Resist! The Forgotten Duty of a Free People
Resist Them: Samuel Adams and the Forgotten Duty of a Free People
Resist Them: Samuel Adams and the Forgotten Duty of a Free People
“Resist them.”
Nearly five years before the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams demanded that the people resist arbitrary power, warning them that the alternative was to tamely submit, sit idly by, and hope for the best – a recipe for total tyranny.
For Adams, this wasn’t politics; it was a test of backbone and fortitude. It was the moral virtue of doing what’s right, even when facing down the most powerful government on Earth.
Today, that demand is completely ignored. But the principle behind it is timeless: a people that won’t defend their liberty is a people that won’t have it for long.
A DUTY TO BE FREE
One of Samuel Adams’s sharpest arguments appeared in the Boston Gazette, the unofficial newspaper of the Sons of Liberty. Writing as Candidus on October 14, 1771, he laid out the non-negotiable terms of freedom.
He began with a line from James Thompson’s poem, Liberty, a clear warning about a people losing their character.
“Ambition saw that stooping Rome so kneeling Rome could bear a master, nor had virtue to be free.”
For Adams, the lesson was simple: the people, and the people alone, are responsible for defending their own liberty. This is no mere political choice, but the fundamental duty of a…