This group worked to oppose the new taxes enacted by the royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson.
Adams was elected to the Continental Congress in In that body, he became a champion of American independence. Adams served on the committee that drafted the new Massachusetts Constitution of As a member of the Continental Congress, he also helped write and signed the Articles of Confederation. Adams did not attend the Constitutional Convention of He rejected the purpose of the Convention, which was to strengthen the central government. Upcoming Events Explore our upcoming webinars, events and programs.
His mother, Mary Adams, was the daughter of a local businessman. It was there that Adams was introduced to the writings of John Locke , a philosopher in the Enlightenment , who argued that all people were born with certain rights that could not be taken away, and that governments exist by the consent of the people.
He was similarly unsuccessful as a city tax collector, performing his duties so ineptly that his ledgers came up short by thousands of pounds. He used that opportunity to exhort other Bostonians to cherish and protect their personal freedom. That same year, Adams was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, an office he would hold for nine years. Around that time, he also joined a secretive group of activists called the Loyal Nine, which eventually evolved into a more radical organization called the Sons of Liberty.
When British troops arrived in Boston in , Adams became more heavily involved in organizing resistance against the Crown.
He wrote scores of newspaper articles under pen names, attacking the British. He also pressured Boston merchants to boycott British goods. After the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in , which sought to force the colonists to buy their tea from the British East India Company, Adams helped organize Bostonians to hinder the tea shipments. One group of resisters took matters even further, dressing up as Indian warriors and boarding several British ships to dump their tea, in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Eventually, British authorities had enough of Adams and his agitation. But American spies got wind of the plan, and American militiamen confronted the British on Lexington Common. The ensuing Battles of Lexington and Concord were the opening armed confrontations that sparked the Revolutionary War. As a delegate to the Continental Congress, Adams signed the Declaration of Independence , and continued his inflammatory rhetoric.
In a speech in Philadelphia, he castigated Americans who sided with the Crown. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. As a member of the Continental Congress, Adams also helped draft the Articles of Confederation , the predecessor to the U. After leaving the Continental Congress in , Adams went back to Boston, and eventually got back into state politics.
He served for a time as president of the Massachusetts Senate and as Lieutenant Governor under Governor John Hancock , his former fellow radical.
When Hancock died in office, Adams took over for him, and subsequently was elected to three one-year terms before retiring.
In , the Townshend Acts were passed which taxed items such as lead, glass, paint, and tea. The Stamp Act Riots and the Massachusetts Circular Letter left a strong impression on Parliament, and after the riots that ensued as a result of the Liberty Affair in , they were now convinced that soldiers had to be sent to Boston.
On October 1, , nearly two thousand British regulars landed at Long Wharf, paraded around town, and finally camped out on Boston Common. Samuel Adams was agitated by the presence of regular soldiers in the town. On February 22, a dispute over non-importation boiled over into a riot. Ebenezer Richardson, a customs informer was under attack.
He fired a warning shot into the crowd that had gathered outside of his home, and accidentally killed a young boy by the name of Christopher Sneider.
In the years that followed, Adams did everything he could to keep the memory of the five Bostonians who were slain on King Street, and of the young boy, Christopher Sneider alive. He led an elaborate funeral procession to memorialize Sneider and the victims of the Boston Massacre.
The memorials orchestrated by Samuel Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Paul Revere reminded Bostonians of the unbridled authority which Parliament had exercised in the colonies. But more importantly, it kept the protest movement active at a time when Boston citizens were losing interest.
By , Samuel Adams was given a new crisis to latch on to. Even with the three pence per pound tax, the tea would be cheaper than all other teas on the market in Boston. While this may have delighted some consumers, merchants that had been smuggling Dutch tea into the colonies were very upset over this new tea tax. Since the East India product would be cheaper, its arrival in Boston would undercut all of the patriot merchants who had been peddling their previously less expensive Dutch tea.
To make matters worse, seven loyal merchants had been hand- picked by the East India Company tea to sell the tea in Boston. They were called the consignees, and two of them were the sons of Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In the summer of , news arrived in Boston of the passage of the Tea Act. Preparations for resistance were now well underway in the colonies.
Samuel Adams did everything in his power to garner support from colonial merchants who would be hurt by the Tea Act. Samuel Adams started by forming the Boston Committee of Correspondence. The object of the committee was to communicate with other British North American colonies in order to share methods of resistance to taxation without representation. By November 28, the crisis was now on the doorstep of Boston.
The first tea ship to arrive was the Dartmouth owned by the Rotch family. The ship arrived with crates of East India Company tea. Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty now had a deadline. According to customs law, the ship had only twenty days to unload its cargo.
The twentieth day would be December 17, Still two more ships arrived. Samuel Adams took the lead in negotiating with ship owners, and the customs officials for the port of Boston.
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