As previously stated, the heart of the Old Dominion was fired by Patrick Henry, one of the most unreliable men living. Byron called him a forest-born Demosthenes, and Jefferson, wondering over his career, exclaimed: "Where he got that torrent of language is inconceivable. I have frequently closed my eyes while he spoke and, when he was done, asked myself what he had said without being able to recollect a word of it." He had been successively a storekeeper, a farmer and a shopkeeper, but had failed in all these pursuits and became a bankrupt at twenty-three. Then he studied law a few weeks and practiced a few years. The first success he made in this line was in an effort to persuade a jury to render one of the most unjust verdicts ever recorded in court. Finally he embarked on the stormy sea of politics. One day he worked himself into a fine frenzy, and in a most dramatic manner demanded "Liberty or Death," although he had both freely at his disposal. He was a slaveholder nearly all his life. He bequeathed slaves and cattle in his will, and one of his eulogists brags that he would buy or sell a horse or a negro as well as anybody.
John Adams of Braintree, now Quincy, was a graduate of Harvard College, and a lawyer by profession. He ranks next to Washington as being the most prominent of the Revolutionary leaders. He was the son of a poor farmer and shoemaker. He married Abigail Smith, the daughter of the Congregational minister in the adjoining town of Weymouth. Much disapprobation of the match appears to have been manifested, for Mr. Adams, the son of a poor farmer, was thought scarcely good enough to be match with the minister's daughter, descended from many of the shining lights of the colony.[24]
John Adams was a cousin of Samuel Adams. He joined the disunionists, probably, because he saw that if the Revolution was successful there would be great opportunity for advancement under the new government. This proved to be the case, for he was the first minister to Great Britain, the successor of Washington as second president of the United States. His eldest son became the sixth president, and his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, ably represented his country as minister to Great Britain during the Civil War of 1861.
The Stamp Act received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and it was to come into operation on the first day of November following. The "Virginia Resolutions," through which Patrick Henry first acquired a continental fame, voted by the House of Burgess in May following, denied very definitely the authority of Parliament to tax the colonies. At first men recoiled. Otis was reported to have publicly condemned them in King street, which was no doubt true, for, as we have seen, he fully admitted the supremacy of Parliament.
The principal objection made by the colonists to the Stamp Act was that it was an internal tax. They denied the right of Parliament to impose internal taxation, claiming that to be a function that could be exercised only by colonial assemblies. They admitted, however, that Parliament had a right to levy duties on exports and imports, and they had submitted to such taxation for many years without complaint.
In order to soften the opposition, and to consult to the utmost of his power the wishes of the colonists, Grenville informed the colonial agents that the distribution of the stamps should be confided not to Englishmen but to Americans. Franklin, then agent for Pennsylvania, accepted the act and, in his canny way, took steps to have a friend appointed stamp distributor for his province. This made him very unpopular and the mob threatened to destroy his house.
The Stamp Act, when its ultimate consequences are considered, must be deemed one of the most momentous legislative acts in the history of mankind.
A timely concession of a few seats in the upper and lower houses of the Imperial Parliament would have set at rest the whole dispute. Franklin had suggested it ten years before, anticipating even Otis, Grenville was quite ready to favor it, Adam Smith advocated it. Why did the scheme fail? Just at that time in Massachusetts a man was rising into provincial note, who was soon to develop a heat, truly fanatical, in favor of an idea quite inconsistent with Franklin's plan. He from the first claimed that representation of the colonies in Parliament was quite impracticable or, if accepted, would be of no benefit to the colonies, and that there was no fit state for them but independence. His voice at first was but a solitary cry in the midst of a tempest, but it prevailed mightily in the end.
This sole expounder of independence was Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution. Already his influence was superseding that of Otis, in stealthy ways of which neither Otis nor those who made an idol of him were sensible, putting into the minds of men, in the place of the ideas for which Otis stood, radical conceptions which were to change in due time the whole future of the world. "Samuel Adams at this time was a man of forty-two years of age, but already gray and bent with a physical infirmity which kept his head and hands shaking like those of a paralytic. He was a man of broken fortunes, a ne'er-do-well in his private business, a failure as a tax collector, the only public office he had thus far undertaken to discharge."[25] He had an hereditary antipathy to the British government, for his father was one of the principal men connected with Land-Bank delusion, and was ruined by the restrictions which Parliament imposed on the circulation of paper money, causing the closing up of the bank by act of Parliament and leaving debts which seventeen years later were still unpaid.
It appears that Governor Hutchinson was a leading person in dissolving the bank, and from that time Adams was the bitter enemy of Hutchinson and the government. Hutchinson in describing him says, "Mr. S. Adams had been one of the directors of the land bank in 1741 which was dissolved by act of Parliament. After his decease his estate was put up for sale by public auction, under authority of an act of the General Assembly. The son first made himself conspicuous on this occasion. He attended the sale, threatened the sheriff to bring action against him and threatened all who should attempt to enter upon the estate under pretence of a purchase, and by intimidating both the sheriff and those persons who intended to purchase, he prevented the sale, kept the estate in his possession and the debts to the land bank remained unsatisfied. He was afterwards a collector of taxes for the town of Boston and made defalcation which caused an additional tax upon the inhabitants. He was for nearly twenty years a writer against government in the public newspapers. Long practice caused him to arrive at great perfection and to acquire a talent of artfully and fallaciously insinuating into the minds of readers a prejudice against the characters of all he attacked beyond any other man I ever knew, and he made more converts to his cause by calumniating governors and other servants of the crown than by strength of reasoning. The benefit to the town from his defence of their liberties, he supposed an equivalent to his arrears as their collector, and prevailing principle of the party that the end justified the means probably quieted the remorse he must have felt from robbing men of their characters and injuring them more than if he had robbed them of their estates."[26]