"You replace Mr. Franklin?" inquired the nobleman, glancing at the papers.
"No, monsieur," Jefferson replied, "I succeed him. No one could replace him."
And that answer had more truth than wit.
Honors came to Franklin such as no other American has ever received, but he remained from first to last the same quiet, deep-hearted, and unselfish man, whose chief motive was the promotion of human welfare. He had his faults and made his mistakes; but time has sloughed them all away, and there are few sources of inspiration which can compare with the study of his life.
No family has loomed larger in American affairs than the Adams family of Massachusetts. John Adams, President himself and living to see his own son President—an experience which, probably no other man will ever enjoy—had a second cousin who played a much more important part than he did in securing the independence of the United States. His name was Samuel Adams, and when he graduated from Harvard in 1740, at the age of eighteen, his thesis discussed the question, "Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved," and answered it in the affirmative.
Samuel Adams was a silent, stern and deeply religious man, something of a dreamer, a bad manager and constantly in debt; but he was perhaps the first in America to conceive the idea of absolute independence from Great Britain, and he worked for this end unceasingly and to good purpose. The wealthy John Hancock was one of his converts, and it was partly to warn these two of the troops sent out to capture them that Paul Revere took that famous ride to Lexington on the night of April 18, 1775. A month later, when General Gage offered amnesty to all the rebels, Hancock and Adams were especially excepted.
It was Samuel Adams who, perceiving that Virginia was apt to be lukewarm in aiding a war which was to be fought mostly in the North, suggested the appointment of Virginia's favorite son, George Washington, as commander-in-chief of the American army, and who seconded the motion to that effect made by John Adams. He lived to see his dream of independence realized, and his grave in the old Granary burying ground at Boston is one of the pilgrimage places of America.
With his name that of John Hancock is, as we have seen, closely associated. The worldly circumstances of the two were very different, for Samuel Adams was always poor, while John Hancock had fallen heir to one of the greatest fortunes in New England. He was only twenty-seven at the time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow money from him.
Hancock was no doubt glad to lend the money, for he had more than he knew what to do with, and spent it in such a lavish manner that he was soon one of the most popular men in Boston. So when one of his ships was seized for smuggling in a cargo of wine, all his friends and employees got together and paraded the streets, and a lot of boys and loafers joined them, for drink was flowing freely, and pretty soon there was a riot, and the troops were called out and fired a volley and killed five men, and the rest of the mob decided that it was time to go home, and went. And that was the Boston massacre about which you have heard so much that it would almost seem to rank with that of St. Bartholomew. But, as the Irishman remarked, the man who gets his finger pinched makes a lot more racket than the one who gets his head cut off; and the Boston massacre, for all the hullabaloo that was raised about it, was merely an insignificant street riot. No doubt Samuel Adams did his full share in fanning that little spark into a conflagration!