The Aim of the Fire — Samuel Adams and the Committees of Correspondence

October 3, 1803. We remember Samuel Adams as a firebrand, mostly because his enemies drew the portrait and we hung it in the hall. What he actually built was a committee whose only job was to write letters.

Sourced from the Massachusetts Historical Society (John Adams's diary, December 1765), Founders Online at the National Archives (John Adams to William Tudor, February 9, 1819), the Boston Committee of Correspondence's 1772 pamphlet, and histories of the committees of correspondence from Encyclopædia Britannica, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and George Washington's Mount Vernon.

Cover image: "View of Faneuil-Hall, in Boston, Massachusetts," drawn by W. Pierpont, engraved by Samuel Hill, March 1789. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-45571.

Narration is AI-generated using a voice model trained on the author's own voice.