October 2 1803: Samuel Adams Dies

On This Day…

      …in 1803, the fiery patriot Samuel Adams died at the age of 81. A complete failure as a businessman, he was a brilliant political organizer, a talented writer, and a passionate public speaker. He founded the Sons of Liberty and was almost certainly the main instigator of the Boston Tea Party. He helped organize a movement to boycott British goods and devised the notion of uniting towns through Committees of Correspondence. He called for representatives of all Britain’s American colonies to gather together. When they did, he was chosen a delegate to the first Continental Congress. He was able to go to Philadelphia only because his friends provided him with a new suit, wig, shoes, silk hose, and money to cover his expenses.

Background

When Samuel Adams died in 1803, he was mourned as one of America’s greatest patriots. He had served in the U.S. Senate and as governor of the Commonwealth. But in his heyday as one of the most radical members of the revolutionary generation, Samuel Adams had a more mixed reputation. His detractors called him a rabble rouser, an instigator, and a dangerous troublemaker. To those who shared his dedication to the cause of independence, he was a gifted political organizer and a passionate and articulate spokesman.

Born into a prosperous Boston family, he soon squandered most of the advantages of his position. His father sent him to Harvard and then supported him while he studied law; young Adams decided not to be a lawyer. His father helped to set him up in business; the large sum his father had provided was soon gone. Adams was 26 when his father died; over the next ten years, he lost most of his inheritance, including a house in Boston and his family’s brewery, and ran up debts he could not pay. At mid-life, Samuel Adams was barely able to support his wife and two children. He depended on his wife’s domestic economies and the gifts of neighbors. By 1764 when the British Parliament began to crack down on the colonies, he gave up any attempts at business and devoted himself to politics.

Samuel Adams may have been a complete failure as a businessman, but he had a talent for political organizing. He was sociable, articulate, and politically astute. He wrote brilliant letters and newspaper pieces criticizing the conservative elite. He was a passionate public speaker and knew how to rouse the emotions of the common people. His cousin, John Adams, called him “a universal good character . . . unless it should be admitted that he is too attentive to the public, and not enough to himself and his family.”

After 1764, when the quarrel between the colonists and Parliament grew increasingly bitter, Samuel Adams had little time for anything other than politics. He was an early convert to the cause of independence, and set about inflaming public sentiment against the British crown. He played a leading role in opposition to the Townshend Acts and in the movement to boycott British goods, and stirred up popular hatred of the Redcoats quartered in Boston — a hatred that eventually lead to the Boston Massacre.

Whenever the momentum towards revolution seemed to slow, Samuel Adams found a way to stir up controversy and incite mobs to action. In 1774, he began publishing anti-British articles in the Boston papers. His writing fanned public fears that the king and Parliament were conspiring to deprive the colonists of their liberty. Having devised the notion of uniting towns through committees of correspondence, he drafted declarations of rights and grievances for them to adopt.

After the war, Samuel Adams used his revolutionary credentials to secure positions in the new government. He served a term as senator in the 1780s and as governor in the 1790s, but he was no longer the commanding figure he had once been. He led a quiet life until his death at age 81. His powers of persuasion are remembered in the words he addressed to those of his countrymen who sided with the king:

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Links

Adams’s speech on “American Independence,” August 1, 1776. < http://www.iboston.org/mcp.php?pid=samAdamsIndepSpch&laf=rg  >

“Samuel Adams” on the Colonial Hall website < http://www.colonialhall.com/adamss/adamss.php >

Sources

Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. I

Samuel Adams: Son of Liberty, Father of Revolution, by Benjamin H. Irvin (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Online at: http://www.massmoments.org/

Jack Manning

Historian General
National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org

“But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.”
James Madison, Federalist No. 42

John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg is born

On this day in history, October 1, 1746, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg is born. Muhlenberg was a Lutheran minister who rose to prominence as a general during the American Revolution and was later elected to serve in the US Congress.

Peter Muhlenberg was born into a minister’s family in Trappe, Pennsylvania. As a young man, he and his brothers were sent to Germany to study. Peter was a rambunctious youth and the teachers recommended that he be trained for business instead of the ministry, as his father had planned. For this reason, Peter was apprenticed to a merchant in Lubeck for some time, a position he hated. Peter eventually ran off and joined the German army for a time and then the British army.

In 1767, Peter returned to Pennsylvania as an assistant to a British officer and left the army to begin studying for the ministry. In 1769, Peter was licensed in the Lutheran church and began serving with his father in New Jersey. Peter married and took a church in Woodstock, Virginia, where he remained until the Revolution began.

Peter became a follower of Patrick Henry and was appointed the head of Dunmore County’s Committee of Safety and Correspondence. In 1774, he was elected to the House of Burgesses and then to the first rebel Virginia Convention. As the war progressed, George Washington personally asked Peter to raise the 8th Virginia Regiment.

According to legend, Muhlenberg stood before his congregation on January 21, 1776 in his clerical robes and began to preach from Ecclesiastes chapter 3, “To everything there is a season…” When he reached the 8th verse, “a time of war, and a time of peace,” Muhlenberg tore off his robe to reveal a colonel’s uniform of the Continental Army underneath. He preached that this was a time of war and encouraged the men in his congregation to join the fight. 162 men joined him that today. The following day, Muhlenberg led the regiment to join the Continental Army.

Muhlenberg’s regiment first served on the southern coast, but was then transferred to Valley Forge where he was promoted to brigadier general. Muhlenberg saw action at the Battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Stony Point and Charleston. He was later transferred to Virginia to oversee the state militia and served in Lafayette’s division at the Battle of Yorktown.

After the war, Muhlenberg moved back to Pennsylvania where he served on the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, several years of which he was Vice-President of the Council, a position equivalent to lieutenant-governor. In 1789, Muhlenberg was elected to the First Congress. His brother, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, was elected to Congress as well and became the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. Peter was also elected to the 3rd and 5th Congresses as a Democratic-Republican.

Muhlenberg formed the first Democratic-Republican society, a group of political activists who promoted their views and candidates. These groups spread around the country and helped create our modern notion of grassroots political activity.

In 1801, Muhlenberg was elected to the US Senate, but he only held this position for a few months before President Thomas Jefferson appointed him to the lucrative position of Supervisor of US Customs for Pennsylvania. In 1803, he also became the Collector of Customs for the Port of Philadelphia, a position he held until his death, also ironically on October 1, 1807. Muhlenberg is buried at Augustus Lutheran Church in Trappe, Pennsylvania.

http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com

Jack Manning

Historian General
National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org

“The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788