If someone asked you to identify the most important Founding Fathers, you might single out Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison. Or maybe George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.
But what of Samuel Adams?
A gifted propagandist and agitator, Adams is far more than the namesake of a Boston-based brewery. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff makes that clear in The Revolutionary, her thoroughly researched 2022 biography of the tireless and crafty Massachusetts firebrand whom Jefferson described as “truly the man of the Revolution” and cousin John Adams dubbed “the most sagacious politician” of his time.
The Revolutionary methodically documents Adams’ repeated manipulation of tumultuous events to shape public opinion, in Massachusetts and beyond. She offers up fascinating asides as well.
For example, there is the recurring tension between the puritanical Adams and the flamboyant John Hancock. And the fact that Adams’ allies temporarily abandoned Boston's chief provocateur the year after the Boston Massacre, once tempers cooled. The prodigals eventually rejoined Adams’ camp when discontent with the British intensified yet again, in no small part due to the often secretive but invariably successful machinations of Adams, the “indomitable mastermind.”
Schiff reminds readers that the Revolution began “long before Lexington and Concord,” in the hearts and minds of Americans, “where one tactical genius in particular had worked miracles, unanimity congealing around him.”
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