fighting for repeal with indomitable courage, in spite of the
bitter denunciation of his opponents. Each year the number of
anti-slavery petitions received and presented by him increased;
perhaps the climax was in 1837, when Adams presented a petition
from twenty-two slaves, and, when threatened by his opponents
with censure, defended himself with remarkable keenness and
ability. At each session, also, the majority against him
decreased until in 1844 his motion to repeal the Twenty-first
Rule was carried by a vote of 108 to 80 and his battle was
won. On the 21st of February 1848, after having suffered
a previous stroke of apoplexy, he fell insensible on the
floor of the Representatives' chamber, and two days later
died. Few men in American public life have possessed more
intrinsic worth, more independence, more public spirit and
more ability than Adams, but throughout his political career
he was handicapped by a certain reserve, a certain austerity
and coolness of manner, and by his consequent inability to
appeal to the imaginations and affections of the people as a
whole. He had, indeed, few intimate political or personal
friends, and few men in American history have, during
their lifetime, been regarded with so much hostility and
attacked with so much rancour hy their political opponents.
AUTHORITIES.--J. T. Morse, John Quincy Adams (Boston, 1883;
new edition, 1899); Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of, John
Quincy Adams (Boston, 1858); C. F. Adams (ed.), Memoirs of
John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his diary from
1795 to 1848 (12 vols., Philadelphia. 1874-1877). (E. CH.)
ADAMS, SAMUEL (1722--1803), American statesman, was
born at Boston, Massachusetts, on the 27th of September
1722. He was a second cousin to the elder John Adams.
His father, whose Christian name was also Samuel, was a
wealthy and prominent citizen of Boston, who took an active
part in the politics of the town, and was a member of the
Caucus (or Caulker's) Club, with which the political term
``caucus'' is said to have originated; his mother was Mary
Fifield. Young Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1740,
and three years later, on attaining the degree of A.M., chose
for his thesis, ``Whether it be Lawful to resist the Supreme
Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved.''
Which side he took, and how the argument proceeded, is not
known, but the subject was one which well forecasted his
career. He began the study of law in response to his father's
advice; he discontinued it in response to his mother's
disapproval. He repeatedly failed in business, notably as
manager of a malt-house, largely because of his incessant
attention to politics; but in the Boston town-meeting he
became a conspicuous example of the efficiency of that
institution for training in statecraft. He has, indeed, been
called the ``Man of the Town Meeting.'' About 1748 he began
to take an important part in the affairs of the town, and
became a leader in the debates of a political club which he
was largely instrumental in organizing, and to whose weekly
publication, the Public Advertiser, he contributed numerous
articles. From 1756 to 1764 he was one of the town's
tax-collectors, but in this office he was unsuccessful,
his easy business methods resulting in heavy arrears.
Samuel Adams first came into wider prominence at the beginning
of the Stamp Act episode, in 1764, when as author of Boston's
instructions to its representatives in the general court of
Massachusetts he urged strenuous opposition to taxation by act of
parliament. The next year he was for the first time elected to
the lower house of the general court, in which he served until
1774, after 1766 as clerk. As James Otis's vigour and influence
declined, Adams took a more and more prominent place in the
revolutionary councils; and, contrary to the opinion of Otis
and Benjamin Franklin, he declared that colonial representation
in parliament was out of the question and advised against any
form of compromise. Many of the Massachusetts revolutionary
documents, including the famous ``Massachusetts Resolves''
and the circular letter to the legislatures of the other
colonies, are from his pen; but owing to the fact that he
usually acted as clerk to the House of Representatives and to
the several committees of which he was a member, documents were
written by him which expressed the ideas of the committee as a
whole. There can be no question, however, that Samuel Adams
was one of the first, if not the first, of American political
leaders to deny the legislative power of parliament and
to desire and advocate separation from the mother country.
To promote the ends he had in view he suggested non-importation,
instituted the Boston committees ofcorrespondence, urged that
a Continental Congress be called, sought out and introduced
into public service such allies as John Hancock, Joseph Warren
and Josiah Quincy, and wrote a vast number of articles for the
newspapers, especially the Boston Gazette, over a multitude of
signatures. He was, in fact, one of the most voluminous and
influential political writers of his time. His style is clear,
vigorous and epigrammatic; his arguments are characterized by
strength of logic, and, like those of other patriots, are, as
the dispute advances, based less on precedent and documentary
authorities and more on ``natural right.'' Although he lacked
oratorical fluency, his short speeches, like his writings,
were forceful; his plain dress and unassuming ways helped to
make him extremely popular with the common people, in whom he
had much greater faith than his cousin John had; and, above
all, he was an eminently successful manager of men. Shrewd,
wily, adroit, unfailingly tactful, an adept in all the arts
of the politician, he is considered to have done more than any
other one man, in the years immediately preceding the War of
Independence, to mould and direct public opinion in his community.
The intense excitement which followed the ``Boston Massacre''
Adams skilfully used to secure the removal of the soldiers
from the town to a fort in the harbour. He it was, also,
who managed the proceedings of the ``Boston Tea Party,'' and
later he was moderator of the convention of Massachusetts
towns called to protest against the Boston Port Bill. One
of the objects of the expedition sent by Governor Thomas
Gage to Lexington (q.v.) and Concord on April 18-19,
1775, was the capture of Adams and John Hancock, temporarily
staying in Lexington, and when Gage issued his proclamation
of pardon on June 12 he excepted these two, whose offences,
he said, were ``of too flagitious a Nature to admit of
any other Consideration than that of condign Punishment.''
As a delegate to the Continental Congress, from 1774 to 1781,
Samuel Adams continued vigorously to oppose any concession to
the British government; strove for harmony among the several
colonies in the common cause; served on numerous committees,
among them that to prepare a plan of confederation; and
signed the Declaration of Independence. But he was rather
a destructive than a constructive statesman, and his most
important service was in organizing the forces of revolution
before 1775. In 1779 he was a member of the convention which
framed the constitution of Massachusetts that was adopted in
1780, and is still, with some amendments, the organic law of
the commonwealth and one of the oldest fundamental laws in
existence. He was one of the three members of the sub-committee
which actually drafted that instrument; and although John Adams
is generally credited with having performed the principal part
of that task, Samuel Adams was probably the author of most of
the bill of rights. In 1788, Samuel Adams was a member of the
Massachusetts convention to ratify the Constitution of the United
States. When he first read that instrument he was very much
opposed to the consolidated government which it provided, but
was induced to befriend it by resolutions which were passed
at a mass meeting of Boston mechanics or ``tradesmen''---his
own firmest supporters---and by the suggestion that its
ratification should be accompanied by a recommendation of
amendments designed chiefly to supply the omission of a bill of
rights. Without his aid it is probable that the constitution
would not have been ratified by Massachusetts. From 1789 to
1794 Adams was lieutenant-governor of his state, and from 1794
to 1797 was governor. After the formation of parties he became
allied with the Democratic-Republicans rather than with the
Federalists. He died on the 2nd of October 1803, at Boston.
AUTHORITIES.--Life, and Public Services of Samuel Adams (3
vols., Boston, 1863), by W. V. Wells, Adams's great-grandson--a
valuable biography, containing a mass of information, but
noticeably biassed: J. K. Hosmer's Samuel Adams (Boston, 1885),
an excellent short biography in the ``American Statesmen Series'':
M. C. Tyler's Literary History of the American Revolution (2
vols.,New Vork, 1897): and H. A. Cushing (ed.), The Writings
of Samuel Adams (4 vols., New York, 1904-1908). (E. CH.)
ADAMS, THOMAS (d. c. 1655), English divine, was, in 1612,
``a preacher of the gospel at Willington,'' in Bedfordshire,
where he is found until 1614, and whence issued his Heaven
and Earth Reconciled, The Devil's Banquet and other
works. In 1614-1615 he was at Wingrave, in Buckinghamshire,
probably as vicar, and published a number of works in
quick succession; in 1618 he held the preachership at St
Gregory's, under St Paul's Cathedral, and was ``observant
chaplain'' to Sir Henry Montague, the lord chief justice of
England. These bare facts we gather from epistles-dedicatory
and epistles to the reader, and title-pages. These epistles
show him to have been on the most friendly terms with some
of the foremost men in state and church, though his ardent
protestantism offended Laud and hindered his preferment.
his ``occasionally'' printed sermons, when collected in
1629, placed him beyond all comparison in the van of the
preachers of England, and had something to do with shaping John
Bunyan. He equals Jeremy Taylor in brilliance of fancies,
and Thomas Fuller in wit. Robert Southey calls him ``the
prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians.'' His numerous works
display great learning, classical and patristic, and are unique
in their abundance of stories, anecdotes, aphorisms and puns.
His worns were edited in J. P. Nichol's Puritan
Divines, by J. Angus and T. Smith (3 vols. 8vo, 1862).
ADAMS, WILLIAM (d. 1620), English navigator, was born
at Gillingham, near Chatham, England. When twelve years
old he was apprenticed to the seafaring life, afterwards
entering the British navy, and later serving the Company
of Barbary merchants for a number of years as master and
pilot. Attracted by the Dutch trade with India, he shipped
as pilot major with a little fleet of five ships despatched
from the Texel in 1598 by a company of Rotterdam merchants.
The vessels, boats ranging from 75 to 250 tons and crowded
with men, were driven to the coast of Guinea, where the
adventurers attacked the island of Annabon for supplies,
and finally reached the straits of Magellan. Scattered
by stress of weather the following spring the ``Charity,''
with Adams on board, and the ``Hope,'' met at length off
the coast of Chile, where the captains of both vessels lost
their lives in an encounter with the Indians. In fear of the
Spaniards, the remaining crews determined to sail across the
Pacific. On this voyage the ``Hope'' was lost, but in April
1600 the ``Charity,'' with a crew of sick and dying men, was
