The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (36 page)

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At the end of January the "skinned-over" wounds burst, and the governor got a good look at the infection below. By this time James Otis had reasserted his claim to leadership of the popular faction, and now with Sam Adams he called upon the House to approve a letter to all the colonies which urged a united stand against the new program of Townshend. The response from the House, a rejection of the proposal by a majority of two to one, came as a nasty shock.
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Otis and Adams rarely misjudged the temper of their colleagues. They had in this case, probably because the House had proven willing to petition king and ministers a few days earlier. Petitioning, of course, was the right of subjects and of legally constituted bodies such as colonial legislatures; a letter to official bodies in the colonies calling for opposition to a statute passed by Parliament was another matter. The House, heavily composed of representatives from small towns which as yet did not feel deeply threatened by the Townsbend program, hesitated to issue such a challenge.

Not quite two weeks later, on February 11, 1768, the Otis-Adams faction tried again and this time succeeded in passing the Circular Letter. A shocked and disappointed Bernard attributed their success to "private Cabals" and unscrupulous tampering with House members. Sam Adams, who had a common touch lacking in Otis, undoubtedly used all his no-nonsense charm and his influence on the membership.

Adams was born September 16, 1722, in Boston, a son of Deacon Samuel Adams and Mary Fifield Adams. His father was a small businessman, a maltster, who provided Boston a part of the malt that went into its beer. Besides his house and lot the elder Adams owned several slaves and a small amount of land. He was never wealthy but be was well-fixed.

Sam Adams's father was a justice of the peace and active in the town meeting. He seems usually to have been in opposition to the royal governor. He helped organize the Land Bank in Massachusetts in 1740, a bank that issued notes against the security of land. It was an inflationist scheme, and Parliament, urged on by the governor, ended it shortly after it began. The elder Adams suffered financially in the collapse of the Bank. Not surprisingly, his losses did not increase his fondness for royal government in the colony. Sam Adams may have shared his father's feelings during this episode.

Although the elder Adams had not attended college, he wanted his

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son to. He sent Sam to the South Grammar School and then across the river to Harvard College, class of 1740. Sam did not cover himself with honors at Harvard. He was once fined for "drinking prohibited Liquors," but that hardly distinguished him. Perhaps the most unusual feature of his stay at Harvard was that he was so infrequently disciplined.

For a while Sam, or his father, thought of the ministry as a possible career, but though a strict Calvinist, he felt no great calling to the pulpit. After graduation he worked in the malt shop and then was apprenticed to an important merchant. His merchant-master soon decided that young Sam had no aptitude or interest in business and sent him home. Sam's father, probably beginning to feel uneasy about his son's future, then attempted to set him up in business. He lent his son £1000, which was soon lent to a friend and lost.

The senior Adams died in 1748. Sam inherited his father's property including the malt house. His father had left large debts, the result of the disastrous collapse of the Land Bank. His creditors attempted to have the estate, which had passed to Sam, sold to satisfy the debts. At the first sale Sam appeared and threatened the sheriff, charged with the responsibility for conducting the sale and the would-be purchasers. Nobody bought. This engaging spectacle was repeated four times: the sale was called, purchasers with cash showed up, Sam Adams appeared and spoke harsh words, the purchasers put away their still-bulging purses and stole off followed by the crestfallen sheriff. Adams proved much better at defending his property than increasing it or even maintaining it, and by the late 1750s when his creditors gave up he had spent most of the estate.

In 1756, after holding several minor town offices, Adams was elected tax collector, an important post. Public finance in Boston barely survived his tenure in office. Adams was not a dishonest collector, but he was inefficient. He remained in office for almost ten years, meeting his obligations to the town by using the money collected one year to pay the town for taxes not collected the preceding year. In 1765 he gave up the game with his accounts in arrears of £8000. Adams never paid up. The town's treasurer sued him and won a judgment of 1463. The town, however, refused to press for payment and in a few years forgave him the entire debt.

Boston's sympathy for Adams may have been stimulated by the Caucus Club, a political organization composed of artisans, merchants, tradesmen, a few lawyers and doctors. The club had formed perhaps thirty years before the Revolution, apparently in order to influence the town

meeting. It nominated its own slate of candidates for local office and then did everything in its power to get them elected. John Adams reported in 1763 that the club met in the garret of Tom Daws, a bricklayer who served as the adjutant in the Boston militia. Sam Adams was a quiet but effective member.

The club seems to have been absorbed into the Sons of Liberty during the struggle against the Stamp Act in 1765. Sam Adams's part in the resistance of that year and the years immediately following was real though shadowy. Now in the crisis over the Townshend acts and the Circular Letter he came into his own.

To secure passage of the Circular Letter, Adams must have pronounced "due" all the political debts owed him. More important, timing favored the faction, for late in any session the representatives from interior towns tended to go home. Now in early February, the winter session drawing to a close, several conservatives from these towns departed, evidently secure in the belief that all important business had been dispatched. The remainder of the House, prompted and perhaps prodded by Adams, Otis, and company, passed the Circular Letter addressed to the speakers of the other colonial legislatures.
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The Circular Letter was not a "radical" document; it did not explicitly suggest that any measures be taken other than an attempt by the colonial legislatures to "harmonize with each other." As oblique as this proposal was, it was important, for it was calculated to invigorate the kinds of cooperation which had grown at the time of the Stamp Act. The major part of the letter included a firm statement of the colonial constitutional position. Nothing new appeared here except a firm rejection of the idea that the colonies could ever be represented in Parliament. The letter also stated well a view increasingly common in America that although Parliament was the supreme legislative body in the empire, it, like all governmental and political agencies, derived its authority from the constitution, the fundamental law which not incidentally guaranteed all subjects the right to be taxed only with their own consent. The grounds for objecting to the payment of salaries of royal officials from tariff revenues were scarcely less important -- the equity, security, and happiness of the subject. As for the American Board of Customs Commissioners, its power to multiply subordinates and offices threatened colonial liberty.
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Speaker Cushing sent the Circular Letter to the speaker of every other colonial assembly. Several assemblies were not sitting, but by late spring, New Jersey's and Connecticut's had responded favorably and Virginia's House of Burgesses dramatically. The Burgesses, which had led the colonies in 1765, had not been in session since April 1767. Governor Francis Fauquier, who had absorbed the meaning of the Virginia Resolves, now saw the Burgesses as virtually a seditious body and prudently refrained from calling it except when he believed he-had no choice. Fauquier died on March 1, 1768, and in his stead old John Blair, president of the Council, served until a successor arrived. Blair summoned the legislature at the end of the month and asked it to consider several pressing problems, among which Indian affairs seemed especially crucial. The speaker, Peyton Randolph, had no intention of ignoring such matters; nor did he mean to ignore the Circular Letter, which he promptly placed before the House. The Burgesses responded in a way that far exceeded the Massachusetts request for concerted representations to Britain. Armed with petitions from Virginia counties against the suspension of the New York Assembly, as well as against Parliamentary taxation, the Burgesses approved firm protests to king, Lords, and Commons. While making the conventional concession that Parliament might regulate imperial trade, the Burgesses insisted upon its equality as a legislature. It had no desire for an independent Virginia, but neither did it intend to see Virginia's rights infringed.
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This sort of argument had become familiar three years before. By May 16 the Burgesses moved onto less familiar terrain and issued a circular letter of its own. This letter advocated joint measures by the colonies against any British actions which "have an immediate tendency to enslave them." This proposal, vague on its face, was surely meant to imply that the colonies should not hesitate to reproduce all those engines of opposition they had developed in 1765-66. And if there was any doubt about the Burgesses' intentions, it went a long way toward clarifying them by announcing its hopes for a "hearty union" among the colonies.
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Most of the remaining assemblies had adjourned by the time the

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Massachusetts Circular Letter reached them. At least one -- Pennsylvania's -- had not, but, after hearing the letter read in May, did nothing. The legislature was in the hands of the Quaker party, now in a period of decline but unaware of the fact, and it feared the consequences of ruffling Parliamentary feathers. As in 1765, the Quaker party was in pursuit of a royal charter -- a vain desire, but one which deflated any notions of challenging royal authority.
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