The Glenn Beck Program - May 09, 2026


Boston’s Rebellion： Samuel Adams and the Fight for Liberty ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 5


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

142.91722

Word count

7,589

Sentence count

511


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:26.160 more at www.f35.com slash Canada. The flickering candlelight casts dancing shadows across the worn
00:00:39.640 wooden beams of a room above the Green Dragon Tavern. A tight-knit group of men huddle around
00:00:46.560 a scarred oak table in a haze of tobacco smoke. Their voices, a low rumble of spirited conviction.
00:00:54.340 They call themselves the Monday Night Club, a small collection of local tradesmen, merchants, and writers
00:01:00.060 who get together over tumblers of ale to discuss liberty and tyranny, ideas at this time that can get them killed.
00:01:08.680 At the head of the table sits a stocky, middle-aged man with ink-stained fingers and eyes sparkling with energy and wisdom.
00:01:16.860 His clothes are noticeably more worn than his colleagues.
00:01:19.860 He fidgets with a quill, his hand trembling slightly from age or exhaustion.
00:01:25.600 Maybe both.
00:01:27.400 That man is Samuel Adams.
00:01:31.040 Across from him sits his cousin, John Adams, 34 years old, clean-shaven, cautious, but
00:01:37.560 never shying away from a political debate.
00:01:40.140 He's a farmer and a lawyer with a growing practice.
00:01:43.540 He's a man who is caught between two worlds, the simple family farm life that he craves
00:01:48.760 versus the sense of a calling he feels to play a role in this growing freedom movement.
00:01:57.500 The robust conversation is interrupted by the deep resonant tolling of bells echoing from the streets.
00:02:03.800 The men instinctively spring from their chairs for their coats and their hats.
00:02:08.180 In a city of timber and candlelight, the bells mean there's a fire.
00:02:14.660 Suddenly, there's pounding on a door.
00:02:16.360 Where Samuel's heads snap towards the sound, the club members fall silent as they exchange tense glances.
00:02:21.820 The door swings open, revealing a panting messenger, his breath visible in the cold draft that's now rushing in, his face etched with urgency.
00:02:30.880 He blurts something out about King Street, shots fired, and blood spilled.
00:02:35.200 Without hesitation, the men pour out into the biting winter darkness.
00:02:39.220 Snow crunches under their boots as they race through the narrow, moonlit alleys.
00:02:43.300 The ominous clanging bells drawing more people from their homes.
00:02:48.400 The wind whips at their coats, carrying distant shouts that now grow louder and louder, more chaotic with each step.
00:02:54.740 They turn a corner and collide with pandemonium, a hysterical mob surging like an ocean wave.
00:03:01.400 Bodies pressed together in a frenzy of rage and confusion.
00:03:05.000 Cries of murder pierce the frigid air.
00:03:08.600 Samuel and his companions push forward, elbows and shoulders forcing a path through the throng,
00:03:13.280 hearts pounding with a mix of dread and determination.
00:03:16.440 Finally, they break through the front where the horror unfolds before them.
00:03:21.440 Three bodies lied sprawl in the pristine white snow,
00:03:25.820 limbs twisted unnaturally, crimson blood pooling outward in a stark spreading stain.
00:03:32.880 The crowd wails and thrust their accusing fingers at a line of red-coated British soldiers standing frozen, their faces pale.
00:03:42.200 Sam Adams stands there, the scene searing his soul.
00:03:46.500 This isn't a mere brawl or accident.
00:03:48.680 This is the ignition point, the moment when simmering tensions explode into something irreversible.
00:03:56.720 This is Boston, 1770, the epicenter of the American Revolution.
00:04:04.060 And it would not have happened without the driving perseverance of one unlikely patriot leader, Samuel Adams.
00:04:14.660 This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:04:23.540 episode 5 boston's rebellion samuel adams and the fight for liberty
00:04:30.980 before samuel adams became the beating heart of the revolution before the countless newspaper
00:04:38.220 articles the mobs the tea party he was a failure he failed at business he failed at managing money
00:04:45.060 he even failed at making beer samuel adams was born in boston in 1722 he was the fourth of 12
00:04:52.660 children, only three would survive into adulthood. His father, Samuel Adams Sr., was a successful
00:04:59.820 maltster, a craftsman who transformed barley into malt through the meticulous process of steeping,
00:05:06.800 drying, and sweating, and then kilning. In an era where beer was often safer to drink than
00:05:12.180 contaminated water, he made a fortune supplying Boston's breweries and housewives with the
00:05:17.400 ingredients for making their brews. At six years old, Samuel attended Boston Latin School for the
00:05:23.620 city's elite. At 14, he entered Harvard College. Not unusual at the time, but after graduation,
00:05:30.600 Samuel tried his hand at business. He worked briefly for a Boston merchant named Thomas
00:05:35.160 Cushing, who later said about Samuel, quote, his whole soul was engrossed by politics.
00:05:41.820 Translation, Samuel Adams was useless at business.
00:05:46.200 He further proved that when he tried to start a business of his own.
00:05:49.500 The details have been lost to history, but what we do know is that he squandered his
00:05:53.600 father's investment of a thousand pounds in the venture.
00:05:57.620 Samuel returned to what he was good at, studying, writing, and debate at Harvard.
00:06:02.580 He earned a master's degree when he was 20, and for his master's thesis, he tackled a
00:06:08.600 question that foreshadowed his true calling.
00:06:11.200 Is it lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the republic cannot otherwise be preserved?
00:06:18.620 Naturally, his conclusion was a resounding yes.
00:06:23.140 He wrote that citizens must obey the king only as long as he acts according to the law.
00:06:28.720 But if the king betrays that law, violating natural rights and liberties, then, Samuel wrote,
00:06:35.020 He overthrows the very design of government, and the people are discharged from all obedience.
00:06:43.520 It was an academic argument that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:06:48.420 He didn't know it yet, but that paper was his first article of rebellion.
00:06:53.780 In 1748, Samuel inherited the family malt business when his father died at 59.
00:06:59.880 He was again terrible at it, running it into the ground and accumulating significant debts.
00:07:05.920 The only thing Samuel had going for him was his marriage to Elizabeth Checkley,
00:07:11.540 the 24-year-old daughter of the minister at New South Church where Sam had been a member all his
00:07:17.060 life. A year later, Elizabeth gave birth to their son named Samuel, but he lived only 18 days.
00:07:24.500 Almost one year to the day later, she had another son, also named Samuel, who survived.
00:07:30.620 But the couple would lose another son and a daughter before their daughter Hannah arrived in 1756.
00:07:38.740 The year after that brought the ultimate heartbreak for Samuel.
00:07:43.380 Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn son, and then she died three weeks later.
00:07:49.240 She was only 32.
00:07:50.460 After almost eight years of marriage, Sam was left a devastated widower,
00:07:57.960 turning to his faith for strength.
00:08:00.180 For Elizabeth's epitaph, he wrote,
00:08:04.220 She ran her Christian race with a remarkable steadiness and finished in triumph.
00:08:10.340 In the family Bible, he added a heartfelt prayer.
00:08:13.220 She left two small children.
00:08:16.060 God grant they may inherit her graces.
00:08:18.860 Samuel raised his son and daughter on his own for the next seven years.
00:08:24.640 Further losses compounded his sorrow.
00:08:26.460 His mother died in 1758, his brother in 1759.
00:08:30.500 By 1764, at 41, Samuel's house was in disrepair,
00:08:35.080 the malt business was ruined, and a slight tremor had crept into his hands.
00:08:40.600 Yet, he found love again, and he married Betsy Wells.
00:08:45.420 They had no children together, but Betsy embraced her stepchildren as her own.
00:08:52.080 As Samuel became more embroiled in colonial politics,
00:08:55.780 Betsy was often left alone to manage the household and the children,
00:08:59.040 but she was the glue that held the family together
00:09:01.860 and worked hard to make it on their meager finances.
00:09:05.400 This personal backdrop set the stage for Samuel's plunge into politics and controversy.
00:09:12.200 The spark that turned him into a firebrand?
00:09:15.360 That was the Stamp Act of 1765.
00:09:21.000 This is what this was all about.
00:09:22.720 Great Britain was burdened by debt from the French and Indian War,
00:09:26.460 and they imposed a tax on virtually every paper transaction.
00:09:31.280 Marriage certificates, ships' papers, legal documents, newspapers, and countless others.
00:09:36.800 Colonists who considered themselves full British subjects saw it as a violation of their rights.
00:09:42.280 This was taxation without representation.
00:09:45.540 Worse, it raised alarms about potential government control over religious material.
00:09:51.300 If the government could tax their documents, could it also censor their words next, their sermons, their Bibles?
00:09:58.640 Samuel argued the Stamp Act was designed
00:10:01.600 Only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as slaves of men.
00:10:07.720 And the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan is mighty easy.
00:10:15.540 The protests began almost immediately.
00:10:19.160 Crowds gathered under Boston's Liberty Tree, hanging effigies of British tax agents.
00:10:24.580 Mobs ransacked the homes of royal officials.
00:10:27.720 Stamp agents resigned in terror.
00:10:30.680 By November 1st, 1765, the day the law was to take effect, no royal official in Boston
00:10:36.460 dared to enforce the Stamp Act.
00:10:39.260 Business carried on.
00:10:40.780 Newspapers printed a skull and crossbones where the royal stamp would have been.
00:10:46.060 Samuel Adams had found his calling, something he was good at.
00:10:50.780 He was elected to represent Boston in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and
00:10:56.260 he was one of the earliest members of the Sons of Liberty.
00:10:59.840 He developed an unprecedented influence as the writer of political essays in the Boston Gazette.
00:11:06.060 His writing was blunt and uncompromising.
00:11:08.380 He made rational arguments for liberty that resonated with the common people of Boston and beyond.
00:11:15.600 As was common at the time, and because so much of what he wrote would be considered sedition,
00:11:21.040 he used multiple pseudonyms for his newspaper essays.
00:11:25.100 In December 1765, Samuel brought his cousin John Adams into the inner circle, the Monday Night Club.
00:11:32.360 This was a very secretive group where communication, strategy, and influence were designed,
00:11:37.900 where the most urgent newspaper essays were planned.
00:11:41.620 John was 30 years old, still a little naive and utterly captivated.
00:11:47.100 John later wrote that Samuel had
00:11:48.980 the most thorough understanding of liberty and her resources in the temper and character of the
00:11:54.860 people, as well as the most habitual radical love of it, of any of them, as well as the most correct
00:12:02.360 genteel and artful pen. Thanks to that artful pen, John Adams also said that 1765 had made Americans
00:12:11.260 more attentive to their liberties, more inquisitive about them, and more determined to defend them
00:12:17.120 than they were ever before.
00:12:19.360 The Addams family, if you will, the cousins,
00:12:22.360 made a very powerful pair.
00:12:25.820 When the Stamp Act was finally repealed in 1766,
00:12:29.640 Boston erupted in celebration.
00:12:32.400 But Samuel Addams, ever suspicious,
00:12:34.860 warned that the victory would not last.
00:12:37.840 And boy, was he right.
00:12:41.220 A year later came the Townshend Acts,
00:12:43.880 new taxes on glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea. Parliament, it seems, was doubling down.
00:12:51.900 Samuel wrote the official Massachusetts protest to King George III, calling the acts a violation
00:12:56.860 of the natural and constitutional rights of Americans. Hannah, his 10-year-old daughter,
00:13:02.800 stood by his desk one morning as he was working on the draft. She was proud and amazed that the
00:13:08.500 document would be touched by the royal hand. Samuel rubbed his weary eyes, smiled at her,
00:13:15.780 and replied, It will, my dear, more likely be spurned by the royal foot. He was right again.
00:13:25.320 The document urged a return to local control of taxation and called for other states to boycott
00:13:31.280 the taxed goods. Shortly after the Massachusetts House approved the draft, Samuel and James Otis
00:13:37.420 suggested the document be shared with the other colonies.
00:13:40.720 It was known as the Circular Letter.
00:13:44.340 In June 1768, King George demanded that Massachusetts retract the Circular Letter.
00:13:51.100 But after receiving support of the letter from five other colonies,
00:13:54.480 they voted 92 to 17 not to rescind it.
00:13:58.960 At the time, it was the most open rebellion ever seen in the colonies.
00:14:04.500 Well, the crown-appointed governor, Francis Bernard, promptly dissolved the Massachusetts legislature, setting off widespread protests.
00:14:12.520 Bernard called Adams, quote, the most dangerous man in Massachusetts.
00:14:17.220 And within a month, 200 Boston merchants signed a non-importation agreement.
00:14:23.020 They would buy nothing from Great Britain until the Townshend taxes were repealed.
00:14:29.360 Another grassroots intimidation campaign, this time against customs officials, began.
00:14:34.460 Samuel did not openly support it, but he didn't really discourage it either.
00:14:38.880 In response, royal agents requested the king's troops as peacemakers.
00:14:43.740 Rumors of occupation swirled in late summer.
00:14:46.800 And then, in September 1768, a fleet of British troop transports into Boston Harbor.
00:14:55.140 Redcoats poured into the wharves, muskets gleaming in the early autumn sun.
00:15:00.240 Their boots struck the cobblestone streets in unison, four regiments strong.
00:15:06.060 The king had sent an army to occupy his own subjects.
00:15:12.180 Samuel Adams stood at the window of his modest house on Purchase Street,
00:15:16.900 watching the red tide pour in.
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00:15:37.040 You have to.
00:15:38.120 Then the interest rates.
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00:16:18.040 it's AmericanFinancing.net. For 17 months, Boston had lived under the weight of British
00:16:26.960 bayonets. 2,000 troops in a town of 16,000 civilians. Boston would never be the same.
00:16:35.440 Soldiers and civilians shared streets, taverns, even church steps. The long occupation plus two
00:16:42.020 years of the Townshend taxes and boycotts made frustrations boil over. Every corner of the city
00:16:48.300 felt like a powder keg. The British troops were not exactly elite. Many of them were young, poor,
00:16:55.540 half-drunk, dragged from London jails and given a choice of joining the army or heading to the
00:17:01.140 gallows. So they were underpaid, brutally treated, and bored stiff. So they had their fun wherever
00:17:08.340 they could, often at the expense of regular Bostonians. They liked to gather outside of
00:17:14.700 churches on Sundays, mocking worshippers with lewd songs, and their favorite tune was Yankee
00:17:20.520 Doodle. No one knew exactly what a Yankee was, but Doodle meant clown or fool. It was like being
00:17:29.180 called a hick or a country bumpkin, and the insult stuck. Bostonians called the soldiers
00:17:35.660 lobster backs, another colorful, abusive name. They pelted them with snowballs and mud and
00:17:42.220 sometimes more solid objects. There were British barracks just blocks away from Samuel Adams' front
00:17:48.420 door. He had a large Newfoundland dog named Q, whom he trained to bite any redcoat who crossed
00:17:55.440 his path. The British occupation fueled Samuel's writing like never before. Every Monday, the
00:18:01.540 Boston Gazette carried his latest essay, and over the years he used 30 different pseudonyms,
00:18:07.260 each one a new voice in a chorus of outrage. Samuel and his associates chronicled the British
00:18:13.720 presence like crime reporters, chronicling every insult, every shove, every bruise inflicted by the
00:18:19.940 troops. They published these reports as something they called the Journal of Occurrences. Each week
00:18:26.320 these accounts spread to newspapers in other colonies, and the outrage grew, along with the
00:18:32.140 realization that liberty under siege in Boston was a threat to all Americans. One friend later
00:18:38.200 recalled walking past Samuel's house late one night, seeing the candle still burning in the
00:18:42.260 window. He found it reassuring that, quote, Samuel Adams is hard at work, writing against the Tories,
00:18:49.640 end quote. Yet, as with all things, it was never smooth sailing for Samuel Adams,
00:18:55.220 even on his home turf of Boston. Loyalists constantly mocked he and his cohorts in print,
00:19:02.220 ridiculing them as agonizing reptiles, small statesmen who rave and drivel about the political
00:19:08.520 frenzy and idiotism. But the insults only sharpened his pen. And then came the night of March 5, 1770.
00:19:18.280 Private Hugh White stands guard outside the custom house on King Street.
00:19:23.840 It is bitterly cold and he is taunted for hours.
00:19:28.820 A rowdy late-night crowd jeers, throws snowballs, oyster shells, and chunks of ice at him.
00:19:34.340 They dare him to strike back.
00:19:37.460 Private White raises his musket, shouting for help.
00:19:41.280 His plea eggs on the crowd.
00:19:43.300 A young, nervous Captain Thomas Preston rushes to the scene with seven more soldiers.
00:19:49.040 They stand with their red-coated backs to the wall of the Custom House.
00:19:53.340 Their arrival fuels the fiery crowd even more.
00:19:56.400 The mob swells again, 50, 100, eventually more than 1,000,
00:20:02.000 the air thick with curses that contrast the soft falling snow.
00:20:07.300 Captain Preston orders the soldiers to level their muskets.
00:20:10.180 As soon as they do, the crowd surges forward, almost touching the points of the British bayonets, daring them,
00:20:17.560 Fire! Fire on us!
00:20:19.840 Suddenly, a soldier is blindsided by a flying chunk of wood that hits him in the head.
00:20:25.500 The blow knocks him down.
00:20:28.280 A shot rings out. The crowd roars in panic.
00:20:31.520 Seconds later, the burst of musket fire rips through the crowd.
00:20:35.140 Screams. Chaos.
00:20:36.820 Three men lay dead in the snow.
00:20:38.440 two more die later of their wounds. Six others writhe in the ground with their injuries.
00:20:44.340 Among the dead, the 47-year-old Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Indian descent. He likely
00:20:52.260 escaped slavery years earlier. He, a black man, the first to die in the cause for American liberty.
00:21:00.160 When Samuel and John Adams arrive, the smoke is cleared and the snow is streaked with the crimson
00:21:05.460 blood. The acting royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, quickly has Captain Preston and the eight soldiers
00:21:12.260 under his command arrested. Finally, by 4 a.m., the Boston streets are quiet.
00:21:18.980 The next morning, Boston held an emergency town meeting. The people voted Samuel Adams to be their
00:21:25.880 spokesman to the governor. Later that day, Samuel stood before Governor Hutchinson, who looked on
00:21:31.340 edge. No one in Boston unnerved him quite like Samuel Adams. With his untidy clothes and twitching
00:21:40.180 mouth, watery eyes, and the mild tremor in his hands, Samuel looked unimpressive. But when he
00:21:46.620 spoke, he had an entirely different effect. People were inspired into action. Samuel demanded that
00:21:54.640 the British troops be removed from Boston. Governor Hutchinson refused. Then he waffled.
00:22:00.980 Then he whispered with other officials.
00:22:03.560 Finally, he said he would agree to withdraw one regiment, but not both.
00:22:08.800 Samuel returned to the old South Church where the crowd had swelled to 4,000.
00:22:13.940 Bostonians were adamant removing one regiment was not good enough.
00:22:18.340 Samuel, his eyes ablaze, returned to the governor and said,
00:22:21.260 If the troops weren't removed, thousands of Massachusetts militiamen would be glad to force them out.
00:22:26.500 The governor warned Samuel that this was high treason territory.
00:22:31.160 John Adams, who was watching from the crowd, later wrote that,
00:22:34.060 A self-recollection, a self-possession, a self-command,
00:22:38.560 a presence of mind that was admired by every man present.
00:22:42.720 Samuel stood his ground.
00:22:44.420 If you have power to remove one regiment, you have power to remove both.
00:22:50.000 The people are become very impatient.
00:22:52.740 A thousand men are already arrived from the neighborhood,
00:22:55.600 and the country is in general motion.
00:22:58.960 He watched the resolve slowly drain from Hutchinson's face.
00:23:03.260 Samuel later wrote,
00:23:04.540 I observed his knees to tremble.
00:23:07.360 I thought I saw his face grow pale
00:23:09.300 and I enjoyed the sight.
00:23:11.620 Hutchinson finally buckled.
00:23:15.180 Both British regiments withdrew from the city
00:23:17.880 to Castle William.
00:23:19.640 It was a fortification on an island in Boston Harbor.
00:23:23.260 It was a stunning reversal.
00:23:25.600 When Samuel brought the news back to the Old South Church, the crowd erupted in celebration.
00:23:30.680 But the celebration was short-lived for Samuel.
00:23:34.300 Because his work wasn't finished, he knew this story had to be told well and to spread everywhere.
00:23:40.760 For starters, he labeled the night of March 5th the Horrid Massacre, which quickly caught on in the colonial press.
00:23:48.900 He planned a massive funeral for the victims.
00:23:51.380 10,000 mourners would fill the streets.
00:23:53.860 that's well over half of Boston's population.
00:23:57.580 Drums beat slow and steady as four coffins wound through the city
00:24:01.780 toward the granary burying ground.
00:24:05.240 Samuel understood something few others did.
00:24:08.180 Revolution required a story.
00:24:11.740 His fellow Sons of Liberty member Paul Revere produced an engraving he titled
00:24:15.880 The Bloody Massacre in King Street.
00:24:18.460 It showed the Redcoats firing in perfect formation at a helpless crowd, a captain raising his
00:24:26.460 sword in command and every detail designed to inflame, and it spread like wildfire through
00:24:32.660 the colonies. The truth was messier, but the Purdue's story resonated. Within weeks,
00:24:39.560 the Boston Massacre became the rallying cry from New Hampshire to Georgia.
00:24:43.800 here's where the story gets fascinating the man who's recruited to defend the british soldiers in
00:24:51.820 court was samuel adams own cousin john adams john didn't want the case his one-year-old daughter
00:24:59.560 had died just a month before the boston massacre he was devastated he wanted solitude not controversy
00:25:05.800 but no one else would take the case ultimately he agreed to take the job on principle believing
00:25:13.160 that a free country must allow the right to counsel and a fair trial. Law and justice had
00:25:20.040 to prevail over mob fury. Well, there was six days of testimony, and he dismantled the prosecution's
00:25:27.080 case. Witness after witness admitted that the crowd had taunted and attacked the soldiers first.
00:25:32.580 The most dramatic moment came from the deathbed of a victim, Patrick Carr, who told his surgeon
00:25:38.800 that he forgave the soldiers, that they had fired in self-defense. John Adams' closing argument
00:25:45.900 became very famous. Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
00:25:53.440 or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,
00:26:00.040 nor is the law less stable than the fact. If an assault was made to endanger their lives,
00:26:06.240 the law is clear. They had a right to kill in their own defense. If it was not so severe as
00:26:12.820 to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort,
00:26:19.900 by snowballs, oyster shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind, this was a provocation
00:26:26.760 for which the law reduces the offense of killing down to manslaughter in consideration of those
00:26:33.360 passions in our nature which cannot be eradicated. The jury deliberated two and a half hours. Six of
00:26:41.840 the soldiers were acquitted. Two were convicted of manslaughter and their punishment was having
00:26:46.840 the letter M seared into their right thumbs with a hot iron. Justice, at least technically, was done.
00:26:54.540 But the larger verdict, the one written in the newspapers and declared in sermons across the
00:26:59.140 colonies was already decided. This was tyranny and oppression. Looking back years later, John
00:27:05.720 Adams said, not the Battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis
00:27:12.480 were more important events in American history than the Battle of King Street on March 5th, 1770.
00:27:20.520 By the end of 1770, the American struggle was just getting started. Britain repealed the Townshend
00:27:28.300 acts all except for one key tax the tax on tea you know it's becoming exhausting buying food
00:27:39.800 from companies that want your money but don't want to tell you where anything is made or anything
00:27:44.400 much about it you pick up a package you squint at the label and somehow you still need a private
00:27:49.580 investigator to figure out what you're actually bringing home for dinner it shouldn't be like
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00:30:11.580 Imagine the aftermath of the Boston Massacre.
00:30:13.920 as a smoldering fire that Sam Adams refused to let die out.
00:30:19.260 For the next two years, he embarked on a one-man crusade,
00:30:23.640 determined not to let Massachusetts or the wider colonies slip into amnesia
00:30:28.700 about the grievances that had piled up over the past six years,
00:30:32.520 stretching all the way back to the Stamp Act of 1765.
00:30:36.940 He produced a continuous stream of essays in the Boston Gazette,
00:30:40.580 reminding readers of every insult, every injustice, every ounce of British arrogance.
00:30:46.020 His arch-nemesis, Governor Hutchinson, fumed, writing,
00:30:50.680 The devil himself is not capable of more malevolence.
00:30:55.060 Adams would push the continent into a rebellion tomorrow if it was in his power.
00:31:01.860 Hutchinson was probably right about the rebellion part,
00:31:04.920 but rebellion required a lot more than rage.
00:31:07.780 It needed organization.
00:31:10.520 And Samuel Adams was a genius at that.
00:31:16.240 To appreciate his next move, you have to understand the fragmented landscape of the colonies in the years leading up to the war for independence.
00:31:23.220 They were like 13 separate countries.
00:31:26.640 They were highly independent, all with their own laws, economies, money, rivalries, and little in the way of consistent communication between them.
00:31:34.740 There was no unified voice, no network to share ideas or coordinate actions.
00:31:40.900 In 1772, Samuel seized on an idea first proposed by the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew six years earlier
00:31:48.680 for an organized system of communication between all of the colonies to help them unite in their thinking and action.
00:31:56.760 Samuel jump-started what became known as the Committees of Correspondence.
00:32:00.740 It was a communication web that stretched from Massachusetts to South Carolina.
00:32:06.120 He described its simple mission like this.
00:32:08.360 To state the rights of the colonists, and of this province in particular,
00:32:13.460 as men, as Christians, and as subjects.
00:32:18.360 Each word was chosen with care.
00:32:21.280 Men, meaning all citizens.
00:32:23.320 Christians, grounding their protest in moral spiritual duty.
00:32:27.500 subjects asserting their loyalty, but only to a lawful king.
00:32:32.400 Even supporters of this correspondence effort were skeptical that it would work.
00:32:36.820 One told Samuel that some colonies might not join because, quote,
00:32:40.500 they're dead, and the dead can't be raised without a miracle.
00:32:43.700 To which Samuel replied,
00:32:46.120 All are not dead, and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will enkindle it.
00:32:54.180 And he did.
00:32:56.160 Through these committees, news and outrage spread faster than ever before.
00:32:59.980 A colonial postal service of rebellion with Boston as the nerve center.
00:33:05.740 In the fall of 1773, Samuel Adams had a new chilling item to slip into his correspondence.
00:33:12.840 The British East India Company, that sprawling commercial empire, had been granted a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies.
00:33:22.440 Essentially, it was a corporate bailout.
00:33:25.400 The company was drowning in unsold tea, so Parliament had a solution, let's dump its surplus directly in America, and have the colonists pay a small tax on it, of course.
00:33:36.340 The logic was simple, much of the tea sold in the colonies came from smugglers, but this East India Company tea, even with the small tax, would be cheaper than any other options.
00:33:49.480 Surely, Americans wouldn't be able to resist such a steal, and in the process,
00:33:53.600 maybe they'd forget about taxation without representation that they were so hung up on.
00:33:58.640 To modern ears, the tea tax issue might seem pretty petty, but tea in the 1770s,
00:34:05.520 it wasn't just a drink. It was a vital staple of daily life. The water in many colonial
00:34:11.500 communities was undrinkable. Boiling it into tea made it safe to drink, and it helped keep people
00:34:17.300 alive. So when that tax arrived hidden in the teapot, it wasn't a minor issue. This was personal.
00:34:25.380 And it showed that Britain still did not get the message that Americans were fed up with being
00:34:30.240 treated as second-class citizens. Samuel Adams immediately saw through the latest British scheme
00:34:36.160 to tax the colonies. He saw it as a Trojan horse designed to get them accustomed to subjugation.
00:34:41.760 What he didn't know, what no one knew, was that the tea ships had already sailed, some headed straight for Boston.
00:34:52.160 In late November 1773, three ships sat anchored in Boston Harbor.
00:34:58.200 Their holds were packed full of tea.
00:35:00.900 Now by law, the tea had to be unloaded, and all the taxes paid within 20 days, or the cargo would be seized and put up for auction.
00:35:08.700 For Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, unloading the tea was not an option because
00:35:12.860 once it hit the docks, whether voluntary or by seizure, it would be sold and taxed.
00:35:17.880 After several unsuccessful attempts at turning back the ships, and with the 20-day deadline
00:35:22.640 looming in a matter of hours, Samuel led a final town meeting on December 16th.
00:35:28.160 The Old South Meeting House overflowed with 5,000 people.
00:35:33.540 One last appeal was sent to Governor Hutchinson to allow the ships to turn back.
00:35:38.820 No doubt feeling bitter from the Boston Massacre aftermath three years earlier,
00:35:42.660 there was no way Hutchinson was going to cave in on another Samuel Adams mob.
00:35:46.860 He refused. The cargo would be unloaded the next day.
00:35:51.200 When that final answer reached the old South Meeting House,
00:35:54.800 citizens reacted with an uproar.
00:35:59.080 Amid the pandemonium, about 150 men calmly filed out of the meeting house and other buildings nearby.
00:36:05.100 The men disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians, darkening their faces with soot and charcoal and wrapping blankets over their shoulders.
00:36:13.900 Minutes later, war whoops pierced the night from the street outside the meeting house.
00:36:17.740 Inside, the citizens erupted into cheers and hundreds rushed outside to join the band of costume men heading towards Boston Harbor.
00:36:25.520 Samuel, John Hancock, and Dr. Joseph Warren called for order, trying to get the people to stay.
00:36:31.820 They continued with more speeches, stalling for time, but it was all a ruse.
00:36:37.240 The meeting provided them with a plausible deniability for what was about to happen.
00:36:42.060 But Samuel Adams knew all about it, because he was behind the entire operation.
00:36:46.200 Paul Revere was among the disguised men, along with many of Samuel Adams' closest allies.
00:36:52.240 They were the Sons of Liberty.
00:36:53.820 At the docks, they boarded the ships without resistance. They helped themselves to candles
00:36:59.000 and keys to the hatches. They descended to the holds and hauled chest after chest of tea up to
00:37:04.760 the main deck. There were no dainty chests. Each one was lined with lead and weighed over 400 pounds.
00:37:12.580 Over the next two hours, the Sons of Liberty, in disguise, used hatchets to methodically smash
00:37:17.580 open 342 chests dumping every last leaf of tea into the dark water below. On the dock, crowd of
00:37:25.180 thousands gathered to watch, remaining remarkably quiet except for the occasional cheers as batches
00:37:31.500 of tea cascaded into the harbor. Not a single person was injured, nothing else was disturbed
00:37:37.740 on the three ships. The men even swept the decks clean after their heist was done. It quite honestly
00:37:45.740 is the politest robbery in human history, and when it was all said and done, the Sons of Liberty
00:37:52.120 returned to the wharf and melted into the massive crowd. For the next several days, Bostonians
00:37:58.400 reveled in the afterglow of their epic tea party. Samuel Adams wrote,
00:38:02.800 You cannot imagine the height of joy that sparkles in the eyes and animates the countenances
00:38:10.160 as well as the hearts of all we meet on this occasion.
00:38:14.900 Other tea parties took place up and down the eastern seaboard.
00:38:18.860 In Delaware, patriots dumped twice as much tea as Boston did,
00:38:22.080 but only Boston's tea party would be remembered
00:38:24.140 because Boston had Samuel Adams to tell its story.
00:38:28.080 Meanwhile, Governor Hutchinson fumed, calling it high treason.
00:38:32.040 Even though thousands of Bostonians had been at the wharf that night,
00:38:35.540 he couldn't find a single eyewitness to testify,
00:38:38.060 by an unbelievable unity of silence.
00:38:42.480 In London, King George III, who had once dismissed colonial protests as childish tantrums, was
00:38:48.400 now furious.
00:38:50.800 He had tolerated petitions and pamphlets.
00:38:53.860 But this destruction of property, open defiance of his authority, was absolutely unacceptable.
00:38:59.500 The King demanded punishment.
00:39:02.300 He would crush Boston.
00:39:08.060 We all get a little older every day, whether we like it or not.
00:39:27.860 And one of the things that tends to come with getting older is aches and pains.
00:39:31.480 Joints start to wear down, old injuries jump back into life,
00:39:34.740 and the normal exercise of everyday living begins to catch up with you.
00:39:38.060 See, I told you, exercise is bad for you.
00:39:40.820 All of the years of walking and lifting and bending and climbing stairs,
00:39:44.100 getting out of chairs, carrying groceries, doing, you know, what we all do,
00:39:48.100 now the body is sending you a bill.
00:39:50.240 That's the bad news.
00:39:51.580 But the good news is you don't have to just accept it.
00:39:55.040 That's why I want to tell you about Relief Factor.
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00:40:05.580 and two-thirds of them have gone on to take more year after year.
00:40:09.580 I'm one of them.
00:40:10.760 This year, as we celebrate 250 years of freedom,
00:40:13.480 ask yourself, are you living with the freedom you deserve from pain?
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00:40:27.540 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series,
00:40:31.140 be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings,
00:40:34.540 by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:40:37.120 Available now at wallbuilders.com.
00:40:46.580 Spring, 1774, four months after the Boston Tea Party.
00:40:51.120 That punishment arrived.
00:40:54.040 British warships, one by one, they filled the harbor,
00:40:57.360 their mass crowding the skyline like a forest.
00:41:01.060 The British military arrived to enforce what Parliament called
00:41:04.240 the coercive acts. Boston called them intolerable acts. The first blow was the Boston Port Bill.
00:41:13.520 Overnight, the harbor was closed until the East India Company was reimbursed for its losses,
00:41:19.040 which was set at 30,000 pounds. No imports, no exports, zero trade. It was economic
00:41:27.120 strangulation, a siege without a shot fired. Next came the Massachusetts Government Act,
00:41:33.440 stripping the colony of its charter no more self-rule then the administration of justice act
00:41:39.840 which prohibited the colony from conducting its own legal trials and finally the quartering act
00:41:46.160 requiring british soldiers to be housed in vacant buildings and inns at the colony's expense boston
00:41:53.920 became a city under occupation once again and this time its lifeblood was cut off shops shut down
00:42:01.280 Docks were silent. Families who were able packed their belongings and fled Boston.
00:42:07.680 British General Thomas Gage, the man sent to enforce the order, brought 4,000 troops to
00:42:12.960 garrison the town. One day that summer, Samuel Adams took a walk through the deserted marketplace.
00:42:19.280 Beside him was his cousin's son, a seven-year-old John Quincy Adams. Samuel gestured to the boarded
00:42:25.760 up doors, the soldiers on patrol, the masts of warships in the harbor. And he looked at John
00:42:31.520 Quincy and said, this, my boy, is what tyranny looks like. But for all the suffering in Boston,
00:42:41.600 something remarkable began to happen. Wagon loads of food and supplies started arriving from every
00:42:50.240 corner of the colonies. Flour from Pennsylvania, rice from South Carolina, sheep from Connecticut,
00:42:55.980 corn from Virginia. They came not for trade. They came as gifts. As historian Stacey Schiff
00:43:02.740 described the scene, quote, Boston's papers energetically reported on the shipments as if
00:43:07.940 the town had sponsored a telethon. The philanthropy eased Boston's suffering in small ways, but it did
00:43:14.100 something greater still. It made of altruism an act of resistance. The message from the colonies
00:43:21.340 was clear. You're not alone. John Adams marveled that, 13 clocks were made to strike together,
00:43:30.140 a perfection of mechanism which no artist had ever before effected. Samuel Adams was at the
00:43:36.680 center of it all, organizing, distributing the aid, writing thank you letters, as he put it,
00:43:41.920 For flagrant injustice and barbarity, one might search in vain among the archives of Constantinople to find a match for it.
00:43:50.420 But what else could have been expected from a parliament too long under the dictates and control of an administration which seems to be totally lost to all sense of feeling of morality, and governed by passion, cruelty, and revenge?
00:44:05.460 Our business is to find means to evade its malignant design.
00:44:12.720 And in that effort, he succeeded beyond measure.
00:44:17.360 Meanwhile, General Gage had orders to arrest the ringleaders, but only if conviction was certain.
00:44:23.340 And Samuel Adams was far too careful for that.
00:44:26.420 One evening, while in Philadelphia years later, he tossed a bundle of his papers into the fire and said to his cousin John,
00:44:31.480 Whatever becomes of me, my friend shall never suffer by my negligence.
00:44:37.400 He was a revolutionary, but he had the instincts of a spy.
00:44:46.200 In June 1774, Samuel chaired a committee meeting in Salem, where the now illegal Massachusetts legislature gathered.
00:44:55.080 He proposed sending delegates to a general congress of the colonies to be held in Philadelphia.
00:45:00.820 The motion passed. Massachusetts would send five men.
00:45:04.600 Samuel Adams, of course, was one of them, along with his cousin, John.
00:45:08.680 When Samuel left Boston in August, it was the first time he had ever set foot outside of his own state.
00:45:15.740 Through all of these years, for all of his work, he still lived modestly,
00:45:20.080 his family often barely scraping by in his meager salary as a state representative.
00:45:24.980 So he was moved when anonymous friends outfitted him with a brand new wardrobe for the journey.
00:45:31.360 a brown suit, shoes, hat, and silver buckles.
00:45:35.900 Along the road south, he was greeted as a national hero.
00:45:39.800 Every stop was a celebration,
00:45:41.940 and he was amazed to see that his efforts had bared such fruit.
00:45:46.420 The rebellion had gone continental.
00:45:50.720 On September 5, 1774, 56 delegates from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia.
00:45:56.800 They called it the First Continental Congress.
00:45:59.460 They were mostly strangers. Many had heard of one another and had corresponded, but Samuel and John Adams had never met George Washington or Patrick Henry.
00:46:09.940 Some of the delegates still hoped for reconciliation with Britain. Others whispered the word independence behind closed doors.
00:46:18.400 But with everything that was at stake, their first argument was about prayer.
00:46:24.360 The colonies were a patchwork of denominations,
00:46:28.140 Congregational, Anglican, Quaker, Presbyterian.
00:46:32.020 To pray together was to risk division before the work had even begun.
00:46:36.720 So Sam Adams stepped up to solve it.
00:46:39.620 He stood and said he was open to prayer from any pious, virtuous friend of his country.
00:46:46.260 Samuel was a devout Congregationalist,
00:46:48.640 but he put forward a local Episcopalian pastor to lead the opening prayer.
00:46:53.940 Convinced by Samuel's example of constructive compromise,
00:46:58.020 the delegates approved his motion.
00:47:00.420 The next morning, the Reverend Jacob Duches of Philadelphia opened with Psalm 35,
00:47:06.180 an arousing prayer for the colonies.
00:47:09.380 John Adams wrote,
00:47:10.360 I never saw a greater effect upon an audience.
00:47:14.120 It seemed as if heaven had ordained that psalm to be read on that morning.
00:47:18.640 After this, Mr. Duches, unexpected to everybody, struck out into an extemporary prayer which
00:47:26.480 filled the bosom of every man present.
00:47:30.040 I must confess I never heard a better prayer, with such fervor and in language so elegant
00:47:36.360 and sublime, for America, for the Congress, for the province of Massachusetts Bay, and
00:47:42.740 especially the town of Boston.
00:47:45.820 It has had an excellent effect upon everybody here.
00:47:53.020 Samuel Adams' example in Reverend Douche's prayer changed the atmosphere from one of
00:47:57.380 distrust and disagreement into one of understanding and cooperation, and the walls between the
00:48:03.540 colonies were beginning to break down.
00:48:07.140 While the First Continental Congress slowly found its footing, events in Massachusetts
00:48:11.200 raced ahead.
00:48:13.040 In Samuel's absence, his best friend Dr. Joseph Warren took the reins of leadership.
00:48:17.940 Under his guidance came the Suffolk Resolves, a bold declaration that rejected the Coercive
00:48:23.500 Acts, urged Massachusetts to form its own militias, and declared loyalty only to a king
00:48:29.180 that respected their rights.
00:48:31.440 Paul Revere rushed the Resolves to Philadelphia on horseback.
00:48:35.640 When Congress read them aloud, the mood shifted from protest to defiance.
00:48:40.960 They all voted to endorse the Resolves in full.
00:48:44.780 In October 1774, the Congress also issued its Declaration of Rights and Grievances.
00:48:51.080 It affirmed the colonists' rights to life, liberty, and property, which foreshadowed
00:48:56.120 another declaration that was still far on the horizon.
00:49:00.260 Samuel Adams' dream, what had become his life's work, was slowly coming true.
00:49:07.560 colonies were uniting in their quest for liberty. Thomas Jefferson later said that Samuel was
00:49:13.880 the earliest, most active, and persevering man of the revolution. John Adams said,
00:49:19.880 Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be
00:49:25.640 written. When the Congress adjourned in late October, it was agreed to reconvene if Britain
00:49:31.240 refused to yield. But there was little doubt about the reaction. When word of the Congress's work
00:49:38.640 reached King George III, he said, the die is cast. By winter, the situation in Massachusetts was
00:49:47.580 desperate. One British Admiral wrote home that he expected Samuel Adams to, quote,
00:49:51.560 be hanged or shot before many months are at an end. General Gage now had 20,000 troops in Boston,
00:49:58.720 and 10 times the number that were there
00:50:01.180 when the Boston Massacre happened.
00:50:03.680 When Sam Adams returned to Boston
00:50:05.440 from Congress in Philadelphia, he found his home ransacked.
00:50:09.560 The windows were broken, walls defaced, furniture gone.
00:50:13.240 He didn't have the money for repairs,
00:50:14.600 so he moved his wife and daughter outside Boston
00:50:18.040 to the town of Dedham.
00:50:20.360 He told his wife,
00:50:21.700 We must be content to suffer the loss
00:50:24.120 of all things in this life,
00:50:26.120 rather than tamely surrender the public liberty.
00:50:29.580 Samuel started carrying a pistol everywhere he went.
00:50:32.420 Every day, he and John Hancock rode to secret sessions
00:50:36.180 of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress
00:50:38.640 that operated from town to town.
00:50:41.260 Then, in April, 1775,
00:50:44.080 General Gage received fresh orders,
00:50:47.600 disarm the militias and arrest the ringleaders.
00:50:51.360 Adams and Hancock fled Boston under the cover of darkness.
00:50:58.540 They took refuge in the parsonage of Reverend Jonas Clark
00:51:01.820 in a small sleepy village 11 miles northwest.
00:51:05.860 There, in the quiet of a borrowed room,
00:51:08.340 the two men talked long into the night.
00:51:11.260 They knew what was coming.
00:51:14.200 They just didn't know when.
00:51:17.080 But within days, the British troops would march towards
00:51:20.560 that very house in the town called Lexington.
00:51:28.980 Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.
00:51:33.060 But it reveres urging the men finally bolt to Hancock's fancy carriage.
00:51:38.020 Later, they pause for breakfast by the road.
00:51:40.480 Yeah, really.
00:51:41.620 When a farmer rushes towards them across the field, breathless, saying,
00:51:45.220 the British troops are closing in on you now.
00:51:47.300 Adams and Hancock then ditch the carriage, scrambling into the woods on foot,
00:51:51.300 hearts pounding as they vanish into the underbrush.
00:51:55.480 They have no idea that in Lexington, the town they just escaped,
00:52:00.880 a war against the most powerful empire on earth has just begun.
00:52:06.060 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast
00:52:18.220 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.
00:52:36.060 Thank you.