The Writings of Samuel Adams, as edited by Harry Alonso Cushing, gathers the public papers, newspaper essays, and official correspondence of one of the most tireless political writers of the American Revolution. This volume covers the years 1770 to 1773, when Adams sat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and fought the royal governors in print as much as in the chamber. What follows is not a treatise but a working archive: pseudonymous letters to the Boston Gazette, messages and remonstrances of the House, a memorial from a town meeting in Faneuil Hall, and instructions to the province’s agent in London.
The material has a shape, though it is the shape of a campaign rather than a book. Adams writes as “Vindex,” “Determinatus,” “Candidus,” and “A Chatterer,” each mask suited to a different argument, and the pieces answer opponents, governors, and rival newspaper writers by name. Running through all of it is a single contention: the colonies possess inherent rights as English subjects, Parliament’s revenue acts and the instructions sent to the governor violate those rights, and a free assembly must refuse to conduct business as usual until the grievances are redressed.
How the Case Against the Governors Is Built
Vindex on the Power to Prorogue
The volume opens in the Boston Gazette of January 8, 1770, where a writer signing himself Vindex takes up the charter clause granting the Governor “full power and authority” to adjourn, prorogue, and dissolve the General Court. That power, he argues, was meant for the people’s benefit, since the great object of any legislature is the redress of grievances and parliaments ought to sit frequently. A people may be aggrieved by the want of a good law, by the repeal of a bad one, or by an executive that administers justice wrongfully under color of law; to adjourn or dissolve the assembly at such a moment is the greatest grievance of all. Nor is there less reason for an American assembly to sit: certain Acts of the British Parliament are thought dangerous to American liberties, and the House must have room to explain and remonstrate and to petition the King until those Acts are removed. Vindex recalls Governor Bernard’s “extraordinary dissolution” of the previous year, when Bernard declared himself “merely ministerial,” and insists that no man, even with the wisdom of Solomon at three thousand miles’ distance, can judge when an American assembly ought to be prorogued, especially when misrepresentation is so atrocious that even Majesty may be wrongly informed. The power was delegated in the people’s favor, to a resident of “untainted integrity, candor, impartiality and wisdom,” who cannot be passive against his own judgment and conscience; such a man “will bravely act his mind, and venture—Death.”
Determinatus on Non-Importation
The same issue carries a piece signed Determinatus defending the merchants’ agreement to withhold importations from Great Britain. The measure, he says, has the strongest tendency to repeal the revenue acts, which is why “the Cabal” fought it so bitterly—their places, pensions, and profits would vanish with the acts. When they could no longer call it the last efforts of a dying faction, they put on the appearance of Sons of Liberty and asked whether people have a right to trade and sell their own goods. Determinatus answers with an analogy: no man may set fire to his own house if it will burn a whole neighborhood, and in society one must conduct oneself as the society pleases or leave it. He is astonished that two or three persons of little consequence dare vend imported goods after solemnly pledging their faith to the body of merchants; he asks from what root of bitterness such defection springs—avarice, obstinacy, pride, the advice of a false friend, or want of common understanding—and warns that they will disgrace themselves and lose the confidence of merchants and country. If the fate of “Unborn Millions” hangs on the agreement, every individual of every class should support the merchants and insist on strict adherence.
The Boston Memorial on the Superior Court
Next comes a Memorial of the Town of Boston, assembled in Faneuil Hall on March 19, 1770, addressed to the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Several Justices of the Superior Court are unable to attend through bodily indisposition; the Suffolk gaol holds many prisoners, fifteen of them confined for trial on capital offenses; the Sheriff fears escapes; and witnesses in the “late Tragical Murder in Boston,” many of them seamen, are detained to their disadvantage and may be tempted to absent themselves. The Town prays that special justices be appointed in the room of those taken off, or that other steps be taken to prevent delay of justice. A footnote records that Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and John Barret were named a committee that day to draw up the memorial, and that the words “whom the Town reverence & esteem” were struck from the original draft.
Adams to Hancock: A Resignation Discouraged
On May 11, 1770, Adams writes to John Hancock, whose resolution the day before to resign his seat gave him “very great Uneasiness.” Hancock, he argues, had insufficient ground to deprive the Town of a valuable member when he stood within three of the unanimous suffrages of his fellow citizens—one negative vote being his own. What does it matter that he has been spoken ill of?
Belknap’s Testimony and the Affray at Murray’s Barracks
The narrative turns to the night of March 5, 1770, and asks how the affray at Murray’s barracks began. Jeremiah Belknap, a reputable householder in Cornhill, was sworn before a magistrate but never called at trial—a fact the author declines to explain. Belknap testified that at the first noise he ran to his door and heard a man say a soldier had struck him. Eight or nine soldiers armed with clubs and cutlasses came out of Boylston’s alley, the short passage from the barracks into the street. He ordered them back; one, club in one hand and cutlass in the other, made a stroke at him. Seeing no way to stop them, he ran to the main-guard and called for officers, only to be told none was there.
Other witnesses fill in the scene. One, a prisoner’s witness, saw soldiers passing near the barracks after eight o’clock with clubs and bayonets, heard noise and confusion, and watched two soldiers present their guns and threaten to make a lane through the people before officers drove them in. He heard the first gun soon after the crowd cried “home, home,” and thought the main guard had fired, for the drum beat to arms. A Crown witness described boys huzzaing near Draper’s alley, then soldiers sallying out with naked cutlasses and assaulting everyone; he narrowly escaped a cut and saw a wounded man surrounded by people. A captain of the 14th saw a mob in Cornhill pelting soldiers at the pass, and once they knew him he persuaded them to withdraw.
The author presses the question: why were soldiers abroad in every part of town after eight o’clock, contrary to army rules? If officers were careless, whence so general a carelessness at that juncture—especially when it was said no officer was at the main-guard? Or if the soldiers were ungovernable, their appearance suggested a general combination, agreeable to their former threats, to execute some desperate design. The piece is signed Vindex, December 18.
Vindex Answers a Critic
A writer in Draper’s paper charged Vindex with partiality in his first two pieces on the trial. Vindex denies it and demands a single instance. He denies casting injurious reflections on judges, jury, and witnesses; the accuser must retract or prove his charges, or the public will judge him guilty of something worse than partiality. The accuser threatens to bring out facts not allowed in evidence—which Vindex earnestly desires, including ascertaining the person in a red cloak mentioned at trial. Only two witnesses spoke of him: William Hunter and James Selkrig. Hunter declared that in Dock-square “there was a tall gentleman in a red cloak” standing among the people, who whistled and then huzzaed for the main guard; Selkrig described a gentleman in a red cloak and large white wig who made a speech for four or five minutes, adding only that the people went and knocked with sticks, saying they would do for the soldiers. What the tall gentleman said, neither could tell. Some letter-writers to London have marked the red cloak and white wig as the garb of a Boston hypocrite; great pains have been taken to make the world believe men of estates, figure, and religion had formed a plan before the fifth of March to drive off the soldiers. Perhaps it is the low cunning of this writer to insinuate there was a mob in Dock-square for that purpose, whose leader must be a man of figure because he wore a red cloak. Since it is not known what the tall gentleman said, conjecture may be formed when his person is ascertained—the sooner the better.
The Dispute with Philanthrop
Vindex postpones discussion of the conduct in King-street to a future paper and turns to “Philanthrop” of the Evening Post, who claimed Vindex published only one piece of evidence against Killroi and argued from that alone. Vindex says he published several material pieces and concluded that the “furor brevis” lasted too long for the law’s indulgence. A man who repeatedly said he wanted an opportunity to fire on inhabitants, then fired when forewarned, killed one man on the spot, and tried to stab another who had not injured him—all sworn in open court—shows want of remorse and rancorous malice. Against Philanthrop’s claim that no evidence was given of the wound in Mr. Gray’s head, Vindex says he expressly stated the witness was out of the province, and he did not blame Court or Jury. On the bayonets, Philanthrop says it is demonstrable they could not have been bloody since every gun and bayonet was scoured that night; Vindex replies no such evidence was given in Court, and vague supposition cannot invalidate the oaths of creditable witnesses who swore Killroi’
Candidus and the Layman on Clerical Addresses
The exchange with “the Layman” turns on whether Candidus falsely claimed that a clerical address to a governor was unprecedented. Candidus defends himself on strict terms: if a majority of convention members never met and none were notified of time, place, or business, no act can properly be called the convention’s act. He had understood the claim as referring to the first address by ministers calling themselves congregational ministers met in convention, and the Layman has convinced him he was misinformed—which does not make him guilty of falsehood. He accuses his critic of railing for the clergy. Instances of addresses to Governors Pownal and Bernard are produced, but in neither were members notified or a majority present; perhaps only seventeen met an hour early. The Layman insists on twenty-four, immaterial against three or four hundred ministers, and the presiding Rev. Dr. refuses to ascertain the number. Candidus allows that clergy fond of congratulating may address governors upon promotion, but notes that many who congratulated the Nettleham baronet have since seen no reason to pride themselves; every man in power will be adulated because he is in power. Tryon arrives from the bloody scenes of Alamance and receives encomiums from New York, clergy included, for having “saved a sister colony”; another is flattered as “father of his country” by men who now detest Bernard’s administration though they had canonized him.
Fashionable Addresses and First Principles
A second Candidus letter argues that fashionable addresses to “great men” spring from political views, not merit; their design is to make Lord H— and others think the people’s eyes are opened and they are reconciled to ministerial measures. Candidus proposes that so consequential a question be decided by a duly notified town meeting, debated and voted, so all may see the majority and the weight of understanding and property on each side. The administration’s measures remain as odious as ever to the metropolis; nothing conveys a more unjust idea of a true American than complimenting anyone sent to trample on his country’s rights or kissing the hand prepared to rivet his fetters. Needy expectants and base minds exist, but the public eye can never look on forged chains or their bearers without abhorrence. He quotes the celebrated American Farmer on bad men who serve as decoys and learn how profitable it is to be well spoken of at St. James’s or St. Stephen’s. He recalls the Stamp-Act designs and the Sons of Liberty on 14 August 1765, a day forever to be remembered, who resolved to save their country or perish like Samson; the people shouted to the continent’s end, colonies deliberated, and every Stampman trembled and swore never to execute his commission. When the act was repealed Parliament declared its right to bind America in all cases; thence came duties on paper, glass, painter’s colours, and tea—partly repealed but enough remains to fix the precedent. Grenville would have accepted a pepper corn as revenue, so silence under the tea duty is extreme hazard, and consent is ruin. He recalls the indignity heaped on America by crown officers, representations believed at home; for opposing threatened tyranny they were adjudged rebels and traitors to the best of Kings, and finally the town was formally invaded by fleet and army in 1768. Masters military and civil have changed, some perhaps look less sternly, but without essential alteration of measures or redress of grievances their hearts are unchanged while the tribute is extorted, the fortress garrisoned, the harbour invested by ships of war. Such addresses must appear absurd to men of sense abroad; compared with the town’s, province’s, and continent’s resolutions against slavery, a reader would conclude zeal for the public good had worn out before the homespun clothes it caused to be made. He urges: adhere to first principles.
Virginia’s Example and the Randolph Cabal
A third letter praises the colonists’ attachment to natural and constitutional rights. Virginia, the most ancient colony, first asserted the rights invaded by the Stamp-Act and resolved to ward off the stroke, seconded by all colonies with unanimity, so that commission-holders shuddered and publicly abjured their design. Under the wisest administration since the reign began the act was repealed, to the joy of friends of rights in Britain and America except the few promoters or framers moved by gain or inveterate envy. This restless faction, instigated by ambition, lust of power, or love of money, caballed and laid a plan to render the continent tributary; their indefatigable Randolph was dispatched to Britain, hinting before embarkation by asking what one thought of a small duty upon divers articles of importation; on arrival news was sent of a design to duty paper, glass, painter’s colours, and tea to raise revenue.
Candidus on the Reach of Parliamentary Power
Writing as Candidus in the Boston Gazette in December 1771, Adams asks whether it matters if one man or five hundred control the people’s purses. Parliament, he argues, has claimed the power to raise whatever money it pleases in the colonies, exactly as the kings of France and Spain do over their subjects—monarchs who judge when emergencies exist and generally create them when they need money. Silence under such a claim is dangerous, since it may be read as submission, and those urging quiet intend it so. Even repeal of the obnoxious act on terms of submitting to the right would set a precedent. Should a corrupt administration hold the discretion to tax, one revenue act would follow another until the fatal influence reached the colonies’ own parliaments, with bribes and pensions as frequent as in Ireland, reducing the people to vassals of a ministry or an obsequious governor. Only the ultima ratio could prevent it—and manly efforts grow unlikely once people are inured to contemplating themselves as slaves. Custom, as “the Farmer” observed, reconciles us to dreaded objects and reigns most arbitrarily in public affairs.
The Balance of the Mixed Constitution
A mixed government, the Patriot observes, demands perpetual jealousy, since distributed power implies each order’s proper share. The province’s government, like Britain’s, is mixed; the King by charter nominates the governor, but nothing is said of his right to pay him, so the people reserved that right—confirmed by long practice. Now the King orders the governor’s support from the American revenue, and Chronus himself admits he is thereby rendered “more independent of the people,” disadjusting the balance. Undue power added to the monarchical part is as dangerous as to the democratical; annihilating a check in the people enables exorbitant power. Charles the First, legally appointed, became a tyrant, and his subjects called him to account. The “SPIRIT OF APPREHENSION” must be kept at utmost vigilance.
Candidus Answers Chronus
Replying on December 23, Candidus denies being a party man unless attachment to Liberty and Truth makes one, and mocks Chronus’s charge of “altum silentium.” Chronus recommended petitioning, yet his own examples—the New-Hampshire and Rhode-Island claims—show its unhappy effects, the province losing ten times the land’s value. Chronus calls the stamp-act merely a “Grievance” while a similar revenue act is daily executed. Quoting Locke—preservation of property is the end of government, and whoever taxes without consent subverts that end—Candidus argues Parliament has done exactly this. He cites Pitt and Lord Camden on taxation and representation as inseparably united, then lists the deprivations: a garrisoned fortress beyond the people’s control, a governor independent of them for support, governing by administration’s edicts, judging the legality of instructions, and representatives barred from granting money unless customs commissioners are exempted—”a subjugation to as arbitrary a TRIBUTE as ever the Romans laid upon the Jews.” Petitions from assembly, convention, and town had failed; Doctor Franklin’s letter recommends holding up constitutional rights by frequent Resolves. Better liberties wrested by force than implicitly surrendered.
The Memorandum on Hancock and Otis
A memorandum of December 18 records Adams waiting on Harrison Gray junior, who had allegedly told John Hancock that Adams threatened Hancock’s election over his treatment of Mr Otis. Gray declared he never heard Adams mention Hancock’s election; a conversation had occurred between John Cotton and Adams, with Gray present, about Otis.
The January 1772 Exchange
Chronus argues that duties on trade expressly to raise revenue are not repugnant to the constitution, treating the nation as commercial and Parliament as the proper body to regulate and dispose of forfeitures. Candidus replies that no one disputes the power to regulate trade; Chronus proves the wrong point, evading the question of revenue duties without consent. His “good reason”—that if we will not consent, our money will be taken anyway—is mocked as conclusive. Chronus glides to an independent support for the governor; Candidus answers that even granting the premises the conclusion fails, since the question remains by what authority Parliament acts, we not being represented there.
Constitution, Representation, and “One Dominion”
Montesquieu holds that the English constitution has Liberty for its direct object; the provincial constitution, per Hutchinson, is its epitome, so laws subversive of Liberty subvert the constitution. The Farmer: no free people kept their purse-strings without keeping them; Locke: security of property is the end of society. The revenue acts met public disapprobation in every colony yet are enforced with rigor.
Candidus Answers Draper’s Gazette
Writing as Candidus, Adams takes up the printer Draper and the anonymous author who fed him a note about the Boston town meeting. The Selectmen had declared a respectable number present through the day, and when the letter was voted and accepted for the country towns, not fewer than three hundred inhabitants appeared to them—many more, by others’ reckoning. Draper’s author had claimed that when the votes passed for sending the letter, fewer than twenty men remained besides the Selectmen and some of the Committee. The contradiction was so glaring that Draper, having published it, thought his reputation required him to enquire into the report’s foundation. The author then shifted ground, saying he meant a vote half an hour after nine, when most inhabitants had withdrawn—though he had earlier said plainly it was the vote for sending the letter. Candidus remarks that a man resolved to serve a party at the expense of truth had best have the strongest memory; the want of it has made Court writers inconsistent. The question debated late, he explains, was not whether the letter should go to the Selectmen of the country towns—that had passed by a full vote Nem. Con. before most withdrew—but merely in what manner it should be sent; it was agreed the Town-Clerk should sign and forward it by direction of the Committee, and so it reached four fifths of the Selectmen in the country, representatives of the towns, members of the Council and others of note, at less than two dollars’ carriage. He will not believe the people diverted from their best birthrights by trifles in the Court Gazette: the axe is laid at the root of the civil constitution, religious rights are threatened, and these are the Town’s subjects. Whether three hundred or three thousand attended, it was a legal meeting—as legal as the General Assembly convened by the King’s writ, or the Council summoned by the Governor; even seven Gentlemen, a quorum by the Charter, could act for the Council. He cares not who adjusts the private characters of Dr. Young and the Lieutenant Governor, but warns Draper that the name of the Gentleman who furnished the note is not so deep a secret as imagined, and that caution is owed in communicating political intelligence to one whose business is to publish what he hears.
Adams to Gerry on the Marblehead Proceedings
To Elbridge Gerry, on December 23, Adams acknowledges the Marblehead proceedings and Gerry’s favors of the 16th and 21st, which he communicated to their chairman; they agreed to suspend calling a meeting of their committee. He finds in the Essex Gazette a disapprobation signed by a few men of the proceedings of a whole town. If only about twenty voted and the rest opposed the measure, why did they not outvote them while in their power, or why did the twenty-nine disapprobators not attend the second meeting to prevent measures they apprehended? He is a stranger to most of these gentlemen; Mr. Mansfield he once thought a zealous whig, perhaps mistaken. Their third reason seems excessively puerile. He regrets the printed copy lacks the town clerk’s attestation, which the Court Gazette may exploit to lessen its credit, and intends the next Monday’s papers to print it from the manuscript. Gerry might turn the tables by getting a larger subscription from persons not at the meeting who approve the proceedings, though Gerry is the better judge of prudence. The tools of power are taking pains to prevent town meetings but do not altogether succeed; Adams entertains sanguine hopes their measures will have a happy event.
To Darius Sessions on the Providence Letter
To Darius Sessions, on December 28, Adams acknowledges a letter signed by Sessions and other gentlemen of note in Providence. The subject is weighty and demands more attention than a few hours; he has not yet consulted friends, which he intends soon. He offers thoughts obvious at first view: the whole Act of Parliament relating to the Colonies, and the Commission founded on it, is against the first principles of government and the English Constitution, Magna Charta—
The House’s Reply to Hutchinson: Charters and the Origin of Rights
The Massachusetts House answers Governor Hutchinson’s speech at length. The old charter, it argues, rested on the same principle as the first colony in America: the right of disposing the granted territory was vested in the Crown as Christian Sovereign who first discovered it while in the possession of heathens, the land being not within the realm but only within the Fee and Seignory of the King. Being outside the realm, the King, had he meant Parliament to have authority there, must have made special reservation—which was not done. Hutchinson never showed how subjection to Parliament appears from the charter except by his construction of a clause; the House asks whether any such reservation is expressed or implied, notes that Charles I and his predecessor had no such idea of Parliament’s supreme authority, and invokes Grotius: whatever is originally wrong can never be sanctified by repetition and use.
The Uses of a Pseudonym
Adams rarely signs his own name to the sharpest of these pieces, and the masks are not decorative. Vindex conducts the forensic work on the Boston Massacre trials, weighing the sworn testimony of crown and defense witnesses, correcting his own earlier errors in print, and pressing the question of who actually struck first in King Street. Candidus takes up the clergy who addressed the governor, the “fashionable” flattery of men in power, and the danger of treating silence under the tea duty as consent. A Chatterer mocks the lieutenant governor’s claim that he surrendered Castle William while somehow retaining command of it. Each voice lets Adams press an argument to its limit while the House, speaking officially, keeps to the language of petition and remonstrance.
The technique reveals a political theory in practice. Adams believes the people must be kept awake to their grievances, and that a true patriot will not soothe groundless fears but will investigate whether the people’s fears are groundless at all. Power, he writes, makes men wanton and intoxicates the mind; the citizen’s duty is jealousy of those entrusted with it. The pseudonyms also let him say in the newspaper what the House could only imply in a message: that a governor who acts “merely ministerial,” obeying instructions from a secretary of state three thousand miles away, has ceased to exercise the judgment the charter presumed in him.
The Charter as Compact
The single idea that organizes the whole volume is that the Massachusetts Charter is a compact, not a grant of favors. The House argues that the Crown covenanted to summon a General Court each May, and the people covenanted to choose officers and councillors; they never covenanted to grant money or transact business beyond that. A governor’s instructions cannot bind where compliance injures the people, for then a substitute would have greater power than the principal, and a king who can do no wrong might by instruction obtain a right to do wrong. If instructions may control one charter right, Candidus warns, they may control any or every one.
From this follows the House’s claim to the same inherent rights as the House of Commons, including the right to refuse money until grievances are redressed. Adams and his colleagues are careful to say they do not claim their opinion should prevail against the King’s, nor will they adjourn or dissolve the Court themselves; but their judgment of the proper time to do business should prevail. The grievances they enumerate are concrete: admiralty courts extended to land causes before a single judge without a jury, salaries paid from a revenue the House never granted, troops quartered in Boston without consent, and a capital “crimsoned with the Blood of our fellow Subjects.” To be made instruments of one’s own servitude, the House says, would be a kind of suicide.
One Political Body
Adams returns again and again to the danger of the colonies being picked off one at a time. The enemies of America, he writes, point their artillery against a single province and artfully draw off the attention of the others, rendering that province odious while it suffers ministerial vengeance for the common cause. An attempt to subdue one province to despotic power is an attempt to enslave the whole, because the colonies form one political body of which each is a member. The circular letter of 1768, which the House refused to rescind on pain of dissolution, embodied this logic: it merely acquainted sister colonies with measures already taken, yet the ministry treated it as inflammatory. The House’s refusal, carried ninety-two to seventeen, was, in the writer’s account, a defense not only of the right to petition but of the right of subjects to communicate freely with one another about their grievances.
The same principle governs the instructions to Benjamin Franklin. The House tells its agent that the colonies, however they differ in mode of opposition, are united in the main principles of constitutional and natural liberty, and that the design of their enemies is to render them odious and contemptible in England and to detach the sister colonies from one another. Adams wants the colonists to correspond more frequently and attend to each other’s particular circumstances—a practical program of union built on the recognition that the liberties of the whole are invaded whenever one member is attacked.
What the Volume Leaves Behind
These papers matter less as literature than as a record of how the Revolution was argued before it was fought. Adams works within the language of English liberty—Magna Charta, the petition of right, the example of Locke on prerogative—and turns that language against the crown’s own servants. His method is forensic and documentary: he quotes charters, prints depositions, corrects his own published errors, and demands that opponents produce the exact words they claim were spoken. The volume closes in the thick of the contest, with the House pressing the governor on whether provision has been made for his support independent of the legislature, and with Candidus warning that important changes happen insensibly and that nations must guard against silent and slow attacks. The last word is a maxim: adhere to first principles.
