How tall was samuel adams

The Bill also transferred the seat of colonial government from Boston to Salem, some 25 miles north. The Massachusetts Government Act soon followed. The Government Act stripped Massachusetts of its Charter and limited town meetings to one per year unless otherwise directed by the Governor. The Acts only united the people of Massachusetts. Through the Committees of Correspondence network, Boston sought and soon received aid not only from Massachusetts towns but also from communities throughout the colonies.

On June 17, Adams drafted the Resolves of the Massachusetts House of Representatives , asking for both aid and advice:. Whereas the towns of Boston and Charlestown are suffering under the Hand of Power, by shutting up the harbor by an armed force, which is in the opinion of this House an invasion of the said towns evidently designed to compel the inhabitants thereof into a submission to taxes imposed on them without their consent and whereas it appears to this House that this attack upon the said towns for the purpose of the aforesaid is an attack made upon this whole Provence and continent which threatens the total destruction of the liberties of all British America.

To enforce these laws and bring Massachusetts under control, General Thomas Gage was appointed military Governor of the province and 4, troops were sent to garrison the town. Samuel Adams reacted quickly. In June, he chaired a committee in the House of Representatives, now meeting in Salem, which proposed electing individuals to represent Massachusetts at a colonial congress scheduled to meet in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis in Boston.

Needless to say, he was selected to be one of the delegates. As the First Continental Congress convened in September, the situation in Massachusetts only grew more desperate. In Adams's absence, his good friend Joseph Warren assumed the leadership role of the opposition.

Warren soon penned The Suffolk Resolves , a virtual declaration of independence for Massachusetts. Working together closely through correspondence, Adams and Warren put forth a bold suggestion - the creation of an opposition government! Adams knew that for such a plan to be successful the people of Massachusetts must be united, writing to Warren:. That union is most likely to be obtained by a consultation of deputies from several towns either in a House of Representatives or a Provincial Congress…the people would be united in what they would easily see to be a constitutional opposition to tyranny.

On September 25, Adams wrote to Warren informing him that the Congress had given its assent to his Suffolk Resolves , and:. They strongly recommend your perseverance in a firm and temperate conduct, and give you a full pledge of their united efforts on your behalf.

I have been assured in private conversation with individuals, that, if you should be driven to the necessity of acting in defense of your lives or liberty, you would be justified by their constituents and openly supported by all means in their power. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress first met in October and assumed all legislative, financial, and military powers for the colony beyond Boston. The die had been cast and the possibility of civil war loomed. The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adjourned in November with a mandate to reconvene in May of should matters fail to improve.

Samuel Adams returned to Massachusetts to take his seat in the Provincial Congress. There he worked tirelessly for the next five months to obtain and distribute aid to the people of Boston still suffering under the closure of the port. Meanwhile, General Gage was under increased pressure from the Ministry in England to put an end to the rebellion in Massachusetts.

Gage wished to avoid conflict as much as possible and did not initially attempt to arrest opposition leaders like Samuel Adams for fear that such a move might spark a violent backlash.

Instead, Gage sought to prevent the Provincial Congress from acquiring any further military supplies. Each side attempted to capture local gunpowder stores and military ordnance before the other. On April 14, Gage received letters from the Secretary of State which forced his hand.

He was ordered to disarm the militias and arrest the leaders of rebellion immediately. The arrival of spring brought no improvement to the state of affairs in Massachusetts.

A second Continental Congress was deemed necessary. Before departing for Philadelphia in early April, Samuel Adams and John Hancock attended a session of the Provincial Congress then meeting in the town of Concord, 15 miles northwest of Boston.

Meanwhile, bowing to the increasing pressure to act, Gage ordered a column of troops to Concord to seize and destroy a suspected cache of munitions.

Ironically, the march took them directly through Lexington. There is no evidence to suggest that Gage had ordered the arrest of Adams and Hancock that day, but fearing the possible capture of the two men, Joseph Warren dispatched riders Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn the delegates to move on. The troops arrived in the Lexington on the morning of the April 19 just as Hancock and Adams escaped. Events began to progress quickly in the spring and early summer of In rapid succession, the Continental Congress established an Army, was notified of the Battle at Bunker Hill , and ordered an invasion of Canada.

Throughout the years of struggle leading to the Second Continental Congress, Adams came to the realization that allegiance to the Crown and possible reconciliation with Parliament was impossible. Independence seemed the only logical course.

The outbreak of hostilities solidified his conviction and he worked deliberately and patiently to convince his fellow delegates that a complete break with Great Britain was necessary. As the calendar turned from to , war began to spread throughout the colonies.

Adams gained more support for the cause of independence:. Is not America already independent? Why then not declare it? Can nations at war be said to be dependent either upon the other? The ideas of independence spread far and wide among the colonies. Many of the leading men see the absurdity of supposing that allegiance is due to a sovereign who has already thrown us out of his protection.

There is a two-fold liberty, natural I mean as our nature is now corrupt and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures…The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be called moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions between men themselves.

This liberty is the proper end and object of authority and cannot subsist without it: and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of your goods, but of your lives if need be. Following several weeks of debate, Congress adopted the resolution on July 2, On July 4, after years of determined effort arguing for the rights of Americans in defiance of Parliament, Adams cast his vote to ratify the Declaration of Independence.

Thirty-three years after posing the argument "Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved? Among the many sources drawn upon in the creation of the document were the Massachusetts Charter and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties. The people of Massachusetts ratified the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in their town meetings in Throughout this time Adams continued to serve as delegate to the Continental Congress.

The Congress worked secretly behind closed doors, however, and there are few details about the role that Adams may have played after the Declaration of Independence was signed. He did serve on several Congressional committees, held a position on the Board of War, and helped draft the Articles of Confederation before returning home to Massachusetts in When Hancock died in office, Adams assumed the governorship.

Following that term, Adams was elected in his own right to three successive one-year terms as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He retired from politics after his tenure as Governor in Samuel Adams died at the age of 81 on October 2, and was interred at the Granary Burying Ground.

I can say that he was truly a great man, wise in council, fertile in resources, immovable in his purposes…although not of fluent elocution, he was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant in good sense, and master always of his subject, that he commanded the most profound attention whenever he rose in an assembly… [24]. Putnum, 5. Explore This Park. Portrait of Adams ca.

A copy still hangs today in the Great Hall. Faneuil Hall as it appeared before the building was enlarged to its current size in In the hall on the second floor, Adams engaged in Town Meetings and would be elected to his offices and to committees where he wrote some of his most significant work. The Old State House as it stands today. Built in , it housed the royal government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The Governor and Council, the Superior Court, and the Legislature all had chambers on the second floor.

Almost immediately he began penning a series of resolutions defending the rights and liberties of the people of Massachusetts: …that all acts made by any power whatever, other than the General Assembly of this Province, imposing taxes on the inhabitants, are infringements of our inherent and inalienable rights as men and British subjects, and render void the most valuable declarations of our charter.

The embellished steeples of the churches dominate the landscape and attempt to beg the viewer to question why troops must be quartered in a Christian and peaceful town. Adams once again took up his quill and under the pseudonym "Vindex" he wrote: Will the spirits of the people as yet unsubdued by tyranny, unawed by the menace of arbitrary power, submit to be governed by military force?

Historian Samuel Eliot Morrison observed: He was no orator — he had a quavering voice and a shaky hand; so he let other Sons of Liberty like Joseph Warren and the firebrand James Otis makes the speeches while he wrote provocative articles and pulled political strings. In the press, Adams began shaming those who would not extend the agreement: Have you not a right if you please, to set fire to your own houses, because they are your own, though in all probability it will destroy a whole neighborhood, perhaps a whole city!

A water-colored print from an engraving by Paul Revere depicting the Boston Massacre. In this image, Captain Preston is behind the soldiers, his sword raised, to suggest he ordered the men to open fire.

In reality, this never happened. Courtesy Library of Congress Meetings, Mobs, Martrys As approached that tension began to flare in minor confrontations between the citizens and the soldiers. In November , Adams wrote: It is with astonishment and indignation that the Americans contemplate the folly of the British Ministry in employing troops…to parade the streets of Boston.

Faced with such a crisis, Hutchinson and his Council bowed to the demand and Hutchinson wrote to the military commander: I am sensible I have no power to order the Troops to the Castle, but under the present circumstances of the Town and the Provence I cannot avoid in consequence of this unanimous advice of the council desiring you to order them there which I must submit to you.

Keeping the Cause Alive In April , news of the repeal of all but one of the Townshend taxes reached American shores. Writing as "Cotton Mather" in the Boston Gazette , Adams called upon his beloved Charter rights: Did not our ancestors, when they accepted this Charter, understand that they had contracted for a free government? Adams became re-energized, and his fury brought the people back into line with the Covenant: To what a state of infamy, wretchedness, and misery shall we be reduced if our judges shall be prevailed upon to be thus degraded to hirelings, and the Body of the People shall suffer their free Constitution to be overturned and ruined?

This popular lithograph from depicts the "Destruction of the Tea" in Boston Harbor. In reality, most men had little more than soot or ash on their faces for a disguise. Adams was conspicuously absent from the event itself. Courtesy Library of Congress Tea and Tyranny After nearly a decade of riots, boycotts and protests, the final blow in the crisis with Parliament struck on May 10, There is no evidence that Adams took part in the destruction of the tea, but he wasted no time in praising it: You cannot imagine 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.

On June 17, Adams drafted the Resolves of the Massachusetts House of Representatives , asking for both aid and advice: Whereas the towns of Boston and Charlestown are suffering under the Hand of Power, by shutting up the harbor by an armed force, which is in the opinion of this House an invasion of the said towns evidently designed to compel the inhabitants thereof into a submission to taxes imposed on them without their consent and whereas it appears to this House that this attack upon the said towns for the purpose of the aforesaid is an attack made upon this whole Provence and continent which threatens the total destruction of the liberties of all British America.

In the background Boston is depicted being cannonaded. The Woman in the background is Britannia, shielding her eyes from the assault.

In , the first direct tax was imposed on the colonies by way of the Stamp Act. Samuel Adams saw this as yet another example of arbitrary authority exercised by the British Parliament. The colonies had not been consulted on issues of taxation, and moreover, they had no representatives in Parliament to defend them. These riots resonated with Parliament, but they continued to pass Acts of taxation without consulting the colonies. 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. 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. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. But apprehend this would be a fatal delusion. Rights of the Colonists , by Samuel Adams. The Writings of Samuel Adams, Vol. III by Samuel Adams. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. John Adams was a leader of the American Revolution and served as the second U.