Narrator (3:25)
On this episode of Newts 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 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 was born to a very wealthy and religious family on September 27, 1722. He was the 10th of 12 children. We tend to forget sometimes both how many children colonial families had and also how many they lost. Only Sam let himself. Two of his siblings made it past childhood. That's three out of 12. Nine did not survive childhood. His father, Sam Adams Senior, was a deacon of the Congregational Church, ran a brewery and was deeply involved in politics. Remember, by the way, that back in a time when we did not have clean, drinkable water, beer really matters. And it's very significant. In fact, Guinness Stout, which is one of my favorite beers, was actually invented in 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 breweries, it's a much different world. In the 18th century, Sam Adams was growing up and he loved politics. Now, I think that's a key part of this. You know, this is a 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 14. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1740 and a graduate degree in 1743. Just a 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 father attempted to establish a land bank in Boston. It was popular in the colonies, but the British Parliament opposed it and ruled the bank illegal in 1741, 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 writes his master's thesis whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved. In other words, 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 supreme magistrate. Of course, the supreme magistrate ultimately 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 Seven Years War, as it's called in Europe, and the French are driven 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 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, 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, essentially a 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 a businessman. He lost the money because 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 26. 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 paper was published by in Boston on January 4, 1748. The first edition started with the. Upon the encouragement we have 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, that we should more fully explain our design and show what the public may expect of it. We would accordingly observe that we shall by no means endeavour 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 fulfil. But this our reader may 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 foreign parts, we may insert such descriptions as may enlighten them therein. Now, part of what they're saying is Boston is a 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 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 decently 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 paper shall be free. Free as the Constitution we enjoy. Free to truth, good manners and good sense, and at the same time free from all licentious reflections. Insolence and abuse. Now, notice here, because this 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 be free. Free as the Constitution we enjoy. 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, he comes back to the word free again and again, and he asserts that 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 was very good at working with people, in 1747, 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, 1748, 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 his father had tried to establish. Adam's just not a good businessman. He's unable to make ends meet. He loses the brewery business. The government foreclosed on 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 just wouldn't buy it. In 1749, Samuel Adams married Elizabeth Checkley. According 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 his junior, Elizabeth was the daughter of Samuel Checkley, his pastor at the Old South Meeting House. The couple had six children, only two of which reached maturity before Elizabeth Adams passed in 1757 due to complications of childbirth. After her death, Adams immersed himself in politics. He worked briefly as a tax collector in 1756, but since he often failed to collect the required taxes and was lenient with many who could not pay higher rates, he was fired and held liable for the lost income. Once again, he's angry at the government. However, this gave him the change to establish connections which served him in the future. He wed his second wife, Elizabeth Wells, in 1764. Wells was the daughter of his good friend Frances Wells, a successful Boston merchant. The couple had no children together, but she embraced her stepchildren as her own and supported her husband throughout his political career. In 1764, the British government, trying to pay for the debts that had built up, passed the sugar act. As a member of the town meeting, Adams was vocal against the Act. On May 24, 1764, 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 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 not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? So here you have already, in 1764, 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, 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.
