♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm pleased to be in conversation tonight with Stacy Schiff, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer.

And tonight we're gonna talk about her book, “The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams.” Uh, we're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium of the New York Historical Society.

So Stacey, thank you very much for being here.

SCHIFF: Delighted to join you, David, as always.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when I was growing up, I heard about John Adams, second president of the United States, first vice president, but I didn't really know much about Samuel Adams.

Um, then there was a beer that came out with Samuel Adams' name on it.

(audience laughs).

And so, I was wondering, why was Samuel Adams ignored by my grammar school people?

Why did you rediscover him?

And is he really as great as, as John Adams was?

SCHIFF: I think that the existence of two Adams men in history does not work to Samuel's favor because John does eclipse him.

In fact, Samuel Adams is the older of the two, they're second cousins.

He's 13 years older, and it's Samuel, who's the Boston cousin, the more urban cousin, um, who's the senior statesman and who recruits John into the opposition cause.

So he is in fact the more eminent Adams in these years pr-prior to the revolution.

After the revolution, John will become a federal figure, and he will eclipse Samuel for many, many reasons.

Some of them having to do with the fact that Samuel Adams was by nature a very diffident character.

He didn't like to be in the spotlight.

He liked to be in the shadows, moving other people into the spotlight like John Adams, like John Hancock, others of his recruits as well.

And he prefers to sort of ex-really take himself out of the scene.

John Adams, at the end of Samuel Adams' life, will suggest that he collect his papers and he'll say, "Without your papers, no one will really be able to understand what the American Revolution was about."

And Samuel Adams never does that.

He never makes a collection of his papers.

He never writes an autobiography, unlike John, who, from day one, is really writing for posterity.

So in a way, he, he writes himself out of the picture.

And also, there's a lot of ill will after the revolution.

John Hancock does him no favors, and that helps to eclipse him as well as does the fact that he's not a man of that moment.

He's really a man of the, of the past.

He's something of a relic of the sort of pre-revolutionary days.

He's looking back still to sort of fundamental principles and not ahead to the kind of commercial opulent future toward which the colonies are heading.

So there are a lot of reasons as well as the fact that he represents the really kind of anarchic street theater part of the revolution, which I think after a revolution you've prefer to forget about those scenes and look to the high-minded id-ideals of Thomas Jefferson instead.

And you kind of like to keep the, you know, sinking of crates of Boston Tea outta the picture.

RUBENSTEIN: I assume it was not the beer named after Samuel Adams that attracted you to write about him.

Um... SCHIFF: I admit, I'm not a beer drinker, so you're right.

(laughter) RUBENSTEIN: So, what inspired you to, uh, write a book about Samuel Adams?

SCHIFF: I was reading around in 18th-century papers as one does.

Um, and I, and (audience laughs).

Um, and I, and, and I noticed that everyone mentioned Adams, as the most eminent patriot.

Thomas Jefferson calls him the earliest, the most active, the most persevering of the Patriots.

And he keeps coming up.

He's the... Every 18th century figure, basically says the Pantheon consisted of George Washington and Samuel Adams.

And so, I start to ask myself, what, what did these founders know that we don't?

How did he get lost precisely your question, and what, what exactly did his deeds consist of?

And at the same time, I think I was, um, I had something, I think of a hangover from my book about the Salem witch trials.

And I was thinking a lot about what it takes to have the kind of moral backbone in a very complex, dangerous moment to really stand up and, and stand for your principles.

And, and that had been very difficult to do in 1692.

Salem and Adams very much corresponded to that kind of figure.

Someone who was willing to take a very unpopular stand and not deviate from it over, over a series of, in this case, 12 years.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, let's go into his life.

But before we do that, let's go into your life.

So where are you from originally?

SCHIFF: Oh yes, you make an excellent point.

Adams, Massachusetts.

It's interesting how the biographer forgets that.

RUBENSTEIN: Wow.

So that inspired you?

SCHIFF: Named for Samuel.

Well, you would think it did, but in Adams, Massachusetts, there is a very beautiful statue in the center of town in front of the public library where I spent most of my childhood of which I always assumed was a statue of Samuel Adams.

And only recently did I realize it's a statue of William McKinley, so... (audience laughs).

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, where was Samuel Adams born and who were his parents?

SCHIFF: He was born in Boston, um, of a very, of a fairly wealthy family.

His father was not a beer maker, but a malster.

He's born to a very prosperous, very religious family.

And he has essentially the best education, which is to say he went to Boston Latin.

He sent after that to Harvard at 14.

Um, at that point, what was most important at Harvard was your class rank, which was determined by your father's position in town.

And he's very high up.

He's number six in his class.

And after that, he goes back to Harvard for a master's degree.

So he's as well educated as one could be in Colonial America at the time.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So presumably after he graduated from Harvard, he didn't go to Harvard Business School or didn't go into private equity, he did something.

(audience laughs).

What did he decide to do that was, uh, as important as private equity?

SCHIFF: You know, it's, it's fun to be discussing this with you because he then basically loiters through the next 25 years of his life.

RUBENSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

SCHIFF: Um, he has...

He basically tries to start a business and fails, he inherits a little bit of a fortune and fails.

Um, he becomes a town ta-tax collector and fails.

He has a stunning inability to deal, deal with any financial matter whatsoever.

He lives on ideas.

Um, he becomes very well-known for his fluency with a pen.

And he, um, I think, subsists on handouts from friends.

And my guess later is that some of those handouts will be from John Hancock, in fact.

And he, while serving as a Boston town tax collector, um, manages to run up a debt, which is, I think three times as high as the next most delinquent tax collector.

I mean, he's basically a financial disaster.

RUBENSTEIN: So why would somebody who couldn't run a business very well and presumably wasn't great with numbers, why would he become the tax collector?

SCHIFF: Um, in those days, um, 'cause you know, tax collecting was so much fun, if you were.... First of all, anybody would pay a fine to get out of tax collecting.

So this was clearly something he did, I think, out of necessity at this point.

In those days, you were paid a premium, um, on the taxes you collected.

He had, he had children at the time, it was necessary to do something to support the family.

This seemed to be a fairly obvious fit for him to do it, um, you're right, it's a, it's a terrible, a spectacular mismatch for him to try to do this.

Um, and he seems to be too good-natured to be an effective tax collector, although that could also perhaps explain his later popularity that he's an ineffective tax collector.

(audience laughs).

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

SCHIFF: Um, but he does run up a tremendous debt.

Um, you get a premium on what you collected.

He failed to collect those sums, so he never really makes much money at it.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so he gets married and has two children, and then what happens to his wife?

SCHIFF: Dies in childbirth.

And then he will go for a very uncommon seven years as a single father, which in those days was... Boston was full of widows.

This is a maritime town where many men had been off to war as well.

Um, there were a lot of eligible women in Boston.

He doesn't marry for a very long time.

I think Paul Revere goes five months between marriages.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So he's raising the children by himself while he is being a tax collector.

And then, um, all of a sudden there's the French and Indian War, and the French and Indian War results in the British defending the United States against the French and the Indians.

And then the British figure out that they've paid a lot of money to defend the United States or the colonies.

They say we should get some of it back in taxes, and they start taxing the colonies.

And Samuel Adams, as a tax collector, he admires that?

SCHIFF: Not so much.

Um, it is the sugar and the Stamp Act in 1764 and 1765, which really put him on the map.

And he sees these as did many people in Boston, including many Tories in, we didn't use the term yet, but many then Tories in Boston, um, as a complete invasion of American liberties.

It was impossible for the colonies to be taxed by an entity in which they were not represented.

It was as simple as that.

And the first volleys, the first, um, voiced opposition from the colonies to London in response to those acts were letters that were written by Samuel Adams.

He was basically recruited by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, to which he does not yet belong, because he was known to be so able with a pen.

And so his opposition to those ill-thought-out bits of legislation, um, is really what puts him on the map.

RUBENSTEIN: The British don't back down, and they either impose more taxes or they, um, try to collect the taxes they've already imposed, not successfully.

Then eventually, in I guess 1773, there is the, um, Boston Tea Party.

And is Samuel Adams involved in that in any way?

Or he just is a bystander, or did he instigate it?

SCHIFF: I think it's fairly safe to say, and I'm connecting dots a little bit, um, that the Boston Tea Party could count as his masterpiece.

Um, that said, he, he does not participate in it.

If you mean was he on the wharf that night with the thousands of Bostonians who watched the tea fall into the harbor?

He's very conspicuously not on the wharf.

And there seems to be a reason why he and John Hancock and a few others are still back at the Old South Meeting House.

He very early on helps to make this equation between the rejection of this noxious tea, which is sailing to, um, the colonies.

And the fact that to uncrate that tea or to consume that tea in any way is to essentially bid farewell to American liberties.

That to say goodbye to that tea is to say goodbye to 10 years of, of effort at getting London to understand that the colony should be able to legislate for themselves and that with every mouthful of that tea, the colonist would be accepting parliamentary sovereignty.

So that is an equation that Adams, more than anyone else, has insisted upon.

And in the days leading up to the actual destruction of the tea, he's leading the town meetings in which the tea's fate is discussed.

At first, there's really this attempt to make of the, of, of the tea what they had done with the Stamp Act.

It's just to get rid of the men who were meant to sell the tea.

And that doesn't really work and things devolve over the next few days.

And Adams is very much in the, in the driver's seat over those next few days.

RUBENSTEIN: And what do the British do?

Do they send more troops over?

They impose a blockade?

What do they do in response to the Boston Tea Party?

SCHIFF: Well, that's really where things get interesting, because had the British not reacted immediately in a very draconian fashion, I think things would've may have fallen out quite differently.

They overreact, and the feeling is that no one can figure out in Boston whom to punish.

There's an enormous effort made, um, by the crown to say who the actual perpetrators are.

And it's interesting because, of course, in Boston, no one was willing to say who had done anything.

No one had seen a thing that night, even though thousands of people had watched what happened.

But in Bo-in London, 12 sailors were deposed, and they very clearly say who had done what, but none of those people had been on the wharf.

So now London was in a jam trying to figure out whom exactly they should discipline.

And ultimately, what they decide to do is to punish the entire Massachusetts Bay colony and to shut down the port of Boston.

And it is in that act, it's with the intolerable acts or the Coercive Acts that, um, the colonies begin to ban together because Boston, they feel, has been martyred for the cause, and had it not been, I think those acts really do more than anything to, to tie the colonies together.

RUBENSTEIN: And the British focus on Samuel Adams as somebody they should try to, um, capture?

SCHIFF: Yeah, he has distinguished himself, um, along with John Hancock as the, as the most wanted man in America.

And from a very early point, even, from even the mid-1760s.

Um, the feeling in London, and there's a certain cluelessness, I should add, in London, is that if only they could dispense with these desperados, John Hancock and Samuel Adams and a few others, this entire opposition effort would be nipped in the bud.

And there's really an underestimation of, of the discontent in America.

They have no sense of how much tempers are flared, and how badly the relationship has frayed at this point.

RUBENSTEIN: Did Adams have to hide from the British?

They come over to actually look for him?

SCHIFF: There are several earlier attempts made to arrest him, and they are foiled because, interestingly, the legislation doesn't exist, which will allow them to do that.

What we know as Paul Revere's ride, um, and this was like one of those 3:00 AM realizations on my part.

We all know Paul Revere gets on his horse that April night, um, and rides off at high speed, um, out of Boston.

"But where precisely was he going?"

I suddenly thought.

And the answer is he's going to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that they're about to be arrested because those are what General Gage's orders... Gage has been sent to be the, the new governor of, of Massachusetts.

Um, those are what his orders from London are, and they've been sent several times already.

He's been instructed in various occasions to arrest Adams already.

Um, he hasn't done so because he, on the ground, realizes that to make that kind of arrest is to incite a rebellion, and he doesn't wanna do so.

And the message that evening, interestingly, is you are about to be arrested.

That's what Revere lands on a doorstep in Lexington to tell Hancock and Adams, even though what we know is that Gage is sending troops out to collect the munitions in Concord.

RUBENSTEIN: So did, uh, Samuel Adams have to hide out from the British?

He'd leave his home, he'd leave his kids behind.

How, how did he hide out?

SCHIFF: So he and John Hancock are in the parsonage in Lexington very much because they realize that they're wanted men at this point.

After Revere visits the household, um, that evening, they will get into a little feud, which is not, um, entirely atypical of Hancock and Adams because John Hancock thinks he should go out and fight.

And he starts to polish his gun, and Adams tries to remind him that they are statesmen and it's not up to them to fight.

And Paul Revere will go off to warn other people of what's about to happen and circle back.

And when he circles back, he will discover Adams and Hancock not having budged because they're too busy fighting about what they should do.

And for a second time, he will warn them that they're about to be arrested and they need to get going and they end up actually crouched in a swamp a few towns away while the first shots are fired at Lexington that morning.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So eventually, the, um, colonies decide to get together and have a gathering to figure out what to do with the British, uh, and they now call The First Continental Congress.

It wasn't called that then, but they gather, and is Samuel Adams a delegate to that?

SCHIFF: He is.

He's renowned through the colonies at this point as a hotheaded radical in many ways.

And there is at this point kind of an analog to him in many other colonies.

So there's a Samuel Adams of Georgia, and there's a Samuel Adams of North Carolina.

There's a Samuel Adams of Rhode Island.

Um, anyone who is sort of the, the lead opposition figure generally gets the title of the “Samuel Adams of.“ And again, he works very much behind the scenes but is understood by other delegates, not necessarily admiringly, that he's behind a lot of the early decisions like where, where they should sit and how they should sit and whether they should open with prayer.

RUBENSTEIN: So at the first Continental Congress, uh, John Adams is a leader, becomes a leader.

Samuel Adams is somebody that's more senior than John Adams, but is Samuel Adams the more dominant figure in the first Continental Congress in terms of, uh, advising the other, uh, delegates what to do?

SCHIFF: An interesting thing happens, I think, at that Congress, which is that as the Massachusetts delegation heads south to Philadelphia, um, they can feel the temperature getting a little bit, um, less congenial because, obviously, the New England colonies are way out in front for the... ...as is Virginia.

But the middle Atlantic colonies are less committed to this idea of, um, any kind of rupture, certainly.

And the New England men are warned that they are going to be perceived as Goths and vandals when they get to Philadelphia and that they need to really take a back seat.

And so, they essentially let the Virginians, um, take center stage, and they work through the Virginia delegation.

And so, as John Adams just explains it, this is why the Declaration is done by Thomas Jefferson and proposed by Richard Henry Lee and why George Washington leads the troops.

RUBENSTEIN: So in the First Continental Congress, there's still a view that we basically can work something out with the British, and they send over letters or entreaties to kind of say, "Let's find a way to work together."

What is the British response to that?

SCHIFF: Condescension and disdain.

Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So they just ignore it more or less?

SCHIFF: It's hard to say when anyone determines that independence is in order.

When Thomas Hutchinson, the, the royal Governor of Massachusetts, is first, um, interviewed by the king after the destruction of the tea, he will say that Adams had been the first to actually advocate for independence in America.

And Adams will say that after the first shots are fired in Lexington, he feels independence should have been declared the next day, and that if that had been done, Canada would be part of the US after that.

So he's already chomping at the bit.

But he's, but he's one of the few at that point who are really chomping at the bit.

RUBENSTEIN: So when nothing happens positive from the British side, um, the Americans meet again in the Second Continental Congress, and that's where John Adams says to Thomas Jefferson and a few others, "We should have a Declaration of Independence to explain what we might do, which is to maybe separate."

Was Samuel Adams involved in the Second Continental Congress?

SCHIFF: He's involved in every one of these.

He's on more committees than you can name, and probably more than he's well qualified for.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Well, that's not been a standard before and other things, but okay.

SCHIFF: It's never happened since, right?

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

So, um, the Second Continental Congress, they decide to have a vote on breaking away from England, and then they decide if they do have that vote, they're gonna issue a statement that will explain it.

That's the Declaration of Independence.

Is Samuel Adams a real rabble-rouser saying, "We gotta break away?"

Or is it John Adams who's really leading that effort then?

SCHIFF: Oh, I don't think that there's anyone at that point who is more committed to independence than Samuel Adams.

It's actually interesting if you look...

I'm glad you mentioned the declaration.

The declaration, as we know, is like a protest list.

It's a list of all of the British sins that they have committed on, against the colonies.

And if you look at it, first of all, so many of these have been the things that Adams has been harping on for 10 years now.

You know, you've dissolved our assemblies, you've moved our assemblies from one town to the other.

You've quartered troops in our, in our innocent myths.

But one of them is also you have basically deported us for imagined crimes, which as far as I know is not true of anyone, except that it had been considered for Samuel Adams many times over.

But I love that that's embedded in the declaration...

Even though it never happened.

Um, yes, he's a foremost proponent, but again, the very much the backseat.

I mean, he's clearly there, cheering this on.

It's hard to say because remember, we have secrecy in the, on the, on the record from these congresses.

RUBENSTEIN: Does John Adams say, "Look, um, I'd like to be president of the United States someday and don't get too much publicity 'cause I need the publicity."

He doesn't do that?

SCHIFF: No.

There's an interesting exchange, um, from, I think 1802, from the early, from the end of the life between the two Adams cousins where they do talk about the proper architecture of a, of a republic.

And it's very clear from that ex- from that correspondence as from others that John Adams is a believer in institutions, and Samuel Adams is a believer in individuals, and that they have very different views.

I mean, they both are... Like all the founders, they both are very deeply invested in this idea that a democracy rests on two pillars, one of which is virtue morality, and the other of which is an educated populace.

But they have extremely different ideals about how much you can trust that populace.

And Adams really believes that a moral, um, body of citizens will elect a moral leader.

And John doesn't have that much faith in the individual.

RUBENSTEIN: So on July the 2nd, the delegates vote to break away from England.

And by the end of the 4th, they actually agree on the text that Thomas Jefferson had drafted.

And then they get it printed on July the 5th and it's distributed to King George, George Washington to read to the troops and so forth.

And the Second Continental Congress disbands a bit.

Where does Samuel Adams go?

Does he go back to Massachusetts?

Does he get ready to fight in the war?

Is he gonna be a soldier in the war?

What does he do?

SCHIFF: Um, probably for the best, he is for most of the next six years, I think, in Philadelphia or wherever Congress is, 'cause Congress moves around over those years.

RUBENSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

SCHIFF: He's almost without a, without any long period of time away, he's almost entirely in Congress.

RUBENSTEIN: And how does he support himself?

Or how does, what happens?

Who's taking care of his family then?

SCHIFF: In a very charming twist, um, I believe he's the only representative whose wife, his second wife, supports their family during those years.

She, she supports them through some kind of manual labor while he's in Congress.

And at one point, in fact, he goes back to visit but forgets to give her money, um, which is very typical of the kind of person he was, um, thoroughly on, not invested in material things.

And she has to write him afterwards and sort of remind him that he'd forgotten to leave a little bit of cash while he was home.

RUBENSTEIN: So during the war, as it's going forward, um, does Samuel Adams volunteer to, to fight or does he do things behind the scenes in the Congress?

SCHIFF: I think he's in charge of, um, the committee on writing to George Washington on securing uniforms, on securing canon, on meeting the French envoys.

He's on...

He's in Congress throughout these years.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

SCHIFF: He's...

Remember, he's older than most.

He's not as old as Ben Franklin, but he's, he's older than most of the other delegates.

He's old enough to be James Madison or Alexander Hamilton's father.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so the war is eventually won 1781, Yorktown, and then 1783 they have the Treaty of Paris.

So does Samuel Adams go back to Massachusetts as a conquering hero?

"I was the one who wanted to break away.

Now we're independent, we're free, and life is gonna be wonderful"?

SCHIFF: I think he goes back, um, as something of a broken man, interestingly.

Um, as I said, he's very out of touch with the country in some ways.

He's been in Congress too long.

I can't imagine what that could be like.

Um, and he, he goes back in some ways very much celebrated by the people of Massachusetts who know how much he has, he has contributed to the cause and in some ways, very much, um, a figure of the past, a real, a real relic.

Um, as I said, John Hancock goes back at the same time, and does everything he can to poison the waters against Samuel Adams.

So that when Adams, for example, reads the first histories that are published of the revolution, he will read that he was involved in the Conway cabal, the cabal to the shadowy plot to oust George Washington, which he had absolutely no connection with whatsoever.

So he'll read these histories, which as we often discover, are not true to the facts.

Um, and it's a very, it's a very sort of graceless ending.

RUBENSTEIN: So does Samuel Adams get involved in electoral politics?

Does he get elected governor of Massachusetts at some point?

SCHIFF: He becomes governor of Massachusetts, largely because John Hancock dies.

Um, he's not a distinguished governor of Massachusetts.

He's, he's lieutenant governor at one point when Hancock is governor, and then he ascends to the governorship.

Um, he's an extremely undistinguished Massachusetts governor.

His, his glory days are most decidedly in the past.

RUBENSTEIN: But was he, um, honored by people in Massachusetts for having led the war against the British, or did people forget about what he did?

SCHIFF: People will say that he, um, he gets the position that he gets out of gratitude for what he has contributed to the creation of America.

I mean, there's very much a sense when, when foreigners come to the country at that point and want to meet the founders, who wanna understand what the origins of America consisted of.

They ...His is the first port of call.

He's very much... ...That is a, that is a celebrated address, a hallowed address.

But he's otherwise he's older.

He's at this point in failing health and he's, um, really relegated to a very much a backseat.

RUBENSTEIN: And he has how many children at this point with his second wife?

SCHIFF: He doesn't have any children with a second wife.

And in, in an, in an odd coincidence, his son is a surgeon in the, in the army and he will get very sick for serving in the army and, and dies at a young age, and with his son's pension, Adam's for the first time in his life has a, a fairly substantial income.

So in a very tragic way, he finally becomes financially solvent.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, how long does he serve as governor of Massachusetts?

SCHIFF: Like a minute and a half.

(audience laughs).

RUBENSTEIN: A minute and a half.

All right.

And then after that happens, what does he do?

SCHIFF: He doesn't write his memoirs.

He doesn't organize his papers for his future biographer.

And he seems to talk to a lot of people about his thinking about the past and about politics.

I mean, it's really... John Adams, at one point, writes a really poignant letter about how he doesn't wanna end up like his cousin Samuel, who remember is 13 years older, um, who's just kind of a, you know, a, a somewhat debilitated and senile old man.

So these are clearly not years when he's in good health.

RUBENSTEIN: Does he retain a relationship with his cousin, John Adams?

Are they friendly?

SCHIFF: They're friendly, although, to my surprise, I've never seen any reaction in John Adams' papers to the death of Samuel Adams, which I find an odd omission.

RUBENSTEIN: And how long does he live?

SCHIFF: He dies in 1803, at eight, at 81.

RUBENSTEIN: He's 81?

SCHIFF: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And is there any memorial to him in, in Massachusetts, there's any statue for him or?

SCHIFF: At one point, Congress, um, you probably know this story, commission statues of the two most eminent sons of every state.

And at that point, Samuel Adams was understood to be the most important person ever born in Massachusetts.

And so, he became one of the two statues in Washington.

And, um, Boston decided to commission its twin in bronze, which today stands outside of Faneuil Hall, and has its, its inscription, I think, "A statesman, fearless and incorruptible" at the base of it.

It's... And it now faces the Sam Adams tap room for the beer company.

RUBENSTEIN: I enjoyed learning about, uh, Samuel Adams.

I really didn't know much about him until I read your book, and now I realize he was more significant in many ways than John Adams at the time, though John Adams did a reasonably good job himself as well.

So I, I, uh, really enjoyed it, and I want to thank you for this interesting conversation today.

Thank you.

SCHIFF: Thank you, David.

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