SAMUEL ADAMS. zealous Puritans, and it is said intended their son for the church. At any rate, he was early sent to that "learned and lashing" Master John Lovell, who then presided over the Boston Latin school, and who left a smarting memory of himself in the minds of all well educated Bostonians, when he was driven out with his brother loyalists by the Revolution. His portrait, painted by his pupil Smybert, the son of Berkeley's friend, may be seen at Harvard. Our New England grandfathers shuddered before it as a whole generation of Englishmen trembled on passing the chilling marble of Busby in Westminster Abbey. Lovell was a good scholar, something of a poet, one of the contributors to the "Pietas et Congra tulatio," that sighing and rejoicing tribute in which the Harvard muses rang out the old reign of George II. and rang in his glorious successor; and THE Adams family, a parent stem | money or social influence. They were which has borne from age to age eminent fruit in Massachusetts, is traced to the earliest annals of the colony. By the aid of tombstone inscriptions and town records, we may read the name in direct ascent to Henry Adams, who, upon that notable defection at Mount Wollaston, becomes a grantee of land in 1640, in the town created upon the spot, henceforth to be known as Braintree. His son Joseph adheres to the place through a long life, following the calling of a brewer, and leaving a son, John, who removes to Boston. This is the grandfather of Samuel Adams, of the Revolution, as he is called, appropriating that designation in the family by priority of birth and his unmistakable principles. He was thirteen years older than his fellow-worker in the cause, John Adams, to whom he was related in descent from Joseph Adams, the great-grandfather of them both. The two patriots may be distinguished, also, as the Boston or the Braintree Adams. 1 Dunlap, in his "Arts of Design in the United States," has an anecdote related by Judge Cranch of this Lovell portrait, painted by Nathaniel Smybert, in the Harvard Gallery. "I remember," writes the Judge, "that one of his first portraits was the picture of his old master, Lovell, drawn while the terrific impressions of the pedagogue were yet vibrating upon his nerves. I found it so perfect Samuel Adams was born in Boston, September 27, 1722. His parents are spoken of as plain, respectable people, by which is to be understood that a likeness of my old neighbor, that I did not wonder they bore a good character, and were not distinguished for the possession of shudder." when my young friend (the artist) told me that a sudden, undesigned glance at it, had often made him he doubtless inculcated his latinity upon his pupils with the best of motives, though in the worst of manners. At fourteen, the young Adams passed from the hands of this incorrigible corrector to alma mater at Cambridge. He stood well there, and was so favorably thought of, that when his education was suspended by the failure of his father's business, the college, dispensing with his attendance, conferred upon him, at the end of the four years, the usual diploma. On On taking his master of arts degree three years later, he maintained as his thesis "the lawfulness of resisting the supreme power of the State, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." The natural bent of his mind at this time seems to have been to theology, in which he strongly adhered to the independent church government of the Congregationalists. He was never diverted from these early religious principles, though his path of life lay in a different direction from the pulpit. His father's failure in business was consequent upon the breaking up of a banking scheme of the times, contrived to meet the wants of traders, in which he had encountered responsibility as a stock holder. The bank was put down by Governor Belcher and an act of Parliament, and great was the wrath of the merchants of New England. Adams, who had the wreck of his father's business to manage, was thus early led into opposition to the Government. The business, such as it was, did not succeed, and we next hear of him as city tax-gatherer; a peripatetic vocation well calculated to familiarize a man of his turn with the politics and population of the town. It was this ward politics, as we would call it nowa-days, which gave Adams his know ledge and influence at the opening of the Revolution. Some might be led afterwards to call him a demagogue, or Samuel the Publican, as they did, but he was in a far better school than his adversaries for learning the real wishes of the people. Some resemblance may perhaps be seen between this portion of his career and the matured schooling of Patrick Henry, when he also was unsuccessful in business, and learnt to study men. He does not seem to have been the best of tax-gatherers; politics and pecuniary fidelity or punctuality not always running well together. His business was agitation. As the Revolution approaches, such men are in request. His cousin, John Adams, takes early note of him in 1763, as one of a motley assembly-rudis indigestaque moles he calls it in a trite quotation from Ovid-the Caucus Club, meeting in the garret of Tom Dawes, adjutant of the Boston regiment. "He has a large house, and he has a moveable partition in his garret which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator, who puts questions to the vote regularly; and select-men, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire-wards and representatives, are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town."1 Adams is, however, not much longer also an affable and persuasive address, which could reconcile conflicting interests and promote harmony in action. He never, from jealousy, checked the advancement of others; and in accomplishing great deeds, he took to himself no praise. Seeking fame as little as fortune, and office less than either, he aimed steadily at the good of his country and the best interests of mankind. Of despondency he knew noth ing; trials only nerved him for severer struggles; his sublime and unfaltering hope had a cast of solemnity, and was as much a part of his nature as if his confidence sprung from insight into the divine decrees, and was as firm as a sincere Calvinist's assurance of his elec tion. For himself and for others, he held that all sorrows and all losses were to be encountered, rather than that liberty should perish. Such was his deep devotion, such his inflexibility and courage, he may be called the last of the Puritans, and seemed destined to raise for his country 'the victory of endurance born."'"1 to be kept behind the scenes; public affairs are calling him before the people on the stage. When the first news of the stamp tax reached America, he was foremost in opposition. Let Bancroft, who always exhibits the greatest enthusiasm for his character and services, introduce him at this period, as he rises in the Boston town meeting of May, 1764, to assert the charter rights of the colony: "He was at this time near two and forty years of age; poor, and so contented with poverty, that men censured him as 'wanting wisdom to estimate riches at their just value.' But he was frugal and temperate; and his prudent and industrious wife, endowed with the best qualities of a New England woman, knew how to work with her own hands, so that the small resources, which men of the least opulent class would have deemed a very imperfect support, were sufficient for his simple wants. Yet such was the union of dignity with economy, that whoever visited him saw around him every circumstance of propriety. Above The next year he was chosen, by the all, he combined with poverty a stern people of Boston, a representative to and incorruptible integrity. His nature the General Court or Legislature of was keenly sensitive, yet he bore with Massachusetts, to which he was anmagnanimity the neglect of friends and nually reëlected till 1774, a period the malignity of enemies. Already which covers what we may call the famed as a political writer, employing pupilage of American independence. wit and sarcasm, as well as energy It was the formative era, when the of language and earnestness, no one had equal influence over the popular mind. No blandishments of flattery could lull his vigilance, no sophistry tions of the commonwealth to be subdeceive his penetration. Difficulties mitted to the fiery furnace of war, and could not discourage his decision, nor danger appall his fortitude He had separate workmen were busy in their several States, learning their daily les son, and preparing the different por 'Bancroft's History of the United States, V. 195-7. which had dared to attack him, it bit him unexpectedly a second time; he dropped it, and it made its escape. Now, fellow citizens, what think you was the reflection which this trifling circumstance gave birth to in the mind. of the philosopher? It was this: that there is no animal, however weak and contemptible, which cannot defend its own liberty, if it will only fight for it.'"1 afterwards welded into the strong mass as he awoke, and found that he had of the United States. Of these parcel caught in it a small field-mouse. As laborers, none came up to the great he was examining the little animal convention of 1774, at. Philadelphia, with a better resolution than Samuel Adams. He was the marked man of the British authorities, who saw in him the stirrer up of faction; politic and determined; always at his post to confound skeptics, strengthen the feeble minded, and nerve the resolute. When the government in England, hearing so much of the trouble he gave the administration, inquired of Hutchinson why he did not silence him by a place From these exertions, enforced by or pension, he answered, "Such is the his plain Puritan character, Adams obstinacy and inflexible disposition of came to be called the Patriot Samuel the man, that he never can be concili- Adams, an eminent distinction, conated by any office or gift whatever." sidering that his associates in the BosAn anecdote of the easy, agreeable ton representation at the General Court manner, worthy of Franklin, in which were Otis, Cushing, and Hancock. It he sometimes insinuated his conclu- was a time when patriots kept good sions, is related as happening at a town company. When Samuel Adams went meeting, called at the Old South Meet- to the Congress at Philadelphia, he ing House, upon some fresh aggression upon popular rights. "The different orators of the Whig party had in turn addressed the meeting, loud in complaint and accusation, but guarded and cautious in every point which might look like an approach towards treasonable expressions, or direct exhortations to resistance. Adams had placed himself in the pulpit, and sat quietly listening to all their harangues; at length he rose and made a few brief remarks, which he wound up with the following pithy apologue: A Grecian philosopher who was lying asleep on the grass, was suddenly roused by the bite of some animal on the palm of his hand. He closed his hand suddenly was accompanied by Cushing, his relative John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine. The talking, of which it must be admitted Adams had done his share, was now to be succeeded by action. He had kindled at the quartering of troops at the time of the Boston massacre, and assisted at their removal; he was now to rejoice at Lexington. He was present with the townspeople on the morning of that memorable nineteenth of April, though, wisely retiring with his friend Hancock, he did not share the full perils of the day. "It is a fine day," said he, walking in the 'Biography of Samuel Adams. March, 1814. "Analectic Magazine," |