2.2: The Guiding Hand: Samuel Adams and the Boston Tea Party

A name most likely associated with a beer company, what role did Samuel Adams really play in fermenting opposition to British policies prior to the American Revolution?  His role is usually relegated to the shadows, but he became such an infamous individual that others of his generation were compared to him, and he became Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of the British Crown due to his role in ensuring that a certain beverage never made it out of Boston Harbor.  In this episode of History: Beyond the Textbook, we look at Samuel Adams and focus on his role in the Boston Tea Party.

Key People
Samuel Adams
John Adams

Key Events
Stamp Act
Boston Massacre
Gaspee Affair
Boston Tea Party
First Continental Congress

The third season of History: Beyond the Textbook focuses on the stories of individuals who shaped "America's Crucial Years" of 1783-1790, and runs from October 8-December 24. Catch up on Season One, "America's Colonial Era," and Season Two, "America's Revolution," wherever you listen to your podcasts!

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Transcript

American Revolution.  Sons of Liberty.  Beer.  If you ask the average American to make an association with the name “Samuel Adams,” these three things are probably going to come to the forefront, and not necessarily in this order.  He is a name that frequently is brought up in the context of the pre-Revolutionary era…after all, wasn’t he the man who invented the phrase “No taxation without representation?”  No, he wasn’t, but this just underscores how little is known about the man except that he was a “Revolutionary leader.”  Hardship informed his early adulthood, and he more or less failed at everything he tried in life…until the time came to oppose what he viewed as oppressive English policies and convince his fellow colonial Americans to resist these infringements on their rights, culminating in the destruction of 342 chests of British tea in December 1773.  On this episode of History: Beyond the Textbook, we explore Samuel Adams, the true Patriot politician, and the role he played in the Boston Tea Party.  

Act I: The Massacre’s aftermath

We left off our last episode with the removal of British troops from the city of Boston, although they were stationed on an island just outside of town.  Captain Thomas Preston and eight of his fellow redcoats were imprisoned and awaiting trial on murder charges due to their roles in the Boston Massacre.  Preston and his men would be tried separately, with Preston’s trial commencing in October 1770.  Lawyer John Adams, Samuel’s distant cousin, had agreed to serve as Preston’s defense attorney: that’s correct…the Patriot who would be one of the first public converts to the cause of full independence from Great Britain would be defending British soldiers.  On the flip-side, a hardcore Loyalist would prosecute the man and attempt to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all involved were guilty of murder.  John Adams earned heckles and taunts for his willingness to defend the British, but he famously wished to demonstrate that this land would be a place where rules and laws could be followed and justice would be administered in a fair and unbiased manner.  The six-day trial of Captain Preston was a lengthy ordeal and the verdict came back…NOT GUILTY.  The main issue for the prosecution was proving that Preston had ordered his men to fire, but too many accounts conflicted to prove this beyond that reasonable doubt.  About one month later, the remaining eight soldiers were put on trial…six were found not guilty, while two were found guilty of manslaughter and were sentenced to have their thumbs branded with the letter “M.”  Despite allegations and subsequent evidence of biased juries, John Adams appeared to accomplish his mission: nobody could claim colonial bias with these tow verdicts.  Passions appeared to have leveled in the wake of the Boston Massacre.

But we know that’s not exactly the case since, you know, the Revolution ends up occurring.  Sure, Parliament repealed all duties that were part of the Townshend Acts, save for the one on tea that will resurface in a few years, but blood had been shed.  Massachusetts was furious and may have gone to war right then if given the chance.  Virginia wasn’t too far behind although their frustrations were channeled into more political protest as opposed to the riotous nature of their Massachusetts brethren.  All told, the next significant event that led down the path to war was what history recorded as the Gaspée incident.  We learned in episode 2.1 that smuggling enjoyed a lengthy history in the colonies and brought economic prosperity to those savvy enough to attempt it.  By the early 1770’s, England was taking measures to curtail the practice.  The entire Atlantic coast…and I mean the entire Atlantic coast…was policed by about two dozen boats, one of which was the Gaspée.  This ship mainly patrolled areas around Rhode Island since smuggling was rampant there, and Rhode Islanders had a reputation of doing pretty much whatever they wanted to do.  The issue became heated when the Gaspée was targeted in an intense colonial campaign to accuse the British of infringing on their rights as Englishmen.  On June 10, 1772, the Gaspée was chasing down a suspected smuggler in rough winds near Newport when she ran aground in a sand bank.  Angry colonials boarded the ship, shot the commanding officer, and ransacked the ship.  This attack appears to have been coordinated and premeditated, and the colonials appeared to refute England’s supposed right to rule her colonies.  In neighboring Massachusetts, the now Governor Thomas Hutchinson claimed that this rebellious attitude would spread rapidly if left unchecked.  Word of this treasonous insubordination shocked British authorities and led to calls for an immediate response…calls that ultimately went unanswered.

Act II: The Man Behind the Legend

This brings us to Samuel Adams, a man that, admittedly, most probably associate with the name of a prominent beer company.  On September 16, 1722, Samuel Adams, Jr., was born into a fairly prominent Boston family that did brew beers, among other actvities, and enjoyed material success.  At age 14, Adams formally enrolled in Harvard, and this institution would fill the minds of their students with the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau in addition to teaching the “classics” like Cicero and Livy.  Most interesting given his future “insubordination” to the British Empire, Adams overslept one time, but otherwise toed the line, although his academic performance didn’t stand out in any way.  When he earned his Master’s Degree from that same institution, the process required him to orally respond to a singular question in front of a panel…in Latin.  His question: “Is it lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the republic cannot otherwise be preserved?”  Interesting that the man whose name became synonymous with resistance to England selected this as his thesis, although in hindsight, fellow Harvard alumnus John Hancock did refer to Harvard as “the parent…of the late happy revolution.”

Schooling aside, Adams spent a good portion of his 20’s, and even into his 30’s, attempting to deal with family debts and attempts by creditors to collect said debts.  He also lost his wife of eight years during this time, and four of his six children would not survive infancy, so sorrow and struggle were traits that Adams was all too familiar with.  Beermaking aside, he sustained himself as a clerk and…wait for it…a tax collector.  That’s right…the man often paired with the slogan “no taxation without representation” was in charge of ensuring that taxes were paid.  Not a popular position, but Adams was known to cut a lot of breaks to tax delinquents, and his political stature began to rise during the 1760’s as he became acquainted with Boston’s political elite.  He was influential enough that he wrote official responses to both the Sugar and Stamp Acts, and his vocal opposition to the Stamp Act helped raise his profile in the community.  This rise continued in the wake of the Boston Massacre, even though he wasn’t present on the evening of March 5, because he was selected to provide terms to acting Governor Hutchinson about potential next steps.  Adams sought to control the narrative and wrest it away from the hands of whom he viewed as British “aggressors.”  He was part of a group that submitted an official report…well, their version of an official report, of what they believed had occurred and who was mainly to blame.  In short, they pinned it on customs officials who were overzealous in carrying out their duties and subsequently had requested the presence of the British troops who fired into the crowd.  Little attention was paid to the actions of the crowd, or the “mob,” depending on one’s point of view, and Adams would certainly have learned heavily towards referring to the masses of Bostonians on King Street as a “crowd.”  He had a shadowy hand in guiding the very public funeral processions of the deceased, and certainly approved of the engraving known as The Fruits of arbitrary Power, of the Bloody Massacre, created by Henry Pelham and often miscredited to Paul Revere.  It’s this type of one-sided propaganda with which Adams would be posthumously associated: a behind-the-scenes puppeteer who appeared all to-eager to allow others to claim credit and glory for his efforts. 

Samuel Adams continued his rise as a man of significant influence in the wake of the Gaspée Incident from Act I.  Britain engaged in one particular action that really cut at the sensibilities of freedom-loving colonials: a commission was appointed to travel to Rhode Island, investigate what occurred, and bring the offenders back to London to face justice.  Never mind that, issues with jury selection aside, a known Patriot had argued successfully for acquittal for most of the British involved with the Boston Massacre.  The right to be tried by a jury of one’s peers was now another fundamental English right that appeared to be in jeopardy.  In Boston, Samuel Adams emerged as a founding member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, a network of exchange that connected about 50 Massachusetts towns together via a mutual disdain for British policies and demeanor towards colonial self-government.  The committee sent out a pamphlet, the Boston Pamphlet, that Adams helped write which clearly stated old ideas that were neatly and meticulously organized: among other things, Adams argued that, to quote, “all humans enjoyed rights to life, liberty, and property, and could defend these rights if threatened.”  By the early 1770’s, Adams was taking a leading role in spreading the very ideas that would lay the groundwork for the Declaration of Independence.

Act III: The Big Deal with Tea

Our understanding of the Boston Tea party and the role Samuel Adams played in its execution begins with the actions of England’s House of Commons on April 26, 1773.  This is when, without an official vote, politicians agreed that the British East India Company could legally sell its excess tea to the American colonies.  Wait, what’s the British East India Company?  Like so many people and groups that we reference, this could consume its own episode, but for our purposes, it was a company founded in 1600 that existed to control the trade and supply of tea throughout Britain’s expanding maritime Empire, and they used overzealous methods to do so in the name of profit.  They competed with their French and Dutch counterparts, so they attempted to convince Parliament to make life easier for them in the name of a burgeoning national pride.  This is why, when most of the Townshend Acts were repealed, only a tax on tea remained.  It also explains why, when an excess of imported tea had the potential to cause financial ruin for the company, key members of Parliament who conveniently held stock in the company came to the rescue.  The Tea Act of 1773 was formalized in May 1773: the British East India Company now enjoyed a monopoly on the colonial tea trade, and the tax on tea would stay in place.

By this time, Samuel Adams ensured that the forces of anti-British sentiment were coalescing into a singular movement: in addition to publishing the Boston Pamphlet, his Committee of Correspondence would publish the private correspondence of, among others, Governor Hutchinson and his brother-in-law Andrew Oliver.  The letters arrived courtesy of Benjamin Franklin, and their contents revealed that Hutchinson was in favor of suspending some liberties in the interest of what he called “peace and order.”  This infuriated Adams and his allies, all the while enticing colonials to take further action.  When word of the Tea Act reached the colonies in September 1773, it was the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty who initially led the resistance, declaring in an October resolution that any merchant who chose to deal in tea from the East India Company was considered “an enemy of his country,” signifying that the “country” was not Great Britain.  The directors of the company had ironically agreed that most of the excess tea should be sold in Philadelphia and New York, the largest markets, with Boston receiving its own cargo that was to be transported in four ships.  

One of the four ships carrying this tea, the Dartmouth, arrived in Boston Harbor on November 28, 1773,.  The ship, on behalf of the company, had twenty days to pay the necessary duties or else it and its cargo would be seized.  Earlier that month, Adams and the Committee had decided that the teas should absolutely not be unloaded, and had even formally adopted the resolutions that Philadelphia had passed in October.  To amp up pressures on the consignees of the tea, or those who were legally held responsible for what happened to it, meetings were held November 29 and 30 at the Old South Church in Boston.  The meetings were technically illegal, and furthered the insistence that the teas must go back to England.  Noteworthy about these meetings were that anyone could attend as opposed to just voting-eligible adult males, and it included those from Boston and the surrounding countryside.  When Governor Hutchinson ordered a sheriff to break up the meeting, Samuel Adams launched into a passionate 20-minute speech that amounted to a direct public attack on the man who had once supported the principle of “no taxation without representation.”  He mocked Hutchinson’s assertion that he was a representative of His Majesty, calling him a “shadow of a man.”  Adams ended his time on the floor by reiterating the core tenets of the Boston Pamphlet, namely that when a citizenry, to quote, “felt themselves injured always had a right to meet together to consult for their own safety.”  Samuel Adams is not a man who is remembered for his oratorical skills, but he received a standing ovation for his defense of democracy…and the meeting ended with wealthy businessman-turned-Patriot John Hancock imploring his “countrymen” to move ahead…and take action.

Act IV: Party Time…and Its Consequences

The stage was set for one of the most well-known acts of political and civil defiance in American history.  Side note: since many historians consider the Boston Tea Party a proverbial “point of no return” when it comes to the sequence of events leading t the American Revolution, we’ll refer to the “colonials” as “Americans” moving forward.  Even though early December 1773 brought a lull between the two sides, it was more akin to the eye of a hurricane.  The men of Boston began to empty out any store that sold arms and ammunition, and any British soldier sent ashore was similarly armed.  Governor Hutchinson ordered Boston Harbor sealed so that the Dartmouth would not leave without official clearance.  Each side was holding their breath until December 17, which was the deadline for the Dartmouth to pay the tax on her tea or suffer the seizure or its contents.  Three days prior, on December 14, another meeting was held at the Old South, and Francis Rotch, owner of the Dartmouth attended.  He agreed to request permission to leave the harbor, but was denied by customs officials since they had not received the required duties, nor had Governor Hutchinson allowed it.  Two days later, Rotch appealed directly to Hutchinson…who denied him the necessary pass.  He told the crowd gathered at the Old South of this final decision.  Adams was reported to have addressed the crowd by stating, “This meeting can do nothing further to save this country.”  In short, Samuel Adams appeared to be signaling that mass meetings and assemblies would accomplish little to solve the issues with the East India Company, and by extension, England at large. 

Speculation has run rampant as to Samuel Adams’s true level of involvement regarding what happened next.  Allegedly, men began to discreetly leave the Old South as Rotch addressed the assembly; about 15 minutes following the end of Adams’s remarks, yells described as war cries broke out.  Hundreds had already left the meeting, and it was quickly adjourned so everyone could watch the commotion taking place along the waterfront.  By this time, December 16, 1773, the Eleanor and the Beaver were in the Harbor along with the Dartmouth…all containing a cargo that included tea.  The captain of the Beaver was the only one aboard his ship, and he would provide a statement the next day describing what happened.  Thousands of curious onlookers watched as 100-150 men dressed as Mohawk and armed with hatchets boarded the ships.  About 40 boarded the Beaver, busting the decks so they could hoist its cargo of unopened tea overboard.  The entire operation of smashing the chests of tea and dumping out the leaves into the Harbor took about three hours…three hours to destroy 90,000 pounds of tea valued at 10,000 British pounds.  Samuel Adams certainly didn’t board any of the ships, wield a hatchet, or triumphantly dump any leaves, but his leadership and organization, not to mention his final nudge at the Old South Church, provided the guidance and justification for such an act of resistance to occur.  

As for the aftermath? Well, news of what became known as the Boston Tea Party Hit the British government like a cannonball. the piecemeal parliamentary legislation by which England would attempt to punish boston, and thereby the American colonies, became known as the Intolerable Acts.. we'll look at the details of these laws in episode 2.4, but we're going to skip ahead to the American response to the Intolerable Acts because it's a fitting conclusion to examining the influence of Samuel Adams. In keeping with the precedent of governing their own affairs, the Americans convened what would be called the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774. The only colony not represented at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia was Georgia, and this was due to ongoing struggles with the creek in which they wanted British military assistance. The first Congress featured some truly Heavy Hitters.. individuals who are going to play Massive roles in the war to come. John Adams accompanied Sam from Massachusetts, the bombastic Patrick Henry of Virginia was in attendance, along with future chief justice and Federalist Paper essayist John Jay of New York, and Rodger Sherman of Great Compromise Fame represented connecticut. oh yeah.. George Washington was there as well. As prolific of a gathering of individuals as this was, Samuel Adams was perhaps the most infamous attendee, and arguably one of the most well known. From the outset, the intentions of the Adamses were called into question since they were among the more radical of the attendees. It's commonly believed that neither was quite ready to completely break away from England, but they knew that a full reconciliation was impossible given the events of the preceding 4+ years. Samuel Adams sought to bring the other delegates to his way of thinking, and his primary opponent was Joseph Galway.. a man who would flee to the safety of New York behind British lines months after the issuing of the Declaration of independence, so we know where his story is headed. Galway would present a plan of unions similar to that of Ben Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson two decades earlier, which would have allowed for British legal Supremacy and what amounted to American Home rule.. it failed to pass. Additionally, the First Continental Congress sought to petition the king with their grievances in the wake of the Intolerable acts, and they accomplished a colonial boycott of British goods. They also petitioned across the Atlantic Ocean looking for support, and resolved to meet the following May if Parliament didn't consent to their requests. With that, Samuel Adams Road home to Rally more support, and prepare for the inevitable Bloodshed he predicted back in 1772 following the gas pay incident. it's not as if he Fades from the spotlight following the first Continental congress.. far from it. it's just that others will additionally rise to prominence, and their experiences merit our attention moving forward. scholar, brewmaster, tax collector, pamphleteer, politician.. all in the life's work of Samuel Adams, who preferred to accomplish his work behind the scenes. 

Join us for our next episode as we escape politics and use the pen for something different...poetry.  Specifically poetry written by a girl who was enslaved, and caused a stir on both sides of the Atlantic.  Her story allows for a unique perspective on the pre-Revolutionary time period, and subsequently addresses an ironic coexistence with the ideals of the era: that of chattel slavery.  Next time on History: Beyond the Textbook, we’ll examine Phillis Wheatly, poet of the Revolution.