Fade Resistance Performance:
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.
Adams was born in Boston, brought up in a religious and politically active family. A graduate of Harvard College, he was an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector before concentrating on politics. He was an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760’s, and he became a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent. His 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter calling for colonial non-cooperation prompted the occupation of Boston by British soldiers, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Adams and his colleagues devised a committee of correspondence system in 1772 to help coordinate resistance to what he saw as the British government's attempts to violate the British Constitution at the expense of the colonies, which linked like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Continued resistance to British policy resulted in the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the coming of the American Revolution.
Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, at which time Adams attended the Continental Congress in Philadelphia which was convened to coordinate a colonial response. He helped guide Congress towards issuing the Continental Association in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and the Massachusetts Constitution. Adams returned to Massachusetts after the American Revolution, where he served in the state senate and was eventually elected governor.
Samuel Adams later became a controversial figure in American history. Accounts written in the 19th century praised him as someone who had been steering his fellow colonists towards independence long before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. This view gave way to negative assessments of Adams in the first half of the 20th century, in which he was portrayed as a master of propaganda who provoked mob violence to achieve his goals. Both of these interpretations have been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that these traditional depictions of Adams are myths contradicted by the historical record. He continues to be a controversial figure in American history. Disagreement about his significance and reputation began before his death and continues to the present.
Adams's contemporaries, both friends and foes, regarded him as one of the foremost leaders of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, for example, characterized Adams as truly the “Man of the Revolution”. Leaders in other colonies were compared to him; Cornelius Harnett was called the "Samuel Adams of North Carolina", Charles Thomson the "Samuel Adams of Philadelphia", and Christopher Gadsden the "Sam Adams of the South". When John Adams traveled to France during the Revolution, he had to explain that he was not Samuel, "the famous Adams".
Supporters of the Revolution praised Adams, but Loyalists viewed him as a sinister figure. Thomas Hutchinson, Adams's political foe, took his revenge in his History of Massachusetts Bay, in which he denounced him as a dishonest character assassin, emphasizing his failures as a businessman and tax collector.
Whig historians who knew Adams, wrote of him as a man selflessly dedicated to the American Revolution. But in the early 19th century, Adams was often viewed as an old-fashioned Puritan, and was consequently neglected by historians. Interest in Adams was revived in the mid-19th century. The first full biography of Adams appeared in 1865, a three-volume work written by William Wells, his great-grandson. The Wells biography is still valuable for its wealth of information, although Whig portrayals of Adams were uncritically pro-American that influenced some later biographies written for general audiences.
In the late 19th century, many American historians were uncomfortable with contemporary revolutions and found it problematic to write approvingly about Adams. Relations had improved between the United States and the United Kingdom, and Adams's role in dividing Americans from Britons was increasingly viewed with regret.
While some have argued that Adams, far from being a radical mob leader, took a moderate position based on the English revolutionary tradition that imposed strict constraints on resistance to authority. That belief justified force only against threats to the constitutional rights so grave that the "body of the people" recognized the danger, and only after all peaceful means of redress had failed. Within that revolutionary tradition, resistance was essentially conservative.