Transferred thus to Philadelphia, and from the Massachusetts general court to a continental congress, Adams began now to act on a broader scene. His first act was one of conciliation. He was himself a strict Congregationalist, and the recent attempts to extend Episcopacy in America, and the controversy thence arising, had produced a good deal of feeling. A motion by one of the Massachusetts delegates to open the proceedings of the congress with prayer was opposed by Mr. Jay, one of the delegates from New York, on the ground that as there were in that body Episcopalians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, they would hardly be able to join in the same act of worship. Thereupon "Mr. Samuel Adams arose " - so wrote John Adams in a letter to his wife describing the scene - "and said he was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue who was at the same time a friend to his country. He was a stranger in Philadelphia, but he had heard that Mr. Duche deserved that character, and therefore he moved that Mr. Duche, an Episcopal clergyman, might be desired to read prayers to the congress." The motion passed, and Duche, at that time the most popular preacher in Philadelphia, appeared the next morning and officiated with great unction.

He acted as chaplain to congress for several sessions, but when the British occupied Philadelphia he abandoned the cause of his country, and even had the impudence to write Washington a letter exhorting him to the like piece of treachery. Adams's motion, however, was very well timed. It not only pleased the Episcopalians, a powerful body in New York and predominant at the south, but it also secured for the moment Duche himself, whose example was not without its effect upon others. In this congress and those which followed, Adams, who continued a member for eight years, took an active, decided, and influential part. No one man, perhaps, did so much as he to put the revolution in motion, and to bring about the separation from the mother country, to which, indeed, Gen. Gage bore testimony in excepting him, along with Hancock, from his offer of pardon in case of submission. In administrative talents, however, he was not so conspicuous; and the line of policy which he supported in congress was rather graduated to accord with the feelings, sentiments, and sometimes the prejudices of the people, than always calculated to meet the actual exigencies of affairs.

Together with John Adams he took an active part in the formation of the state constitution of Massachusetts, adopted in 1780. He was a very influential member of the Massachusetts convention called in 1788, to consider the federal constitution; and though opposed to many of its features, he was finally persuaded, along with Hancock, to give it his support, in consideration of certain proposed amendments, of which several were afterward adopted. This decision of the question, so far as Massachusetts was concerned, was of the greatest moment, involving in it the action of other states, and in fact the fate of the new government. The next year Adams was chosen lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, which office he held till 1794, when he was chosen governor as Hancock's successor. He was a warm admirer of the French revolution, and in national politics leaned decidedly to the republican or Jeffersonian party. It was this circumstance, no less than his increasing age and infirmities, that induced him in 1797, the federal party being predominant in Massachusetts, to decline serving longer as governor, and to retire to private life. - A highly characteristic portrait by Copley, which hangs appropriately in Fan-euil Hall, has transmitted his features to us.

Memorials of his life and service are to be found scattered through the writings of John Adams, who in his old age exerted himself to recall public attention to his colleagues of the revolutionary times. Sullivan, in his "Familiar Letters on Public Characters," describes Samuel Adams as "of common size, muscular form, light blue eyes, fair complexion, and erect in person. He wore a tie wig, cocked hat, and red cloak. His manner was very serious. At the close of his life, and even from early times, he had a tremulous motion of the head, which probably added to the solemnity of his eloquence, as this was in some measure associated with his voice. Having in-herited no fortune, and being without a profession, he was, almost down to the close of his life, without resource except in the salaries and emoluments of office, never large, and only eked out by the industry and economy of his wife. Yet those who visited his house found nothing mean or unbecoming his station, since he knew how to combine decency, dignity, and propriety with a small expenditure.

At a late period of his life he obtained a competency, but only by a very afflicting event - the death of his only son, of the same name with himself, who, having graduated at Harvard college in 1771, had studied medicine with Dr. Joseph Warren (the famous general), had served as a surgeon through the revolutionary war. and returning home with a broken constitution, had died in 1788. The avails of his claims for services in the army gave his father a competency in his declining years. - In one respect - indeed in many, but we can here refer only to one - there was a remarkable contrast between Samuel and John Adams. Both, true to their New England origin, were theologians; but John Adams, while to a certain extent a conservative in politics, was quite a neologist in religion. The Arminian heresies of his youthful days had prevented him from studying divinity, and in the correspondence of his extreme old age he appears almost as much a freethinker as Jefferson himself. Samuel Adams, on the other hand, though to his last days a progressive in politics, was always a decided conservative in religion, adhering with sincere persuasion and firm tenacity to the five points of Calvinism. Nor did this strictness limit itself to doctrine. "At a time," says Edward Everett, "when the new order of things was inducing laxity of manners and a departure from the ancient strictness, Samuel x\dams clung with greater tenacity to the wholesome discipline-* of the fathers." But Mr. Everett scarcely does justice to Mr. Adams's spirit of 'sociality when he adds, "His only relaxation from business and the cares of life was in the indulgence of a taste for sacred music, for which he was qualified by the possession of a most angelic voice and a soul solemnly impressed with religious sentiment." He was, on the other hand, fond of conversation, and possessed himself a large fund of anecdote. - Besides the state papers of which Adams was either wholly or mainly the author, and his numerous political contributions to the newspapers, of which, however, but few have been identified, there have appeared in print a number of his letters.

An oration on American independence, purporting to have been delivered by him in Philadelphia Aug. 1, 1776, and printed in London, is probably spurious, though it is a very favorable imitation of his style, neat, forcible, and pointed, without the least inflation or appearance of effort. In this oration the writer gives the English the title of a "nation of shopkeepers," and it is not impossible that it was hence that Bonaparte borrowed this appellation, which was a favorite one with him, since it is known that the oration was translated into French and published at Paris. Adams's life has been written by W. V. Wells (" Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams," 3 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1865). He left only female descendants, and the name of Adams is no longer borne by any of his blood.