refused to believe
prejudice trample knowledge
and benevolence
Adapted from the recent article, Samuel Adams in Smithsonian, Oct 1, 2023.
The article states: Adams banked on the sage deliberations of a band of ambitious farmers reasoning their way toward rebellion.
That was how democracy worked.
He dreaded disunity.
“Neither religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and amidst the noise and violence of faction,” he warned.
He refused to believe that prejudice and private interest would ultimately trample knowledge and benevolence.
Self-government was in his view inseparable from governing the self; it demanded a certain asceticism.
He wrote anthem after anthem to the qualities he believed essential to a republic — austerity, integrity, selfless public service — qualities that would become more military than civilian.
The contest was never for Adams less than a spiritual struggle.
It is impossible with him to determine where piety ended and politics began; the watermark of Puritanism shines through everything he wrote.
Faith was there from the start, as was the scrappy, iconoclastic spirit, as were the daring, disruptive excursions beyond the law.
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