Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/53

ADAMS.ADAMS. This did not suit his views and he began to study law, which he left, at the wish of his mother, to learn business in a counting room. Upon arriving at his majority in 1743, he attended the commencement exercises at Harvard and there received his degree as master of arts, selecting as his thesis, the proposition that "It is lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved." Seated on the platform during its delivery was Governor Shirley and the other crown officials who represented the "supreme magistrate." Young Adams was a strict Calvinist, and a zealous member of the Old South church. His father soon gave him one thousand pounds that he might begin business for himself, but he sunk the whole amount, half by a bad loan and the other half in his business. Next he joined his father in carrying on a malt house on his father's estate on Purchase street. His father died in 1748 and left him one-third of his estate. In 1749 he married Elizabeth Checkley, daughter of the minister of the New South religious society in Summer street, which his father had been instrumental in founding in 1718. He continued the business of the malt house, and this gave rise to the title "Sammy the Malster," bestowed upon him by his political opponents. Massachusetts had issued paper money and coin had been driven from circulation. An inflation of prices resulted, attended with disastrous fluctuations. British merchants trading with the colony complained of the paper currency, and the people, as represented in the legislature, opposed the board of trade, which was sustained by the governor. This condition led to the formation of two banking companies, the people taking the stocks of the "land bank," or "manufactory scheme," which issued £150,000, redeemable in produce after twenty years, and Mr. Adams's father became a large shareholder. The "silver scheme" was patronized by the merchants, who issued £110,000 in notes, to be redeemed in silver in ten years. The land bank had 800 stockholders, and they were influential in the legislature, and as a political power succeeded in causing the removal of Governor Belcher. The plans of both of these banking companies were frustrated by an act of parliament that was extended to the colonies, an old law of England forbidding any joint-stock company having over six shareholders. The two banks were therefore obliged to redeem their script and suspend business. As the individual shareholders were personally responsible it brought ruin to many of the larger holders. In 1758 an attempt was made to seize the Adams estate to satisfy a claim against his father on account of his personal liability in the "land bank." Samuel resisted the attempt, and held off the levy till the colonial legislature released the directors from personal liability. In 1756 he was made collector of taxes, and as the payment of taxes was slow the delinquency was recorded in the Boston town records as against the collectors, naming the sum to be £9,878. The tories charged the deficiency against Adams; and Hutchinson, the last royalist governor, in his history of the colony called it a "defalcation." In the transactions of the Massachusetts historical society for 1883, a complete disproval of the charge is recorded. In 1757 Mr. Adams's wife died and left two children, a son and a daughter. His malt house was a failure. He had lost his other property, save only the ancestral home on Purchase street, and this was much out of repair. In this dark hour, he was one of five men appointed by the town of Boston to instruct the representatives just elected to the general court as to the wishes of the people of the town of Boston, and Samuel Adams wrote out America's first protest against the plan of Lord Grenville for taxing the colonies.

Indeed in his capacity as clerk of the legislature he was the author of nearly all the papers that were drawn up against impositions of the British government. The patriot party found in him its very soul. His instructions were read before the general court May 24, 1764, and the original draft of the document is preserved, having been the property of George Bancroft, the historian, at the time of his death. On Dec. 6, 1764, Mr. Adams was married to Elizabeth Wells. In Boston the news of the passage of the stamp act by the British parliament called out determined resistance. Hutchinson's house was destroyed and his family barely escaped the infuriated mob. The general assembly was to convene in September, and Samuel Adams again prepared the instructions for the Boston members. John Adams had written the instructions for the Quincy members, and the Gazette printed both documents. Samuel Adams was elected to a vacancy in the Assembly Sept. 27, 1765, and the day he was sworn in, Bernard, the royalist governor, prorogued the legislature. In October, 1765, he began his service in behalf of revolution as the only remedy, for oppression, and advocated it in the colonial assembly continuously until 1774, when he was sent as a representative to the Colonial Congress at Philadelphia, and there