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How Did Samuel Adams Contribute To Government

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How Did Samuel Adams Contribute To Government
Samuel Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 27, 1722. His father was Samuel Adams, Sr., and his mother Mary Fifield. He was one of twelve children born from this marriage, but one of three children who survived past their third birthday. Samuel was the tenth child and the survivors were his older sister Mary, himself, and a younger brother named Joseph. He died on October 2, 1803. His family was well recognized for their wealth as well as their religious and political involvement. They were Puritans, members of the Old South Congregational Church. Samuel Adams, Sr. was a church deacon and a merchant who later became a leading figure in the Boston Caucus. The Boston Caucus was an organization which supported popular causes which …show more content…
His mother persuaded him to get a job at the counting house, which is equivalent to a bank now a day, with a family friend. He lasted only a couple of months because the owner felt that Adams was more interested in politics than in becoming a good merchant. Samuel Adams, Sr. did not give up on his son; he gave Samuel one thousand pounds to invest in starting his own business, but his lack of interest and business ability were confirmed. He loaned half of the money to a friend, who never paid him back, and quickly finished the other half. According to Pauline Maier, he was “a man utterly uninterested in either making or possessing money.” Even after this event, Adams, Sr. still did not give up on his son, making him a partner in the family’s malt house. Many generations of the Adams family have worked in this business, and because of the need of malt for brewing beer, this was a perfect job for Samuel. Something that many people get wrong is that they say that Samuel Adams was a brewer when in fact he was just a maltster. While still working for his father, Samuel and a group of friends started the “Independent Advertiser” in 1748. This was a newspaper which printed political essays written by Samuel. These essays emphasized many themes that would later characterize his subsequent career, being written as anonymous and influenced by John Locke’s philosophy of liberty and …show more content…
This was a taxation on any printed material to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the victory of the Seven Years War. As usual, Adams created a set of resolutions against the Stamp Act and the Virginia House of Burgesses also came up with resolutions similar to those of Adams’. Samuel Adams thought that with this Act, not only was it unconstitutional, but it would hurt the British economy as well. In return, Adams organized a boycott to place pressure on Parliament to remove such taxes. Since Parliament would not listen to the colonists, the people enraged! Andrew Oliver, a stamp distributor, was hanged from Boston’s Liberty Tree, his house was ransacked and his office demolished later that night. Thomas Hutchinson, a lieutenant governor, his house was destroyed. Governor Francis Bernard blamed Samuel Adams for this violence. According to modern scholarly interpretation of Adams, he in fact supported legal methods of resisting Parliament taxation… but opposed mob violence. When Oxenbridge Thacher died, Adams was appointed as one of the four representatives of Boston, where he was the author of a series of House resolutions against the Stamp Act. In May of 1766, British merchants convinced Parliament to stop the tax; Samuel made a public statement thanking the merchants for their help. Adams was reelected to the House and appointed as clerk. With his responsibility of

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