The Father of the American Revolution -- Part One

At age seven, Samuel was enrolled in the Grammar School of Boston. He did poorly in mathematics, but excelled in grammar and literature. At age fourteen, he was admitted to Harvard College, where he concentrated on the classics, philosophy and theology.

It was during this time that Sam Adams, the political philosopher, began to emerge. He fully embraced John Locke, including the philosopher’s belief that governments exist “only for the public good” and that the people have a right to “withdraw their support” from a government they no longer trust. At the time, however, Adams was committed to Locke’s principles only in an academic or theoretical sense. He was content with life in the British Empire, and was more concerned with his own immediate future plans than with any large-scale political question that might affect North America.

Shortly after Sam Adams graduated from Harvard, Parliament restricted the use of paper money in the colonies. This legislation, designed to protect English merchants, effectively devalued much of the paper money already in circulation, including a large portion of Deacon Adams’s financial holdings. Since hard currency was scarce in the New World, Deacon Adams, along with much of the colonial upper class, conducted a majority of their business transactions with money printed in the colonies. Parliament’s new policy caught many of them unprepared, and its impact was painful.

As his father rallied to repair his business empire, Samuel returned to Harvard to pursue a Master of Arts degree. By now, Samuel Adams had experienced just how quickly theoretical concepts could become real-life problems. In a whim, Parliament had reduced his father’s hard-earned fortune (and Samuel’s own inheritance) by a third. Could such arbitrary power, without the consent of those effected, be just? This was a question he tackled head on with his master’s thesis: “Whether it be Lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth Cannot be Otherwise Preserved.”

His formal education now complete, Samuel Adams’s journey had begun.

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The following sources contributed to this article:

Langguth, A.J., Patriots: The Men Who Started The American Revolution.

Lewis, Paul, The Grand Incendiary. 1973

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