Michael: Alright Kevin, pop quiz. When I say the name “Samuel Adams,” what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Be honest. Kevin: Oh, that’s easy. A frosty mug of beer, probably in a colonial-themed pub. He’s the guy on the bottle, right? The cheerful, revolutionary brewer. Michael: That’s what most people think! And while he did come from a malting family, the man we’re talking about today was anything but a simple brewer. He was far more interested in brewing rebellion than beer. Kevin: Brewing rebellion? I like the sound of that. So we’re not in a pub, we’re in a political backroom somewhere. Michael: Exactly. Today we’re diving into The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stacy Schiff. And what’s fascinating is that Schiff’s whole project is to pull Adams out of the historical shadows. He was so good at operating behind the scenes, so meticulous about destroying his papers, that he nearly wrote himself out of history. She calls him the “instigator-in-chief” of the American Revolution. Kevin: Instigator-in-chief? Wow. That sounds less like a revered Founding Father and more like a modern political operative. Where do we even start with a guy like that?

Michael: We start where he was most comfortable: orchestrating chaos from a distance. To understand how he operated, you have to look at the response to the Stamp Act in 1765. This wasn't just a random burst of public anger; Schiff paints it as a masterpiece of political theater. Kevin: Political theater? I thought it was just angry colonists throwing rocks and stuff. Michael: On the surface, yes. But the details suggest something much more coordinated. Take the story of Andrew Oliver, the man appointed to be the stamp distributor in Massachusetts. One morning in August, Bostonians woke up to find an effigy of him hanging from a massive elm tree at a major intersection. This wasn't just a dummy; it was a carefully crafted piece of propaganda. Kevin: What do you mean? Like, it was a well-dressed dummy? Michael: Precisely. It had a label on it with a poem that ended, "What greater glory can New England see / Than stamp men hanging from a tree." And next to it, they hung a giant boot, a pun on the British Prime Minister Lord Bute, with a devil peeking out of it. This was clever, symbolic, and placed in the most visible spot in town. The tree itself was instantly renamed the "Liberty Tree." Kevin: Okay, that’s definitely more than just an angry mob. That’s branding. The Liberty Tree is a fantastic brand name. But who was actually pulling the strings? Was it Adams? Michael: Schiff argues he was almost certainly one of the masterminds. He never got his hands dirty, but he was the head of the political club that directed the "Sons of Liberty." He would work through intermediaries, like a shoemaker named Ebenezer Mackintosh, who was the leader of one of Boston's street gangs. Adams would give the signal, and Mackintosh would mobilize the "mob." Kevin: Wait, hold on. So the guy we picture as a noble founder was using gang leaders to stage-manage riots? That feels… ethically murky. He's essentially stoking violence to achieve a political goal. Michael: It’s incredibly murky, and that’s the central tension of the book. Adams was a man of deep Puritan morality, but he believed the cause of liberty was so sacred that it justified extreme measures. The procession that carried Oliver's effigy wasn't a chaotic rampage. It was an orderly parade. They marched past the Town House, where the governor was watching helplessly, and then they dismantled Oliver’s new stamp office, brick by brick, in a very methodical way. It was a demonstration of power, designed to look like popular rage but executed with discipline. Kevin: That is terrifyingly brilliant. It’s a message to the British authorities: "We control the streets, not you. And our anger is not random; it is organized." Michael: Exactly. And if that was the live performance, Adams also created the media campaign to go with it. This is where he becomes a true pioneer of propaganda. He and his associates started something called the Journal of Occurrences. Kevin: The Journal of Occurrences? Sounds a bit dry. Michael: The name is dry, but the content was pure fire. It was essentially a news service that documented—or, more accurately, fabricated—the daily outrages committed by British soldiers stationed in Boston. It was filled with stories of innocent women being insulted, old men being beaten, and drunken soldiers causing mayhem. Kevin: How much of it was true? Michael: That’s the genius of it. Probably very little. Schiff describes it as a collection of "half-truths, rumors, and outright fabrications." But Adams understood something fundamental about media. He didn't publish the Journal in Boston, where people could easily check the facts. He had it sent to a New York newspaper first. From there, it was reprinted in Philadelphia, and then in other papers across the colonies, eventually making its way back to Boston. Kevin: Whoa. So it's like an 18th-century version of a viral disinformation campaign. By the time the stories get back to Boston, they've been legitimized by a dozen other papers, and their origin is totally obscured. Michael: You've got it. It created this narrative of a city under brutal military occupation. Colonists in Virginia or South Carolina would read these stories and feel a deep sense of sympathy and outrage for their brethren in Boston. It was instrumental in uniting the colonies against a common enemy, an enemy that Adams was very carefully defining and demonizing through the press. Kevin: This is blowing my mind. We think of the revolution as this noble debate over ideas like "no taxation without representation." But Schiff is saying it was also fueled by a sophisticated, and deeply manipulative, propaganda machine run by Samuel Adams. Michael: She argues that the ideas needed a vehicle. Adams provided that vehicle. He knew that logic appeals to the mind, but a good story—a story of injustice and oppression—appeals to the heart. And he was a master at telling that story, over and over again, until it became the truth in people's minds.

Kevin: Okay, so Adams is this master puppeteer working from the shadows. But a revolution can't be run entirely by an invisible hand. You need a public face, a frontman, right? Someone to stand on the balcony and wave to the crowds. Michael: You absolutely do. And Adams had the perfect man for the job: John Hancock. If Adams was the revolution's strategist, Hancock was its celebrity. He was handsome, incredibly wealthy, and loved the spotlight. Kevin: The complete opposite of Adams, who sounds like he was allergic to attention. Michael: A total opposite. Schiff details how Hancock essentially bought the love of Boston. He was the city's great benefactor. He'd donate fire engines, build church steeples, and hand out free firewood to the poor. On the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, he’d host a lavish party at his mansion, serving Madeira wine to hundreds of guests. He was the charismatic, popular face of the resistance. Kevin: So you have Mr. Austerity and Principle, Samuel Adams, using Mr. Bling and Popularity, John Hancock, as the public face of the movement. That seems like a partnership destined to explode. Michael: And it often came close. Adams was deeply wary of Hancock's ego. He wrote that Hancock had an "unseemly thirst for accolades" and worried about the people falling for an American demigod just as they were trying to throw off a foreign king. But he was pragmatic. He knew the movement needed Hancock's money and his popularity. He managed him, flattered him when necessary, and reined him in when his ego threatened the cause. Kevin: It’s a high-stakes political drama. But every drama needs a villain. Who was the target of all this revolutionary energy? Michael: The villain of this story, at least from Adams's perspective, was Thomas Hutchinson. He was the Lieutenant Governor, and later Governor, of Massachusetts. And he’s a truly tragic figure in Schiff's telling. He wasn't a monster; he was a brilliant, native-born Massachusetts man who believed deeply in law, order, and loyalty to the Crown. Kevin: So he's the establishment guy who just doesn't get it. Michael: He fundamentally could not comprehend the colonists' rage. He saw it as the work of a few troublemakers, like Adams, stirring up the rabble. The most dramatic example of this disconnect was the destruction of his mansion during the Stamp Act riots. Kevin: This was after the effigy incident? Michael: Yes, about two weeks later. A mob, likely incited by the same network, descended on Hutchinson's home. And they didn't just break windows. They systematically dismantled the entire house over eight hours. They chopped down the doors with axes, smashed every piece of furniture, threw his priceless library of books and historical manuscripts out into the muddy street, and even leveled the cupola on the roof. Kevin: My goodness. That's not a protest; that's an annihilation. What did Hutchinson do? Michael: He and his family barely escaped with their lives. The next day, he appeared before the court, not in his usual robes and wig, but in his plain clothes, weeping as he described the "barbarous outrage." He simply couldn't understand the depth of the hatred against him. He saw himself as a public servant doing his duty. Kevin: It's a powerful image. The man of order, a symbol of the old world, being literally torn down by the forces of this new, chaotic world that Adams is helping to unleash. Hutchinson is playing chess while Adams is playing a whole different game, and Hutchinson doesn't even know the rules have changed. Michael: That's the perfect way to put it. Adams understood that the revolution was an emotional and psychological battle as much as a political one. He needed to create heroes, like Hancock, and villains, like Hutchinson. He used Hutchinson's loyalty to Britain to paint him as a traitor to America. He even leaked some of Hutchinson's private letters, which, when taken out of context, made him sound like he was begging for British military intervention. It was a political assassination, and it worked. It destroyed Hutchinson's reputation and solidified him as the enemy in the public's mind.

Kevin: So when you put it all together, the picture of Samuel Adams that emerges from this book is incredibly complex. He’s not the simple patriot on a beer label. He's a political genius, a moral crusader, and a ruthless propagandist all rolled into one. Michael: And that’s the core of Stacy Schiff’s argument. The American Revolution wasn't an inevitable event that sprang fully formed from a few lofty ideals. It had to be actively, painstakingly, and sometimes brutally, engineered. Samuel Adams was the chief engineer. He understood that to build a new nation, you first had to demolish the colonists' deep-seated loyalty to the old one. And he did that by using every tool at his disposal: political theater, mob action, media manipulation, and the careful management of heroes and villains. Kevin: It really challenges that clean, heroic narrative of the Founding Fathers we're all taught in school. It forces you to ask a really uncomfortable question: can a just and noble cause be built using methods that are, frankly, unjust and manipulative? Michael: It’s a question with no easy answer. Adams himself believed that the fight for liberty was, as he put it, "the best cause that virtuous men contend for." For him, the end absolutely justified the means. But Schiff leaves it to the reader to decide whether they agree. Kevin: It makes you wonder where you draw that line. Is it okay to spread misinformation if you're fighting against what you see as tyranny? It’s a debate that feels just as relevant today as it was in 1770. Michael: It really is. And it’s a testament to Schiff’s work that she can take this historical figure and make his struggles feel so immediate and profound. She truly brings the man, in all his brilliant and troubling complexity, back to life. Kevin: We’d love to hear what you all think. Does the end justify the means in a revolution? Was Samuel Adams a hero, a manipulator, or both? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. We're always curious to hear your take. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.