Great leaders demand attention for reasons bigger than themselves. Here is a great short biography of Samuel Adams, because you and I don’t know enough about him. This article is copied from the Kings Meadow Study Center newsletter.
All temporal power is of God,
And the magistratal, His institution, laud,
To but advance creaturely happiness aubaud:
Let us then affirm the Source of Liberty.
Ever agreeable to the nature and will,
Of the Supreme and Guardian of all yet still
Employed for our rights and freedom’s thrill:
Thus proves the only Source of Liberty.
Though our civil joy is surely expressed
Through hearth, and home, and church manifest,
Yet this too shall be a nation’s true test:
To acknowledge the divine Source of Liberty.
-Samuel Adams
Politics is a strange institution. Though the word means a dutiful participation in the local sphere of government, such an unadulterated definition has little value in the current market. Rather, “politics” is a sophisticated word implying careless and unrealistic campaign promises, questionable fundraising, self-promotion through sordid accusations against opponents, schmoozing, and a common sliminess that appears openly upon the holding of office. It is certainly not that all men who serve the public have such dishonest characters; it is that the term, “politician,” in our day, says as much.
Yet, politics is obsessed over, minutely analyzed in heavy air-time, and perpetually prognosticated by a media-saturated culture. Or at least it seems that way. This is the trick. Though we have the longest ever presidential campaign in American history currently being waged, and though we have a wash of possible precedents in the next commander-in-chief, a majority of Americans simply don’t care enough to actually vote. Such politics has little to do with ordinary lives and such politicians are seemingly mere manipulators and dishonest posers-the worst possible vice to my generation. To this generation, an honest expression, no matter how wrong, is at least honest. Experience is everything.
Leadership implies integrity. As Stonewall Jackson once wrote: “What is life without honor? Degradation is worse than death. True leadership comprehends this full well.” (Grant 132). Whether the sphere of leadership be the family, church, state, or vocation, all callings must be genuine and true in order to be done well. Within these priorities, excellence equates to a commitment to right and not simply refined tastes and charming personality. As William Lane put it, “Let your excellence be your protest.”A public leader of integrity and commitment is better called a statesman. When the names of Wilberforce, Washington, and Roosevelt or spoken, more than political ability is meant. Proven character through a multitude of tasks and realms is implied because these men were not defined by popularity. Whereas a popularity politician woos the multitudes in order to control what amounts to a mob; a statesman takes instruction from his constituency, offers wise counsel, and above all, vision for the right paths. Whereas a politician has a job and a position of power; a statesmen has a calling and a position of real influence that can train up the next generation by lived and practiced example. Such a man was Samuel Adams. Through his devotion to the parish life of the town-meeting, his natural ability to vision-cast, and his steadfast remembrance of just courses, Adams’s life demonstrates the marked qualities of a statesman.
George Bancroft, the 19th century American historian, summed up the character of Samuel Adams by calling him: “the helmsman of the Revolution at its origin, the truest representative of the home rule of Massachusetts in its town-meetings and General Court.” (Hosmer vi).
Simply, what made New England think and live differently was their already practical independence. Each town was its own republic governed by the town meeting-the folk-mote of the ancient Saxons. At such a meet, equal voice and vote were given to each man and member of church. What is more pertinent is that each of these meetings, in turn, elected deputies to represent the parish town at general assemblies of New England’s far-flung villages. The deputy was an entrusted servant of the town. He was obligated to obey their publicly discussed wishes and no more, no less. Within such limitations, Samuel Adams thrived and led the colonists to nationhood.
His education at the Boston Latin School and Harvard was the best of the day, yet Sam Adams apparently owned much more through the regular visits of Boston notables to his father’s study. Learning through the conversations of called clergymen, merchants, and statesmen, presumably, the young Adams absorbed all that he could in understanding how to be a man, and also, how to understand a man. As a deputy in later life, Samuel Adams learned his people through the simple yet effective pastoral walk. “Constant, too, were the harangues which he delivered in his intercourse with the townsmen, sitting side by side with some ship-carpenter on a block of oak, just above the tide, or with some shop-keeper in a fence corner sheltered from the wind.” (Hosmer 116).
Carrying the principle from boyhood to his deputation in behalf of Boston, Sam Adams naturally turned to this standby of community when he united the colonies through the Committees of Correspondence. Each committee, comprised of 21 members, discharged the duty of declaring their rights and also of passing on news and advice for their current common struggle. And these committees bound together common men already bound by a common creed: “To each letter stand affixed the names of the committee in autograph. This awkward scrawl was made by the rough wrist of a Cape Ann fisherman, on shore for the day to do at town-meeting the duty his fellows had laid upon him, the hand that wrote this other was cramped from the scythe-handle, as its possessor mowed an interval on the Connecticut; this blotted signature, where smutted fingers have left a black stain, was written by a blacksmith of Middlesex, turning aside a moment from forging a barrel that was to do duty at Lexington.” (Hosmer 203). Because of the Committees daily work at affirming what rights God had already given them and of encouraging each other through letters carried by such faithful men as Paul Revere, “There [grew] a common affection among them-the communis sensus.” (Samuel Adams to Benjamin Franklin, Hosmer 268)
A Statesman must know his people in order to effectively serve them. He must further know the law in order to do justice amongst his people. Therefore, a leader must both respect the limitations of his power and thrive within them by forecasting a just vision for a righteous people. As Solomon said, “the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Proverbs 25:2). Samuel Adams had the peculiar distinction of being the visionary for the folk-motes of his day. Within the boundaries of the law, he could freely run.
Like the other founders, Samuel Adams did not rush to the prospect of Independence. Writing his first Circular Letter, he commented: “There is an English affection in the colonies towards the mother country, which will forever keep them connected with her to every valuable purpose, unless it shall be erased by repeated unkind usage on her part.” (Hosmer 104). The “unkind usage” is precisely what the colonists were enduring and Adams often had to walk a line of steadiness between the passive complacency of his people and the revolutionary designs of his constituency. When the idea of an American representation in Parliament became a popular call for compromise, Adams opposed it by the principle of localism-a massive congress simply cannot know its people. When Adams thought of the multitude that could so easily become a mob under his influential sway, he wrote: “Merciful God! inspire the people with the wisdom and fortitude, and direct them to gracious ends.” (Hosmer 194).
Adams was in the limited position of taking orders and giving advice. He had severe responsibilities to care for the commonwealth of his land and to cast a vision for their destiny. It was within such context that he addressed the first congress in 1774: “I should advise persisting in one struggle for liberty, though it was revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish, and only one out of a thousand to survive and retain his liberty. One such predecessor must possess more virtue and enjoy more happiness than a thousand slaves; and let him propagate his like, and transmit to them what he hath so nobly preserved.” (Hosmer 320).
In all of this, Sam Adams character was duly noted.
He was a content man with a household that loved him. His home was known for its hospitality, its song, its Scripture recitations, as well as for its Newfoundland that had the habit of attacking aggressive Redcoats. “His wife, like himself, was contented with poverty; through good management, in spite of their narrow means, a comfortable home-life was maintained in which the children grew up happy, and in every way well-trained and cared for.” (Hosmer 152).
His speech was not lovely but it knew only “straightforwardness, persistence, undeviation, and sanity.” (Hosmer 63). Thomas Jefferson said of him, “But Mr. Samuel Adams, although not of fluent elocution, 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 by which the froth of declamation was heard with the most sovereign contempt.” (Hosmer 359). And Joseph Galloway remarked of Adams: “He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit if his objects.” (Hosmer 318).
Samuel Adams was a remarkable man that led a remarkable generation of men. In many ways his calling was simply to remind others to stick to the right course and to not waiver. He counseled standing up for justice no matter the consequences. Leading up to the War of Independence this was his sole vocation. It seems anti-climatic that simple things like remembrance and steadfastness could accomplish something so great as the explosive growth of a nation’s liberty. And yet, this is the whole import of Providence and the stories of all of history. Like myths, the supernatural and divine must always intervene on behalf of the helpless hero. In every one, God calls His man to remember that He made us and that He will be faithful to redeem.
George Bancroft has the final word on the matter: “American freedom was more prepared by courageous counsel than successful war.” (Hosmer 351).
Grant, George and Karen. Letters Home. (Nashville: Cumberland House).
Hosmer, James K. Samuel Adams, American Statesmen Series. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1910).
David Raymond lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife, Danielle, and his children, Peter and Lucy. He teaches the Humanities courses at Stone Table School.
