Adams addressed the assembly, they unanimously
voted for removal of the troops. Now this is a real,
I think significant repudiation of the British ability to extend power.

(20:55):
Governor Hutcheson understands how big a threat this is. On
the same day, writes to William Dalrymple, the commander of
the military, quote, I am sensible. I have no power
to order the troops to the castle, but under the
present circumstance of the town and the province I cannot
avoid in consequence of this unanimous advice to the Council
designing you to order them there, which I must submit

(21:17):
to you. Lieutenant Colonel Dalrymple agreed to this and ordered
the troops to Castle Island in the Harbor. So the
American citizens feel like they're winning. The soldiers involved in
the shooting were arrested and waited trial. But it's fascinating.
This is a great story in American history because they
wanted a fair trial. Even Samuel Adams, who was one

(21:39):
of the hottest and most aggressive of the Americans, knew
that it had to be a fair trial. And of
course most attorneys did not want to defend the British,
so Adams got his cousin John Adams and Josiah Quincy
to defend them. It's a brilliant move. John Adams is
a great lawyer. At the time, I think hurts him

(22:01):
sum in terms of the people of Boston. But they
made the argument that the soldiers were only firing out
of self defense and there wasn't their fault that they
were there. They'd been ordered to go there. So of
the soldiers only two were found guilty of manslaughter. Adams
actually opposed the court decision and really was on the

(22:22):
side of the American revolutionaries. In April seventeen seventy, in

(22:44):
an effort to find a middle ground, Parliament repeals all
the towns and taxes except one, the tax on tea.
In the late spring of seventeen seventy one, news came
that Parliament would no longer allow the legislature to pay
the governor's salary, but instead the governor's salary will be

(23:04):
paid with revenue from the t tax. At that point
people begin to get really upset. By the autumn seventeen
seventy two, the news broke the judges the Supreme Court
would like the governor not be paid by the legislature.
Now what's happening is the British Parliament is gradually creating
a class of people whose loyalty is to London, and

(23:25):
who are prepared to impose on the people of Massachusetts.
Now Adams when they learned that the judges as well
as the governor are going to be paid directly from
the tax, writes an article on the Boston Gazette under
the name Valerius Publicola. He writes this quote to what
a state of infamy, wretchedness, and misery. Shall we be

(23:48):
reduced if our judges shall be prevailed upon to be
thus degraded to hirelings, and the body of the people
shall suffer their free constitution to be overturned and ruined.
Let not the iron hand of tyranny ravish our laws
and seize the badge of freedom, and the murderous rage
of lawless power be ever seen on the sacred seat

(24:08):
of justice. Now, by the way, it's interesting, I want
to the paper in which I realized that reforming judges
was the number two demand of the colonists, after the
right of taxation. They were so angry at the way
that the judges had become creatures of the state against
the people that much of what we see in the

(24:31):
Constitution in limiting the judges is a function of what
they had experienced under the British where the judges became
the tools of the king against the people. By late
seventeen seventy two, Adams is writing a pamphlet The Rights
of the Colonists, and again this really is a precursor
to Jefferson. Listen to it. Quote, Among the natural rights

(24:54):
of the colonists are these first a right to life,
second to liberty, third property, together with the right to
support and defend them in the best manner they can.
These are evident branches of rather than deductions from the
duty of self preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
All men have a right to remain in a state

(25:16):
of nature as long as they please, and, in cases
of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society
they belong to and enter into another. When men enter
into society, it is by voluntary consent, and they have
a right to demand and insist upon the performance of
such conditions and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

(25:40):
Now notice Adam is going all the way back, basically
making the argument which John Locke had made at the
turn of the last century in the sixteen nineties, and
that is that our rights are natural, They are inherent
in the way that God and Nature operate, and therefore
they are not a function of the state, but rather
the state has to be seen in the context of

(26:03):
these natural rights. And this begins to be an enormous division,
because if you are the British king, you can't accept
the idea that their rights outside your kingship Historically in
the Middle Ages, power came from God through the king
down to other people. What they're now saying is no,

(26:24):
no power comes from the God to us. It's a
natural right, there's a natural liberty, and then we loan
the king power. Well, this is a radical violation of
the system that had been inoperated throughout the Middle Ages.
And so the result is you begin to see Samuel
Adams I think as a real precursor of what Jefferson

(26:44):
will write in The Decoration in Dependence, laying out a
doctrine even says at one point talks about life liberty
and property. Property becomes life fluting in pursuit of happiness.
But pursuit of happiness in the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment
is actually means virtue and wisdom, doesn't mean hedonism and

(27:05):
getting drunk. So they're talking about you have a right
to seek a better life, the right to freedom being
the gift of God Almighty. It is not in the
power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become
a slave. Now, look, this is a head on collision
that's coming right down the road, and Adams is right
in the middle of it, and he is describing the

(27:28):
base of freedom as it has existed in America ever since,
and that is that your rights come from God, that
the government cannot infringe on those rights, and that only
those things that you're willing to delegate the government can
belong to government. In the middle of all this, an
East Indian ship, the Dartmouth, arrived in Boston. Adams wanted

(27:50):
the ship to return without paying the importation duties, something
that was required by law. He held a meeting where,
according to a letter he wrote to Arthur Lee on
December thirteenth, seventeen seventy three, at least seven thousand men,
many coming from outside towns as far as twenty miles away,
gathered to support Adam's petition, but Governor Hutcheson refused to

(28:10):
make the ship return. Faced with this, a group of
men disguised themselves as Indians and in less than four
hours through all three hundred and forty two chests of
tea into the harbor. This was the famous Boston Tea Party.
We're not really sure if Adams was one of the Indians,
but we are sure that he was instrumental in publishing

(28:32):
what happened through all the colonies and using it as
one of the reasons for colonists to fight for independence. Well,
the British government goes nuts. They passed the Intolerable Acts
of seventeen seventy four, closing the Boston Port until the
colony paid for the tea. They dumped into the harbor,
requiring all colonists to house British soldiers in their homes,
and made it so the British had control of locally

(28:53):
appointed officials. They basically are trying to take over and
create a dictatorship based in London. That just leads Stephen
Moore in tense argument. Adams in June of seventeen seventy
four drafts the resolves of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
and makes the case for the rest of the colonies
that we are now being oppressed and they're coming for

(29:16):
you next. Now. The British are very serious about this.
They send General Thomas Gage as military governor, They send
four thousand troops into Boston, and Adams doesn't back down.
In fact, in June seventeen seventy four, Adams chairs a
committee in the House of Representatives which had left Boston

(29:37):
to go to Salem to be able to meet and
they propose electing individuals to represent Massachusetts at a Colonial
Congress set to meet in Philadelphia. Both Sammy Adams and
his cousin John Adams were elected delegates, and to this
particular thing, General Gage, with the British back home putting

(29:57):
real pressure on him to end the rebellion. You don't
want who arrest Sadams. Because he felt this would lead
to a backlash, he tried to prevent the provincial Congress
from getting military supplies. That led to each side attempted
to capture local gunpowder source. Then, on April fourteenth, seventeen
seventy five, a letter from the Secretary of State ordered
Gage to disarm the militia and arrest the leaders of

(30:20):
the rebellion, which was namely Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
A second Continental Congress was deemed necessary in May of
seventeen seventy five. Just a month later, Adams was selected
as a delegate. However, in April, before departing, Adams and
John Hancock attended a session of the provincial Congress medium
conquered fifteen miles northwest of Boston. Since they were aware

(30:44):
of the order to arrest him, they decided to stay
in Lexington, at the home of Reverend Clark instead of Boston.
Because of a very real risk of arrest, Gage orders
a column of troops to Conquered to seize and destroy
a suspected cache of munitions. March, the soldiers would go
through Lexington sashly. Not clear nowadays whether Gage knew that

(31:05):
Adams and Hancock were there, or whether or not he's
even going to try to arrest him. Despite this, fearing captured,
Joseph Warren dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawls to warn
the delegates to leave, and in April eighteenth, seventeen seventy five,
Paul Revere won on his famous ride, sparking the beginning
of the Revolutionary War. The British troops arrived in Lexington

(31:28):
the morning of April nineteenth, just as Hancock and Adams escape.
Less than a month after the battles of Lexington and Concord,
the Second Continental Congress took place. In an April three,
seventeen seventy six letter to Samuel Cooper, Adams wrote, is
not America already independent? Why then not declare it? Cannations

(31:48):
at war said to be dependent either upon the other,
and so Adams is really working the concept it's time
to declare independence. He's very much in favor of a
resolution to declare it, and ultimately he's one of the
people who is enthusiastically signing the Declaration of Independence. And
again he's basing all of this on natural rights and

(32:09):
on the sense that all we're doing is defining what
we already have, and it's the British King who's trying
to take it away from us. We're not trying to
establish it. We already have it, but the British King
now is trying to steal it. It's I think a
very significant moment once they had won the war. Adams
supported a state constitution, but he wanted to limit the

(32:32):
power of the government. He did not go to the
Constitutional Convention of seventeen eighty seven because he was afraid
that a stronger government would infringe on the people's liberties.
He rejected the very concept. He attempted to re international
politics as a candidate for the oath House, but was
defeated by Fisher Aiams, who was an avid supporter of
the constitution. He went on to serve as Lieutenant governor

(32:54):
of Massachusetts under Governor John Hancock, and when Hancock died
in office, Adams soon the governorship. Then he was elected
to three successive one year terms as governor of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He officially retired in seventeen ninety seven
because he is unable to write due to the fremers
in his hands. He died on October second, eighteen o three,

(33:17):
at the age of eighty one. In eighteen nineteen, Thomas
Jefferson wrote of Samuel Adams quote, I can say he
was truly a great man, wise in counsel, fertile in resources,
immovable in his purposes. Although not a fluent elocution, he
was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant

(33:38):
in good sense, and master always of his subject, that
he commanded the most profound attention whenever he rose in
an assembly. And of course, as I have pointed out,
Jefferson in many ways was deeply shaped by adams understanding
of natural law and of the role of God in
giving us our liberties. Because sam Adams was so eloquent

(34:00):
and defining the rights of Americans, because he was so
consistent and persistent in arguing and fighting for those rights.
Because he was able to talk in a common language
which allowed everyday folks to understand it and to decide
for themselves where they were in this great struggle. He
really is one of the heroes around whom the American

(34:22):
system is built. I'm not sure that we would have
gotten nearly as far towards freedom and liberty without Samuel Adams.
I am sure he managed to help people all across
the colonies come to an understanding that there was an
irreconcilable difference between a British king who believed in the
divine right of kingship and Americans who believed that that

(34:45):
divine right led to sovereignty for the individual, not for
the state. And I think Samue Latams has to be
considered one of the genuine immortals whose shaped freedom and
on whose shoulders we today still stand. Thank you for listening.
You can read more about Samuel Adams and get links
to my other founding Father's episodes on our show page

(35:08):
at newsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gingrish three
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan and
our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
at Gingish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I
hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us

(35:29):
with five stars and give us a review so others
can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of
Newtsworld can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at
gingishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This
is Newtsworld.