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Samuel Adams
by
No one ever accused Adams of being a muddy thinker; you grant his premises and you are bound to accept his conclusions. He leaves no loopholes for escape.
The following words, used by Chatham, refer to documents in which Adams took a prominent part in preparing: “When your Lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness and wisdom, you can not but respect their cause and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must avow that, in all my reading–and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master statesmen of the world–for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing like it, and all attempts to impress servitude on such a mighty continental people must be in vain.”
In the life of Adams there was no soft sentiment nor romantic vagaries. “He is a Puritan in all the word implies, and the unbending fanatic of independence,” wrote Gage, and the description fits.
He was twice married. Our knowledge of his first wife is very slight, but his second wife, Elizabeth Wells, daughter of an English merchant, was a capable woman of brave good sense. She adopted her husband’s political views and with true womanly devotion let her old kinsmen slide; and during the dark hours of the war bore deprivation without repining.
Adams’ home life was simple to the verge of hardship. All through life he was on the ragged edge financially, and in his latter years he was for the first time relieved from pressing obligations by an afflicting event–the death of his only son, who was a surgeon in Washington’s army. The money paid to the son by the Government for his services gave the father the only financial competency he ever knew. Two daughters survived him, but with him died the name.
John Adams survived Samuel for twenty-three years. He lived to see “the great American experiment,” as Mr. Ruskin has been pleased to call our country, on a firm basis, constantly growing stronger and stronger. He lived to realize that the sanguine prophecies made by Samuel were working themselves out in very truth.
The grave of Samuel Adams is viewed by more people than that of any other American patriot. In the old Granary Burying-Ground, in the very center of Boston, on Tremont Street–there where travel congests, and two living streams meet all day long—you look through the iron fence, so slender that it scarce impedes the view, and not twenty feet from the curb is a simple metal disk set on an iron rod driven into the ground and on it this inscription: “This marks the grave of Samuel Adams.”
For many years the grave was unmarked, and the disk that now denotes it was only recently placed in position by the Sons of the American Revolution. But the place of Samuel Adams on the pages of history is secure. Upon the times in which he lived he exercised a profound influence. And he who influences the times in which he lives has influenced all the times that come after; he has left his impress on eternity.