How Samuel Adams Fomented Revolution

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: And our next guest has written biographies of some of history’s most fascinating figures. From Cleopatra to the Witches of Salem. Now, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian, Stacy Schiff, is turning to an American revolutionary in her new book about Samuel Adams she argues that he is one of the country’s most essential founding fathers. And she tells Walter Isaacson how someone so important has become so forgotten.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And Stacy Schiff, welcome to the show.

STACY SCHIFF, AUTHOR, “THE REVOLUTIONARY: SAMUEL ADAMS”: Thanks, Walter. I’m delighted to join you.

ISAACSON: This wonderful book, “The Revolutionary”, is has such vibrant writing to it. But let’s start with the character, the biography Samuel Adams. He’s not quite as well-known as his second cousin, John Adams. But he was, according to Jefferson and your book, as you are convincing about it, more important in creating the revolution and the type of republic we become. Tell me about his relationship with his second cousin, John, and why he was so important.

SCHIFF: It’s contrary to what, I think, we all believed, it’s Samuel who recruits John. Samuel’s older, and indeed, they’re second cousins. He, sort of, jumped on this resistance bandwagon before John does. Although the two of them agree very early on that American rights are in jeopardy, and that a very small elite is essentially leading Boston a stray. But John is a little bit vein, very spotlight searching, very happy to be in the spotlight. And Samuel is, by nature, a backroom operator. He’s very recessive. He’s exceptionally modest, for every good reason, given the fact that he’s fermenting (ph) revolution. He’s tries to stay out of the picture. There’s an amazing moment in John Adams’s papers where he describes Samuel at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia throwing his papers into the fire. And in another occasion, shredding them into little bits of confetti and littering them out the window because he needs to cover his tracks and the tracks of his confederates. So, very much you have this, sort of, a front man and a back man relationship between the two. It’s Samuel who is very largely setting things in motion, according to the other founders.

ISAACSON: Well, Samuel is sort of the back — the guy in the background, but he’s the writer. I think you have a wonderful line, something about him being able to pluck ideas from the air and pin them to the page. Nice little pun there, too. But it is a thing that drives the revolution, this idea of being a vibrant writer like that.

SCHIFF: He’s really a master propagandist. I mean, there are many things you can — to which you can attribute to him. Thomas Jefferson calls him the most active, the earliest, the most persevering man of the revolution. There are many tributes to him from his contemporaries. But possibly the single most important contribution is the writing because it achieves what John Adams would call, the revolution that proceeds the revolution. The revolution in hearts and minds. The revolution in thinking. And to that end, Samuel is utterly tireless. He is constantly in the papers. He writes under some 30 pseudonyms. There are probably pseudonyms that still alluded us. He often writes under two different pseudonyms in the same issue of a newspaper. And he really is just grasping at this kind of ambient ideas and crystallizing them on the page.

ISAACSON: That’s very modern, in a way. In fact, throughout your book I’m reading and say, boy, this is just like our time. And the use of pseudonym’s when it came to social media, to what extent did people know it was Samuel Adams?

SCHIFF: You’re right on the modern parallel. It’s — there is this exceptional — there’s this explosion of media at a time when ideas are also evolving, which very feels very current. I spent a lot of time on that, on who knew precisely where — which pseudonym’s Samuel stood behind? And there are times when John doesn’t recognize that it’s his cousin. There are times where Adams is credited with other peoples’ screens. And he’s by no means the only one going on about American liberties being trampled. Many people are writing on the subject. So, he sometimes given credit for articles he didn’t write. And very often, the crown officials, who are reading it very closely and obviously very unhappily, will fail to recognize him behind a piece. So, those articles went back to London. They often get described very thoroughly by crown officials and often the assignments of authorship are wrong.

ISAACSON: Well, one of the great lines about Samuel Adams is born to sever the cord. Explain why that’s true of him.

SCHIFF: Well, from the start, it’s John Adams’s line and he essentially says to his cousin that he’s born to sever the cord between colonies and mother country. And from the start — I mean, first of all, I should say, he has a first act of his life which is exceedingly unimpressive. It amounts to nothing for the first 40 years of his life, and then essentially dedicates himself to the American cause, to public service. And from the very beginning of that time, he is very acutely aware of every possible infringement of every possible British misstep. And very much standing up for colonial liberties, to the point where he begins to run circles around any crown official who attempts to enforce those rules, those laws. So, he really becomes the, sort of, one man center of civil resistance organizing all kinds of things which we think of as very modern like boycotts, and pickets, and extra-legal assemblies. I mean, he really has sort of every tool in his toolbox, in terms of pulling Boston together, in terms — in resisting British legislation.

ISAACSON: You talk about how for the first 40 years, he didn’t really amount to much. What propels him to having this amazing second act?

SCHIFF: The immediate engine would seem to be the sugar and snap acts. As soon as British officials begin to reconsider the colonial relationship and to attempt to extract revenue from the colonies, a human cry goes up not only from Massachusetts, but from every colony. This is a — an issue that really unites the colonies. There’s opposition on every front to the Stamp Act. And it is really the thing that sets Adams in motion. He helps to word Boston’s response to London. Objecting to the act. He — this essentially propels him to center stage. It’s because of his help with that resistance that he’s elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Once he enters the House of Representatives, he’s off and running politically. That house, that body, begins to speak with his voice. And as the royal governor will know, it’s a very different voice than he had spoken with earlier. It’s very direct and it’s very extreperous. And in fact, one of his first acts when he becomes a member of the house, is to help to see to it that a gallery is built in the house, so that the people can see their elected officials in action. And here, too, of course, there’s a modern resonance. And because of that, the elected officials, obviously, begin to play a little bit to the gallery. And this obviously also leaves the royal governor sputtering, because he feels the government has become a theater.

ISAACSON: One of the most important things he does is create the Committees of correspondence. And that too is so very modern. It’s like the first social network of propaganda network, but a way of connecting the colony. Tell me why he did it and what was the importance of that.

SCHIFF: He does this in 1772. It’s actually genius and it’s too bad he calls on the Committee of — Committees of Correspondence because it sounds so deadly dull, but I think that was part of the exercise, because it is a very daring thing to have organize. So, it’s this kind of — it’s sort of, secretive under this very, very anodyne name. Essentially there are committees to consider and restate the rights of the colonists. And he’s feeling is that if this can be established in every town in the Massachusetts — colony, and every town in New England throughout the colonies ultimately, then the colonies can be united in their efforts to make sure that they are not disenfranchised in any way. And at first, the idea is thought of as a sort of preposterous idea. It seems like it’s treason, which arguably it was. It’s not taken terribly seriously. And then there are a number of British missteps on which Adams pounces and suddenly the committees begin to really take off. And they — and he essentially wires the continent for rebellion so that after the Boston Tea Party, this will act like an electrical current among the colonies. There will be a communication that was not possible, at any point, for that in which nobody really saw coming. It’s an extraordinary achievement. It was something he pondered for a long time. There were other people who contribute to it. But it does seem largely to have been his genius to have — to establish this network.

ISAACSON: When you say he wired the continent, it really does conjure up modern day social networks. To what extent did you have that in mind? To what extent are they comparable?

SCHIFF: We have the correspondents of the Committees of Correspondence in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. So, every town in New England writes to Boston, essentially to say, thank you for standing up for American rights, often in very colorful and very biblical terms. And it does feel like you’re, you know, like, you’re on Twitter. It has this extraordinary — you have all this chatter and everyone’s kind of repeating each other. It’s even — literally it’s as if they’re retweeting each other, the language overlaps. But there is this extraordinary symphony of this upswing of sentiment.

ISAACSON: And it can’t be controlled by authority, which is very Sam Adams thing and a very internet thing.

SCHIFF: All of this is extra-legal. I mean, the Continental Congress is extra-legal and this is part of the reason why no one in authority took it seriously because it seems as if it was — firstly, that nobody would dare to do this in the first place. And second of all, that it was ludicrous to, really, to begin to even envision such a thing.

ISAACSON: When they make a movie of your book, they are going to start with the Boston Tea Party. It’s a great scene in your book. People dressed up. People not quite sure. Are they Indians? Are they not? Tell me about that and about Samuel Adams sitting there at the meeting as this all begins to happen.

SCHIFF: So, in the Boston Tea Party, which of course, was not called the tea party in the 18th century, it was the Destruction of the Tee at the time. It’s fascinating for the fact that it is a masterpiece of actor-free drama. Everyone who writes about it afterwards resorts to the pass of tents (ph). You’ve never seen the pass of tents (ph) get such a workout. That tea just seemed to have plunged itself into the harbor. It’s astonishing. We know a little bit of who the leaders were from a number of things. One of them is that they conspicuously stay behind when everyone else walks up to the wharf to either watch or to — watch the tubing (ph) destroy or to destroy it. And in that tight circle of people who are left behind very conspicuously are John Hancock and Samuel Adams. But also, when people are deposed afterward — eyewitnesses are depose afterward in London, they’ll name certain names and Adams is always the first they name, the most active of the party, according to those witnesses. And Thomas Hutchinson, who is then governor, will say that Adams was never in greater glory than he was after the destruction of the tea. He’s definitely leading the meetings. We have actual crows (ph) of him in that room. At one point, he says nothing more can be done for the salvation of this country. No contemporary source says that was the signal for the Boston Tea Party, but later, that becomes the detonating line that’s very much added later by historians. But yes, the perpetrators are either disguised or lightly disguised as native Americans. The disguise kind of floats around. At first, people just say disguised or in — sort of, Indian guys. And then later they become the Indians or the Mohawks. No one’s really sure what tribe to use. People use different tribes. But the point is they were meant — you were meant to not name names. No one names names. It’s shocking how many witnesses there are and have no one seemingly seen a thing. So, everybody’s very sure that 342 chest of tea fall to the harbor, but no one is really sure how they possibly could have gotten there.

ISAACSON: One of the things we have to wrestle with the founders is slavery. And what I didn’t know about Samuel Adams is at one point, when he gets married for the second time, he’s given a slave. Tell me what happens.

SCHIFF: Oddly enough to our ears, it was a fairly traditional wedding gift among well to do New Englander’s. So, on his second marriage, his foreign mother-in-law indeed sends a family a slave. Her name is Suri (ph). And Adams bolts at the idea and says that a slave — a slave will not live in my house, he says. And arranges for her freedom after which Suri does live with them for decades afterward. He’s also involved in a couple of efforts to legislate against the sale of slaves, none of which obviously comes to much in the 1760’s.

ISAACSON: To what extent did his puritan heritage influence his thinking?

SCHIFF: He’s a deeply, deeply religious man. And, I think, it’s very easy to draw the connection. This is a very — this is essentially puritanism in secular form. He very much applies the ideas with which he is familiar from his faith. He believes deeply in piety. And one of the reasons that he is forgotten, in fact, after the revolution, is that the country moves on to sort of new world luxury and splendor. And Samuel Adams is still harking back to old world property (ph) and piety. He’s still thinking about a Christian Sparta, as it has been expressed. So, he’s very much out of step with this new country. And so, that, in addition to the fact that he covers his tracks, in addition to the fact that he’s a fairly modest man, a deeply modest man. And in addition to the fact that he’s not a federalist, leaves him very much off the radar.

ISAACSON: After the revolution, you have things that sort of reestablish a bit of an aristocracy. Even have a society of the Cincinnati, you know, the sort of hereditary period to which George Washington becomes a part. It would seem to me that a true revolutionary would say, no, no. That’s not what we were fighting for. And I think Sam Adams is one of those who says, no, no. That’s not what we want. Tell me about how he helped shape the post-revolutionary period.

SCHIFF: Well, in that respect, he is absolutely a true revolutionary. That — the society makes him crazy. He can’t believe this is happening all over again. He spent decades now fighting against the elite, fighting against hereditary privilege, and here are those people who want to reinstitute it. And to his mind — and this is where it comes down so firmly and solidly on the side of education, there is an actual aristocracy and people distinguish themselves from other people, but it’s not a hereditary thing. It doesn’t run in families. There should be no political dynasties, in his thinking. So, his feeling is, that’s why we have universities, that’s why we have schools. Everyone should be educated and, you know, it’s a meritocracy. The best people should be put in positions of power. He’s very much out of step with both the country and with his — in fact, the Adams — I mean, John Quincy Adams goes on to become president. There’s a dynasty right there. So, he’s very much recessive in these years in terms of an effect on the country. His — the years in which he forms America are really those years in which he forms the revolutionary cause. He’s very much left behind in the currents that follow.

ISAACSON: Has he ever really been a politician? Did he ever think of running for president or something?

SCHIFF: He throws his hat in the ring several times for various positions post-revolution. And is pathetically defeated every time. So, there’s — it’s unclear if he did that because we don’t have — almost no documentation for this. Did friends put him up to that, or are these things that were done of his own volition? It is unclear. He’s very briefly governor of Massachusetts after the death of John Hancock. He had been lieutenant governor to Hancock’s governor. It’s possibly Samuel Adams at his worst. One historian makes the very astute comment that the higher he goes in the political hierarchy, the worse he performs.

ISAACSON: I want to read one of your great sentences because this book is filled with them. But it, sort of, captures what it is to be an American. You say that Adams planted himself in the camp of liberty and knowledge, lobbing grenades into those of power and riches. In other words, always standing up to the elites and the aristocracy. Believing much more in a pure democracy. To what extent is that his definition of what we were trying to create?

SCHIFF: I would say that’s 100 percent the definition. That this — that should all rest — everything should rest somehow on pure democracy. How to make that happen was not something with which he conjured.

ISAACSON: Tell me, as you were writing this, what lessons do you draw for today?

SCHIFF: I think if he stands for one thing, he really stands for this idea that ordinary citizens are more powerful than they realize they are. He says this over and over again. He tells several parables about the idea, you know, a small mouth caught in a hand can bite its way to freedom. And that’s really his essential understanding, is that if people are willing to band together and organize in a way, they can achieve political change, which — of which the life is a perfect illustration.

ISAACSON: Stacy Schiff, thanks so much for joining us.

SCHIFF: Thank you so much, Walter.