The Glenn Beck Program - Boston’s Rebellion: Samuel Adams and the Fight for Liberty | The American Story | Ep 5
Aired: 2026-05-09
Duration: 51:18


=== Samuel's Humble Beginnings (03:27) ===

[00:00:06]  The flickering candlelight casts dancing shadows across the worn wooden beams of a room above the Green Dragon Tavern.
[00:00:14]  A tight knit group of men huddle around a scarred oak table in a haze of tobacco smoke, their voices a low rumble of spirited conviction.
[00:00:24]  They call themselves the Monday Night Club, a small collection of local tradesmen, merchants, and writers who get together over tumblers of ale to discuss liberty and tyranny.
[00:00:35]  Ideas at this time that can get them killed.
[00:00:39]  At the head of the table sits a stocky, middle aged man with ink stained fingers and eyes sparkling with energy and wisdom.
[00:00:46]  His clothes are noticeably more worn than his colleagues.
[00:00:49]  He fidgets with a quill, his hand trembling slightly from age or exhaustion.
[00:00:55]  Maybe both.
[00:00:57]  That man is Samuel Adams.
[00:01:01]  Across from him sits his cousin, John Adams, 34 years old, clean shaven, cautious, but never shying away from a political debate.
[00:01:10]  He's a farmer and a lawyer with a growing practice.
[00:01:13]  He's a man who is caught between two worlds the simple family farm life that he craves versus the sense of a calling he feels to play a role in this growing freedom movement.
[00:01:27]  The robust conversation is interrupted by the deep, resonant tolling of bells echoing from the streets.
[00:01:33]  The men instinctively spring from their chairs for their coats and their hats.
[00:01:38]  In a city of timber and candlelight, The bells mean there's a fire.
[00:01:44]  Suddenly, there's pounding on a door.
[00:01:46]  Samuel's head snaps towards the sound.
[00:01:48]  The club members fall silent as they exchange tense glances.
[00:01:52]  The door swings open, revealing a panting messenger, his breath visible in the cold draft that's now rushing in, his face etched with urgency.
[00:02:00]  He blurts something out about King Street, shots fired, and blood spilled.
[00:02:05]  Without hesitation, the men pour out into the biting winter darkness.
[00:02:09]  Snow crunches under their boots as they race through the narrow, moonlit alleys.
[00:02:13]  The ominous clanging bells, Drawing more people from their homes.
[00:02:18]  The wind whips at their coats, carrying distant shouts that now grow louder and louder, more chaotic with each step.
[00:02:24]  They turn a corner and collide with pandemonium, a hysterical mob surging like an ocean wave, bodies pressed together in a frenzy of rage and confusion.
[00:02:34]  Cries of murder pierce the frigid air.
[00:02:38]  Samuel and his companions push forward, elbows and shoulders forcing a path through the throng, hearts pounding with a mix of dread and determination.
[00:02:46]  Finally, they break through the front where the horror unfolds before them.
[00:02:51]  Three bodies lie sprawl in the pristine white snow, limbs twisted unnaturally, crimson blood pooling outward in a stark, spreading stain.
[00:03:03]  The crowd wails and thrusts their accusing fingers at a line of red-coated British soldiers standing frozen, their faces pale.
[00:03:12]  Sam Adams stands there, the scene searing his soul.
[00:03:16]  This isn't a mere brawl or accident.
[00:03:18]  This is the ignition point, the moment when simmering tensions explode into something irreversible.
[00:03:26]  This is Boston, 1770, the epicenter of the American Revolution.

=== The Stamp Act Outrage (15:06) ===

[00:03:34]  And it would not have happened without the driving perseverance of one unlikely patriot leader, Samuel Adams.
[00:03:43]  This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book.
[00:03:50]  Of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
[00:03:55]  Episode 5 Boston's Rebellion Samuel Adams and the Fight for Liberty.
[00:04:03]  Before Samuel Adams became the beating heart of the Revolution, before the countless newspaper articles, the mobs, the Tea Party, he was a failure.
[00:04:12]  He failed at business.
[00:04:13]  He failed at managing money.
[00:04:15]  He even failed at making beer.
[00:04:18]  Samuel Adams was born in Boston in 1722.
[00:04:21]  He was the fourth of 12 children.
[00:04:23]  Only three would survive into adulthood.
[00:04:26]  His father, Samuel Adams Sr., was a successful maltster, a craftsman who transformed barley into malt.
[00:04:34]  Through the meticulous process of steeping, drying, and sweating, and then kilning.
[00:04:39]  In an era where beer was often safer to drink than contaminated water, he made a fortune supplying Boston's breweries and housewives with the ingredients for making their brews.
[00:04:49]  At six years old, Samuel attended Boston Latin, the school for the city's elite.
[00:04:54]  At 14, he entered Harvard College, not unusual at the time.
[00:04:59]  But after graduation, Samuel tried his hand at business.
[00:05:02]  He worked briefly for a Boston merchant named Thomas Cushing, who later said about Samuel, His whole soul was engrossed by politics.
[00:05:13]  Samuel Adams was useless at business.
[00:05:16]  He further proved that when he tried to start a business of his own.
[00:05:19]  The details have been lost to history, but what we do know is that he squandered his father's investment of a thousand pounds in the venture.
[00:05:27]  Samuel returned to what he was good at studying, writing, and debate at Harvard.
[00:05:32]  He earned a master's degree when he was 20, and for his master's thesis, he tackled a question that foreshadowed his true calling.
[00:05:41]  Is it lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the republic cannot otherwise be preserved?
[00:05:48]  Naturally, his conclusion was a resounding yes.
[00:05:53]  He wrote that citizens must obey the king only as long as he acts according to the law.
[00:05:58]  But if the king betrays that law, violating natural rights and liberties, then, Samuel wrote, he overthrows the very design of government and the people are discharged.
[00:06:11]  from all obedience.
[00:06:13]  It was an academic argument that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[00:06:18]  He didn't know it yet, but that paper was his first article of rebellion.
[00:06:23]  In 1748, Samuel inherited the family malt business when his father died at 59.
[00:06:29]  He was again terrible at it, running it into the ground and accumulating significant debts.
[00:06:36]  The only thing Samuel had going for him was his marriage to Elizabeth Checkley.
[00:06:41]  The 24 year old daughter of the minister at New South Church, where Sam had been a member all his life.
[00:06:48]  A year later, Elizabeth gave birth to their son named Samuel, but he lived only 18 days.
[00:06:54]  Almost one year to the day later, she had another son, also named Samuel, who survived.
[00:07:00]  But the couple would lose another son and a daughter before their daughter Hannah arrived in 1756.
[00:07:09]  The year after that brought the ultimate heartbreak for Samuel.
[00:07:13]  Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn son, and then she died three weeks later.
[00:07:19]  She was only 32.
[00:07:22]  After almost eight years of marriage, Sam was left a devastated widower, turning to his faith for strength.
[00:07:30]  For Elizabeth's epitaph, he wrote, She ran her Christian race with a remarkable steadiness and finished in triumph.
[00:07:40]  In the family Bible, he added a heartfelt prayer.
[00:07:43]  She left two small children.
[00:07:45]  God grant.
[00:07:47]  They may inherit her graces.
[00:07:49]  Samuel raised his son and daughter on his own for the next seven years.
[00:07:54]  Further losses compounded his sorrow.
[00:07:56]  His mother died in 1758, his brother in 1759.
[00:08:00]  By 1764, at 41, Samuel's house was in disrepair, the malt business was ruined, and a slight tremor had crept into his hands.
[00:08:10]  Yet, he found love again, and he married Betsy Wells.
[00:08:15]  They had no children together, but Betsy embraced her stepchildren as her own.
[00:08:22]  As Samuel became more embroiled in colonial politics, Betsy was often left alone to manage the household and the children, but She was the glue that held the family together and worked hard to make it on their meager finances.
[00:08:35]  This personal backdrop set the stage for Samuel's plunge into politics and controversy.
[00:08:42]  The spark that turned him into a firebrand?
[00:08:45]  That was the Stamp Act of 1765.
[00:08:51]  This is what this was all about.
[00:08:52]  Great Britain was burdened by debt from the French and Indian War, and they imposed a tax on virtually every paper transaction.
[00:09:01]  Marriage certificates, ships, papers, legal documents, newspapers, and countless others.
[00:09:06]  Colonists who considered themselves full British subjects saw it as a violation of their rights.
[00:09:12]  This was taxation without representation.
[00:09:15]  Worse, it raised alarms about potential government control over religious material.
[00:09:21]  If the government could tax their documents, could it also censor their words next, their sermons, their Bibles?
[00:09:28]  Samuel argued the Stamp Act was designed.
[00:09:31]  Only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as slaves of men.
[00:09:37]  And the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan is mighty easy.
[00:09:46]  The protests began almost immediately.
[00:09:48]  Crowds gathered under Boston's Liberty Tree, hanging effigies of British tax agents.
[00:09:54]  Mobs ransacked the homes of royal officials.
[00:09:57]  Stamp agents resigned in terror.
[00:10:00]  By November 1st, 1765, the day the law was to take effect, No royal official in Boston dared to enforce the Stamp Act.
[00:10:09]  Business carried on.
[00:10:10]  Newspapers printed a skull and crossbones where the royal stamp would have been.
[00:10:16]  Samuel Adams had found his calling, something he was good at.
[00:10:21]  He was elected to represent Boston in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and he was one of the earliest members of the Sons of Liberty.
[00:10:29]  He developed an unprecedented influence as the writer of political essays in the Boston Gazette.
[00:10:35]  His writing was blunt and uncompromising.
[00:10:38]  He made rational arguments for liberty that resonated with the common people of Boston and beyond.
[00:10:45]  As was common at the time, and because so much of what he wrote would be considered sedition, he used multiple pseudonyms for his newspaper essays.
[00:10:55]  In December 1765, Samuel brought his cousin John Adams into the inner circle, the Monday Nightclub.
[00:11:02]  This was a very secretive group where communication, strategy, and influence were designed, where the most urgent newspaper essays were planned.
[00:11:11]  John was 30 years old, still a little naive and utterly captivated.
[00:11:16]  John later wrote that Samuel had.the most thorough understanding of liberty and her resources in the temper and character of the people, as well as the most habitual radical love of it of any of them, as well as the most correct, genteel, and artful pen.
[00:11:34]  Thanks to that artful pen, John Adams also said that 1765 had made Americans.
[00:11:41]  More attentive to their liberties, more inquisitive about them, and more determined to defend them than they were ever before.
[00:11:49]  The Adams family, if you will, the cousins, made a very powerful pair.
[00:11:56]  When the Stamp Act was finally repealed in 1766, Boston erupted in celebration.
[00:12:02]  But Samuel Adams, ever suspicious, warned that the victory would not last.
[00:12:07]  And boy, was he right.
[00:12:11]  A year later came the Townshend Acts new taxes on glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea.
[00:12:18]  Parliament, it seems, Was doubling down.
[00:12:21]  Samuel wrote the official Massachusetts protest to King George III, calling the acts a violation of the natural and constitutional rights of Americans.
[00:12:31]  Hannah, his 10 year old daughter, stood by his desk one morning as he was working on the draft.
[00:12:36]  She was proud and amazed that the document would be touched by the royal hand.
[00:12:42]  Samuel rubbed his weary eyes, smiled at her, and replied, It will, my dear, more likely be spurned by the royal foot.
[00:12:52]  He was right again.
[00:12:55]  The document urged a return to local control of taxation and called for other states to boycott the taxed goods.
[00:13:02]  Shortly after the Massachusetts House approved the draft, Samuel and James Otis suggested the document be shared with the other colonies.
[00:13:10]  It was known as the Circular Letter.
[00:13:14]  In June 1768, King George demanded that Massachusetts retract the circular letter.
[00:13:21]  But after receiving support of the letter from five other colonies, They voted 92 to 17 not to rescind it.
[00:13:28]  At the time, it was the most open rebellion ever seen in the colonies.
[00:13:34]  Well, the Crown appointed Governor Francis Bernard promptly dissolved the Massachusetts legislature, setting off widespread protests.
[00:13:42]  Bernard called Adams, the most dangerous man in Massachusetts.
[00:13:47]  And within a month, 200 Boston merchants signed a non importation agreement.
[00:13:53]  They would buy nothing from Great Britain.
[00:13:56]  Until the Townshend taxes were repealed.
[00:13:59]  Another grassroots intimidation campaign, this time against customs officials, began.
[00:14:04]  Samuel did not openly support it, but he didn't really discourage it either.
[00:14:08]  In response, royal agents requested the king's troops as peacemakers.
[00:14:13]  Rumors of occupation swirled in late summer.
[00:14:17]  And then, in September 1768, a fleet of British troop transports into Boston Harbor.
[00:14:25]  Redcoats poured into the wharves.
[00:14:27]  Muskets gleaming in the early autumn sun.
[00:14:30]  Their boots struck the cobblestone streets in unison, four regiments strong.
[00:14:36]  The king had sent an army to occupy his own subjects.
[00:14:42]  Samuel Adams stood at the window of his modest house on Purchase Street, watching the red tide pour in.
[00:14:51]  Sometimes people get sideswiped by life.
[00:14:53]  It's a sudden medical bill that you never saw coming, or a job change that turns everything that you once understood to be your finances completely upside down.
[00:15:01]  And then you add to that the higher prices on everything, and suddenly you're in a position where credit cards are the bridge.
[00:15:06]  You have to.
[00:15:08]  Then the interest rates, they're not forgiving.
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[00:15:45]  For 17 months, Boston had lived under the weight of British bayonets.
[00:15:58]  2,000 troops in a town of 16,000 civilians.
[00:16:02]  Boston would never be the same.
[00:16:05]  Soldiers and civilians shared streets, taverns, even church steps.
[00:16:10]  The long occupation, plus two years of the townshend taxes and boycotts, made frustrations boil over.
[00:16:16]  Every corner of the city felt like a powder keg.
[00:16:20]  The British troops were not exactly elite.
[00:16:23]  Many of them were young, poor, half drunk, dragged from London jails and given a choice of joining the army or heading to the gallows.
[00:16:32]  So they were underpaid, brutally treated, and bored stiff.
[00:16:36]  So they had their fun wherever they could, often at the expense of regular Bostonians.
[00:16:43]  They liked to gather outside of churches on Sundays, mocking worshipers with lewd songs.
[00:16:48]  And their favorite tune was Yankee Doodle.
[00:16:51]  No one knew exactly what a Yankee was, but doodle meant clown or fool.
[00:16:58]  It was like being called a hick or a country bumpkin, and the insult stuck.
[00:17:03]  Bostonians called the soldiers lobster backs, another colorful, abusive name.
[00:17:09]  They pelted them with snowballs and mud and sometimes more solid objects.
[00:17:14]  There were British barracks just blocks away from Samuel Adams' front door.
[00:17:19]  He had a large Newfoundland dog named Q, whom he trained to bite any redcoat who crossed his path.
[00:17:26]  The British occupation fueled Samuel's writing like never before.
[00:17:30]  Every Monday, the Boston Gazette carried his latest essay.
[00:17:34]  And over the years, he used 30 different pseudonyms, each one a new voice in a chorus of outrage.
[00:17:41]  Samuel and his associates chronicled the British presence like crime reporters, chronicling every insult, every shove, every bruise inflicted by the troops.
[00:17:50]  They published these reports as something they called the Journal of Occurrences.
[00:17:55]  Each week, these accounts spread to newspapers.
[00:17:58]  In other colonies, and the outrage grew, along with the realization that liberty under siege in Boston was a threat to all Americans.
[00:18:07]  One friend later recalled walking past Samuel's house late one night, seeing the candle still burning in the window.
[00:18:13]  He found it reassuring that, Samuel Adams is hard at work, riding against the Tories.
[00:18:21]  Yet, as with all things, it was never smooth sailing for Samuel Adams, even on his home turf of Boston.
[00:18:28]  Loyalists constantly mocked him and his cohorts in print, ridiculing them as Agonizing reptiles, small statesmen who rave and drivel about the political frenzy and idiotism.

=== Framing the Massacre (08:10) ===

[00:18:40]  But the insults only sharpened his pen.
[00:18:43]  And then came the night of March 5th, 1770.
[00:18:50]  Private Hugh White stands guard outside the custom house on King Street.
[00:18:54]  It is bitterly cold, and he is taunted for hours.
[00:18:58]  A rowdy late night crowd jeers, throws snowballs, oyster shells, and chunks of ice at him.
[00:19:04]  They dare him to strike back.
[00:19:07]  Private White raises his musket, shouting for help.
[00:19:11]  His plea eggs on the crowd.
[00:19:13]  A young, nervous Captain Thomas Preston rushes to the scene with seven more soldiers.
[00:19:19]  They stand with their red coated backs to the wall of the custom house.
[00:19:23]  Their arrival fuels the fiery crowd even more.
[00:19:26]  The mob swells again 50, 100, eventually more than 1,000, the air thick with curses that contrast the soft falling snow.
[00:19:37]  Captain Preston orders the soldiers to level their muskets.
[00:19:40]  As soon as they do, the crowd surges forward, almost touching the points of the British bayonets, daring them fire!
[00:19:48]  Fire on us!
[00:19:49]  Suddenly, a soldier is blindsided by a flying chunk of wood that hits him in the head.
[00:19:55]  The blow knocks him down.
[00:19:58]  A shot rings out.
[00:19:59]  The crowd roars in panic.
[00:20:01]  Seconds later, the burst of musket fire rips through the crowd.
[00:20:05]  Screams, chaos.
[00:20:06]  Three men lay dead in the snow.
[00:20:08]  Two more die later of their wounds.
[00:20:10]  Six others writhe in the ground with their injuries.
[00:20:14]  Among the dead, the 47 year old Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Indian descent.
[00:20:21]  He likely escaped slavery years earlier.
[00:20:24]  He, a black man, the first to die in the cause for American liberty.
[00:20:30]  When Samuel and John Adams arrive, the smoke is cleared and the snow is streaked with the crimson blood.
[00:20:36]  The acting royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, quickly has Captain Preston and the eight soldiers under his command arrested.
[00:20:44]  Finally, by 4 a.m., the Boston streets are quiet.
[00:20:49]  The next morning, Boston held an emergency town meeting.
[00:20:53]  The people voted Samuel Adams to be their spokesman to the governor.
[00:20:57]  Later that day, Samuel stood before Governor Hutchinson, who looked on edge.
[00:21:02]  No one in Boston unnerved him quite like Samuel Adams.
[00:21:06]  With his untidy clothes and twitching mouth, watery eyes, and the mild tremor in his hands, Samuel looked unimpressive.
[00:21:15]  But when he spoke, he had an entirely different effect.
[00:21:20]  People were inspired into action.
[00:21:23]  Samuel demanded that the British troops be removed from Boston.
[00:21:27]  Governor Hutchinson refused.
[00:21:29]  Then he waffled.
[00:21:30]  Then he whispered with other officials.
[00:21:33]  Finally, he said he would agree to withdraw one regiment, but not both.
[00:21:38]  Samuel returned to the old South Church where the crowd had swelled to 4,000.
[00:21:43]  Bostonians were adamant removing one regiment was not good enough.
[00:21:48]  Samuel, his eyes ablaze, returned to the governor and said if the troops weren't removed, thousands of Massachusetts militiamen would be glad to force them out.
[00:21:56]  The governor warned Samuel that this was high treason territory.
[00:22:01]  John Adams, who was watching from the crowd, later wrote that a self recollection, a self possession, a self command, a presence of mind that was admired by every man present.
[00:22:12]  Samuel stood his ground.
[00:22:14]  If you have power to remove one regiment, you have power to remove both.
[00:22:20]  The people are becoming very impatient.
[00:22:22]  A thousand men are already arrived from the neighborhood, and the country is in general motion.
[00:22:28]  He watched the resolve slowly drain from Hutchinson's face.
[00:22:33]  Samuel later wrote, I observed his knees to tremble.
[00:22:37]  I thought I saw his face grow pale, and I enjoyed the sight.
[00:22:41]  Hutchinson finally buckled.
[00:22:45]  Both British regiments withdrew from the city to Castle William.
[00:22:49]  It was a fortification on an island in Boston Harbor.
[00:22:53]  It was a stunning reversal.
[00:22:56]  When Samuel brought the news back to the Old South Church, the crowd erupted in celebration.
[00:23:01]  But the celebration was short lived for Samuel, because his work wasn't finished.
[00:23:05]  He knew this story had to be told well and to spread everywhere.
[00:23:11]  For starters, he labeled the night of March 5th the Horrid Massacre, which quickly caught on in the colonial press.
[00:23:18]  He planned a massive funeral for the victims.
[00:23:21]  10,000 mourners would fill the streets.
[00:23:24]  That's well over half of Boston's population.
[00:23:27]  Drums beat slow and steady as four coffins wound through the city toward the granary burying ground.
[00:23:35]  Samuel understood something few others did.
[00:23:38]  Revolution required a story.
[00:23:41]  His fellow Sons of Liberty member Paul Revere produced an engraving he titled The Bloody Massacre in King Street.
[00:23:49]  It showed the Redcoats firing in perfect formation at a helpless crowd.
[00:23:55]  A captain raising his sword in command and every detail designed to inflame.
[00:24:00]  And it spread like wildfire through the colonies.
[00:24:03]  The truth was messier.
[00:24:06]  But the Purdue story resonated.
[00:24:08]  Within weeks, the Boston Massacre became the rallying cry from New Hampshire to Georgia.
[00:24:15]  Here's where the story gets fascinating.
[00:24:18]  The man who's recruited to defend the British soldiers in court was Samuel Adams' own cousin, John Adams.
[00:24:26]  John didn't want the case.
[00:24:28]  His one year old daughter had died just a month before the Boston Massacre.
[00:24:32]  He was devastated.
[00:24:33]  He wanted solitude, not controversy.
[00:24:36]  But no one else would take the case.
[00:24:40]  Ultimately, he agreed to take the job on principle, believing that a free country must allow the right to counsel and a fair trial.
[00:24:48]  Law and justice had to prevail over mob fury.
[00:24:53]  Well, there were six days of testimony, and he dismantled the prosecution's case.
[00:24:57]  Witness after witness admitted that the crowd had taunted and attacked the soldiers first.
[00:25:02]  The most dramatic moment came from the deathbed of a victim, Patrick Carr, who told his surgeon that he forgave the soldiers, that they had fired in self-defense.
[00:25:14]  John Adams' closing argument became very famous.
[00:25:18]  Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence, nor is the law less stable than the fact.
[00:25:33]  If an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear they had a right to kill in their own defense.
[00:25:41]  If it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, Yet, if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind, this was a provocation for which the law reduces the offense of killing down to manslaughter in consideration of those passions in our nature which cannot be eradicated.
[00:26:08]  The jury deliberated two and a half hours.
[00:26:11]  Six of the soldiers were acquitted, two were convicted of manslaughter, and their punishment was having the letter.
[00:26:17]  M seared into their right thumbs with a hot iron.
[00:26:21]  Justice, at least technically, was done.
[00:26:24]  But the larger verdict, the one written in the newspapers and declared in sermons across the colonies, was already decided.
[00:26:31]  This was tyranny and oppression.
[00:26:34]  Looking back years later, John Adams said Not the Battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis, were more important events in American history than the Battle of King Street on March 5, 1770.

=== Justice and Tyranny (02:32) ===

[00:26:50]  By the end of 1770, the American struggle was just getting started.
[00:26:56]  Britain repealed the Townshend Acts, all except for one key tax the tax on tea.
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=== Securing Your Title Now (15:30) ===

[00:29:23]  Imagine the aftermath of the Boston Massacre as a smoldering fire that Sam Adams refused to let die out.
[00:29:31]  For the next two years, he embarked on a one man crusade, determined not to let Massachusetts or the wider colonies slip into amnesia.
[00:29:41]  About the grievances that had piled up over the past six years, stretching all the way back to the Stamp Act of 1765.
[00:29:49]  He produced a continuous stream of essays in the Boston Gazette, reminding readers of every insult, every injustice, every ounce of British arrogance.
[00:29:58]  His arch nemesis, Governor Hutchinson, fumed, writing The devil himself is not capable of more malevolence.
[00:30:07]  Adams would push the continent into a rebellion tomorrow if it was in his power.
[00:30:13]  Hutchinson was probably right about the rebellion part, but rebellion required a lot more than rage.
[00:30:20]  It needed organization.
[00:30:22]  And Samuel Adams was a genius at that.
[00:30:28]  To appreciate his next move, you have to understand the fragmented landscape of the colonies in the years leading up to the War for Independence.
[00:30:35]  They were like 13 separate countries.
[00:30:38]  They were highly independent, all with their own laws, economies, money, rivalries, and little in the way of consistent communication between them.
[00:30:47]  There was no unified voice, no network to share ideas or coordinate actions.
[00:30:53]  In 1772, Samuel seized on an idea first proposed by the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew six years earlier for an organized system of communication between all of the colonies to help them unite in their thinking and action.
[00:31:08]  Samuel jumpstarted what became known as the Committees of Correspondence.
[00:31:13]  It was a communication web that stretched from Massachusetts to South Carolina.
[00:31:18]  He described its simple mission like this To state the rights of the colonists and of this province in particular as men, as Christians, and as subjects.
[00:31:30]  Each word was chosen with care.
[00:31:33]  Men, meaning all citizens.
[00:31:35]  Christians, grounding their protest in moral spiritual duty.
[00:31:39]  Subjects, asserting their loyalty, but only to a lawful king.
[00:31:44]  Even supporters of this correspondence effort were skeptical that it would work.
[00:31:48]  One told Samuel that some colonies might not join because, quote, they're dead, and the dead can't be raised without a miracle.
[00:31:56]  To which Samuel replied, All are not dead, and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will enkindle it.
[00:32:06]  And he did.
[00:32:08]  Through these committees, news and outrage spread faster than ever before.
[00:32:12]  A colonial postal service of rebellion.
[00:32:14]  With Boston as the nerve center.
[00:32:17]  In the fall of 1773, Samuel Adams had a new chilling item to slip into his correspondence.
[00:32:25]  The British East India Company, that sprawling commercial empire, had been granted a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies.
[00:32:34]  Essentially, it was a corporate bailout.
[00:32:37]  The company was drowning in unsold tea.
[00:32:40]  So Parliament had a solution let's dump it surplus directly in America, and have the colonists pay a small tax on it, of course.
[00:32:48]  The logic was simple.
[00:32:50]  Much of the tea sold in the colonies came from smugglers.
[00:32:54]  But this East India Company tea, even with the small tax, would be cheaper than any other options.
[00:33:01]  Surely, Americans wouldn't be able to resist such a steal, and in the process, maybe they'd forget about taxation without representation that they were so hung up on.
[00:33:11]  To modern ears, the tea tax issue might seem pretty petty, but tea in the 1770s, it wasn't just a drink.
[00:33:19]  It was a vital staple of daily life.
[00:33:22]  The water in many colonial communities was undrinkable.
[00:33:25]  Boiling it into tea made it safe to drink and it helped keep people alive.
[00:33:30]  So when that tax arrived hidden in the teapot, it wasn't a minor issue.
[00:33:35]  This was personal.
[00:33:37]  And it showed that Britain still did not get the message that Americans were fed up with being treated as second class citizens.
[00:33:45]  Samuel Adams immediately saw through the latest British scheme to tax the colonies.
[00:33:49]  He saw it as a Trojan horse designed to get them accustomed to subjugation.
[00:33:55]  What he didn't know, what no one knew, was that the tea ships had already sailed, some headed straight for Boston.
[00:34:04]  In late November 1773, three ships sat anchored in Boston Harbor.
[00:34:10]  Their holds were packed full of tea.
[00:34:12]  Now, by law, the tea had to be unloaded, and all the taxes paid within 20 days, or the cargo would be seized and put up for auction.
[00:34:20]  For Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, unloading the tea was not an option because once it hit the dock, Whether voluntary or by seizure, it would be sold and taxed.
[00:34:30]  After several unsuccessful attempts at turning back the ships, and with the 20 day deadline looming in a matter of hours, Samuel led a final town meeting on December 16th.
[00:34:40]  The Old South Meeting House overflowed with 5,000 people.
[00:34:45]  One last appeal was sent to Governor Hutchinson to allow the ships to turn back.
[00:34:50]  No doubt feeling bitter from the Boston Massacre aftermath three years earlier, there was no way Hutchinson was going to cave in on another Samuel Adams mob.
[00:34:59]  He refused.
[00:35:00]  The cargo would be unloaded the next day.
[00:35:03]  When that final answer reached the Old South Meeting House, citizens reacted with an uproar.
[00:35:11]  Amid the pandemonium, about 150 men calmly filed out of the Meeting House and other buildings nearby.
[00:35:17]  The men disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, darkening their faces with soot and charcoal, and wrapping blankets over their shoulders.
[00:35:25]  Minutes later, war whoops pierced the night from the street outside the Meeting House.
[00:35:29]  Inside, the citizens erupted into cheers, and hundreds rushed outside to join the band of costumed men heading towards Boston Harbor.
[00:35:37]  Samuel John Hancock and Dr. Joseph Warren called for order, trying to get the people to stay.
[00:35:43]  They continued with more speeches, stalling for time, but it was all a ruse.
[00:35:49]  The meeting provided them with a plausible deniability for what was about to happen.
[00:35:54]  But Samuel Adams knew all about it, because he was behind the entire operation.
[00:35:58]  Paul Revere was among the disguised men, along with many of Samuel Adams' closest allies.
[00:36:04]  They were the Sons of Liberty.
[00:36:06]  At the docks, they boarded the ships without resistance.
[00:36:09]  They helped themselves to candles and keys to the hatches.
[00:36:13]  They descended to the holds and hauled chest after chest of tea up to the main deck.
[00:36:18]  There were no dainty chests.
[00:36:20]  Each one was lined with lead and weighed over 400 pounds.
[00:36:24]  Over the next two hours, the Sons of Liberty, in disguise, used hatchets to methodically smash open 342 chests, dumping every last leaf of tea into the dark water below.
[00:36:36]  On the dock, a crowd of thousands gathered to watch, remaining remarkably quiet except for the occasional.
[00:36:42]  Cheers as batches of tea cascaded into the harbor.
[00:36:46]  Not a single person was injured.
[00:36:48]  Nothing else was disturbed on the three ships.
[00:36:51]  The men even swept the decks clean after their heist was done.
[00:36:56]  It, quite honestly, is the politest robbery in human history.
[00:37:01]  And when it was all said and done, the Sons of Liberty returned to the wharf and melted into the massive crowd.
[00:37:08]  For the next several days, Bostonians reveled in the afterglow of their epic tea party.
[00:37:13]  Samuel Adams wrote, You cannot imagine.
[00:37:16]  the height of joy that sparkles in the eyes and animates the countenances as well as the hearts of all we meet on this occasion.
[00:37:27]  Other tea parties took place up and down the eastern seaboard.
[00:37:30]  In Delaware, patriots dumped twice as much tea as Boston did, but only Boston's tea party would be remembered because Boston had Samuel Adams to tell its story.
[00:37:40]  Meanwhile, Governor Hutchinson fumed, calling it high treason.
[00:37:44]  Even though thousands of Bostonians had been at the wharf that night, He couldn't find a single eyewitness to testify.
[00:37:50]  An unbelievable unity of silence.
[00:37:54]  In London, King George III, who had once dismissed colonial protests as childish tantrums, was now furious.
[00:38:02]  He had tolerated petitions and pamphlets.
[00:38:05]  But this destruction of property, open defiance of his authority, was absolutely unacceptable.
[00:38:11]  The king demanded punishment.
[00:38:14]  He would crush Boston.
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[00:39:24]  For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story.
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[00:39:43]  Spring, 1774, four months after the Boston Tea Party.
[00:39:48]  That punishment arrived.
[00:39:50]  British warships, one by one, they filled the harbor, their mass crowding the skyline like a forest.
[00:39:57]  The British military arrived to enforce what Parliament called the Coercive Acts.
[00:40:03]  Boston called them Intolerable Acts.
[00:40:07]  The first blow was the Boston Port Bill.
[00:40:10]  Overnight, the harbor was closed until the East India Company was reimbursed for its losses.
[00:40:16]  Which was set at £30,000.
[00:40:18]  No imports, no exports, zero trade.
[00:40:23]  It was economic strangulation, a siege without a shot fired.
[00:40:28]  Next came the Massachusetts Government Act, stripping the colony of its charter.
[00:40:32]  No more self rule.
[00:40:34]  Then the Administration of Justice Act, which prohibited the colony from conducting its own legal trials.
[00:40:40]  And finally, the Quartering Act, requiring British soldiers to be housed in vacant buildings and inns at the colony's expense.
[00:40:50]  Boston became a city under occupation once again, and this time its lifeblood was cut off.
[00:40:56]  Shops shut down, docks were silent.
[00:41:00]  Families who were able packed their belongings and fled Boston.
[00:41:04]  British General Thomas Gage, the man sent to enforce the order, brought 4,000 troops to garrison the town.
[00:41:12]  One day that summer, Samuel Adams took a walk through the deserted marketplace.
[00:41:16]  Beside him was his cousin's son, a seven year old John Quincy Adams.
[00:41:21]  Samuel gestured to the boarded up doors, the soldiers on patrol, the masts of warships in the harbor, and he looked at John Quincy and said, This, my boy, is what tyranny looks like.
[00:41:36]  But for all the suffering in Boston, something remarkable began to happen.
[00:41:43]  Wagon loads of food and supplies started arriving from every corner of the colonies flour from Pennsylvania, rice from South Carolina, sheep from Connecticut, corn from Virginia.
[00:41:54]  They came not for trade.
[00:41:56]  They came as gifts.
[00:41:58]  As historian Stacey Schiff described the scene Boston's papers energetically reported on the shipments as if the town had sponsored a telethon.
[00:42:07]  The philanthropy eased Boston's suffering in small ways, but it did something greater still.
[00:42:12]  It made of altruism an act of resistance.
[00:42:16]  The message from the colonies was clear You're not alone.
[00:42:21]  John Adams marveled that 13 clocks were made to strike together.
[00:42:27]  A perfection of mechanism which no artist had ever before effected.
[00:42:32]  Samuel Adams was at the center of it all, organizing, distributing the aid, writing thank you letters, as he put it.
[00:42:38]  For flagrant injustice and barbarity, one might search in vain among the archives of Constantinople to find a match for it.
[00:42:47]  But what else could have been expected from a parliament too long under the dictates and control of an administration which seems to be totally lost to all sense of feeling of morality and governed by passion?
[00:42:59]  Cruelty and revenge.
[00:43:02]  Our business is to find means to evade its malignant design.
[00:43:10]  And in that effort, he succeeded beyond measure.
[00:43:14]  Meanwhile, General Gage had orders to arrest the ringleaders, but only if conviction was certain.
[00:43:20]  And Samuel Adams was far too careful for that.
[00:43:23]  One evening while in Philadelphia years later, he tossed a bundle of his papers into the fire and said to his cousin John, Whatever becomes of me, My friends shall never suffer by my negligence.
[00:43:35]  He was a revolutionary, but he had the instincts of a spy.
[00:43:43]  In June 1774, Samuel chaired a committee meeting in Salem, where the now illegal Massachusetts legislature gathered.
[00:43:52]  He proposed sending delegates to a general congress of the colonies to be held in Philadelphia.
[00:43:58]  The motion passed.
[00:43:59]  Massachusetts would send five men.
[00:44:01]  Samuel Adams, of course, was one of them, along with his cousin John.
[00:44:05]  When Samuel left Boston in August, it was the first time he had ever set foot outside of his own state.
[00:44:12]  Through all of these years, for all of his work, he still lived modestly, his family often barely scraping by on his meager salary as a state representative.
[00:44:22]  So he was moved when anonymous friends outfitted him with a brand new wardrobe for the journey a brown suit, shoes, hat, and silver buckles.
[00:44:32]  Along the road south, he was greeted as a national hero.
[00:44:36]  Every stop was a celebration, and he was amazed to see that his efforts had bared such fruit.
[00:44:43]  The rebellion had gone continental.
[00:44:47]  On September 5, 1774, 56 delegates from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia.

=== The Continental Congress (06:24) ===

[00:44:53]  They called it the First Continental Congress.
[00:44:57]  They were mostly strangers.
[00:44:59]  Many had heard of one another and had corresponded, but Samuel and John Adams had never met George Washington or Patrick Henry.
[00:45:06]  Some of the delegates still hoped for reconciliation with Britain.
[00:45:10]  Others whispered the word independence behind closed doors.
[00:45:15]  But with everything that was at stake, their first argument was about prayer.
[00:45:21]  The colonies were a patchwork of denominations Congregational, Anglican, Quaker, Presbyterian.
[00:45:28]  To pray together was to risk division before the work had even begun.
[00:45:33]  So Sam Adams stepped up to solve it.
[00:45:37]  He stood and said he was open to prayer from any pious, virtuous friend of his country.
[00:45:43]  Samuel was a devout Congregationalist, but he put forward a local Episcopalian pastor to lead the opening prayer.
[00:45:50]  Convinced by Samuel's example of constructive compromise, the delegates approved his motion.
[00:45:57]  The next morning, the Reverend Jacob Duchesne of Philadelphia opened with Psalm 35, an arousing prayer for the colonies.
[00:46:06]  John Adams wrote, I never saw a greater effect upon an audience.
[00:46:11]  It seemed as if heaven had ordained that psalm to be read on that morning.
[00:46:16]  After this, Mr. Duchesne, unexpected to everybody, struck out into an extemporary prayer which filled the bosom of every man present.
[00:46:26]  I must confess I never heard a better prayer, with such fervor and in language so elegant and sublime, for America, for the Congress, for the province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially the town of Boston.
[00:46:42]  It has had an Excellent effect upon everybody here.
[00:46:49]  Samuel Adams' example and Reverend Duchesne's prayer changed the atmosphere from one of distrust and disagreement into one of understanding and cooperation, and the walls between the colonies were beginning to break down.
[00:47:03]  While the First Continental Congress slowly found its footing, events in Massachusetts raced ahead.
[00:47:09]  In Samuel's absence, his best friend Dr. Joseph Warren took the reins of leadership.
[00:47:14]  Under his guidance came the Suffolk Resolves, a bold declaration that rejected the coercive acts, urged Massachusetts to form its own militias, and declared loyalty only to a king that respected their rights.
[00:47:28]  Paul Revere rushed the resolves to Philadelphia on horseback.
[00:47:32]  When Congress read them aloud, the mood shifted from protest to defiance.
[00:47:37]  They all voted to endorse the resolves in full.
[00:47:41]  In October 1774, the Congress also issued its Declaration of Rights and Grievances.
[00:47:47]  It affirmed the colonists' rights to life, liberty, and property, which foreshadowed another declaration that was still far on the horizon.
[00:47:57]  Samuel Adams' dream, what had become his life's work, was slowly coming true.
[00:48:04]  The colonies were uniting in their quest for liberty.
[00:48:08]  Thomas Jefferson later said that Samuel was the earliest, most active, and persevering man of the Revolution.
[00:48:15]  John Adams said, Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written.
[00:48:23]  When the Congress adjourned in late October, it was agreed to reconvene if Britain refused to yield.
[00:48:30]  But there was little doubt about the reaction.
[00:48:33]  When word of the Congress's work reached King George III, he said, The die is cast.
[00:48:42]  By winter, the situation in Massachusetts was desperate.
[00:48:45]  One British admiral wrote home that he expected Samuel Adams to, quote, be hanged or shot before many months are at an end.
[00:48:52]  General Gage now had 20,000 troops in Boston, 10 times the number that were there when the Boston Massacre happened.
[00:49:00]  When Sam Adams returned to Boston from Congress in Philadelphia, he found his home ransacked.
[00:49:06]  The windows were broken, walls defaced, furniture gone.
[00:49:10]  He didn't have the money for repairs, so he moved his wife and daughter outside Boston to the town of Dedham.
[00:49:17]  He told his wife, We must be content to suffer the loss of all things in this life rather than tamely surrender the public liberty.
[00:49:26]  Samuel started carrying a pistol everywhere he went.
[00:49:29]  Every day, he and John Hancock rode to secret sessions of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress that operated from town to town.
[00:49:38]  Then, in April 1775, General Gage received fresh orders disarm the militias and arrest the ringleaders.
[00:49:52]  Adams and Hancock fled Boston under the cover of darkness.
[00:49:55]  They took refuge in the parsonage of Reverend Jonas Clark in a small, sleepy village 11 miles northwest.
[00:50:02]  There, in the quiet of a borrowed room, the two men talked long into the night.
[00:50:08]  They knew what was coming, they just didn't know when.
[00:50:14]  But within days, the British troops would march towards that very house in the town called Lexington.
[00:50:26]  Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.
[00:50:30]  But it reveres urging the men finally bolt to Hancock's fancy carriage.
[00:50:34]  Later, they pause for breakfast by the road.
[00:50:37]  Yeah, really.
[00:50:38]  When a farmer rushes towards them across the field, breathless, saying, the British troops are closing in on you now.
[00:50:44]  Adams and Hancock then ditch the carriage, scrambling into the woods on foot, hearts pounding as they vanish into the underbrush.
[00:50:52]  They have no idea that in Lexington, the town they just escaped, a war against the most powerful empire on earth has just begun.
[00:51:11]  Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.