Book Review

Parry, Nathaniel. Samuel Adams and the Vagabond Henry Tufts: Virtue Meets Vice in the Revolutionary Era. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2024 https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/Samuel-Adams-and-the-Vagabond-Henry-Tufts/.

Comparative founder profiles are a crowded book genre with numerous volumes depicting any combination of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin as rivals, friends, or brothers. Nathaniel Parry offers a novel twist to this well-trod approach by comparing the lives of a famous founder, Samuel Adams, with a common criminal, Henry Tufts. Both Adams and Tufts traced their lineage to Puritan settlers in the 1630s. Adams grew up in urban Boston, inheriting a family business, while Tufts’ boyhood was on a scrappy New Hampshire family farm, receiving no inheritance. Their lives briefly intersected in 1794 when Massachusetts Governor Adams saved Tufts’ life by commuting the thief’s death sentence to life in prison. As Henry’s distant descendant and hearing captivating family lore, author Nathaniel Parry wondered why Adams saved Tufts’ life. Parry’s research into this question forms the basis of the communications and media expert’s new book, asserting that the unlikely duo had more in common than at first glance and personified the moral challenges of the American Revolutionary Era.

While historians have penned four other Samuel Adams biographies in the twenty-first century, Henry Tufts’ legacy is relatively unknown today despite a period of notoriety two hundred years ago. In Tufts’ sixtieth year, he published a memoir, A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels and Sufferings of Henry Tufts, Now Residing at Lemington, in the District of Maine In substance as compiled from his own mouth in 1807. The 366-page autobiography was undoubtedly ghostwritten with many embellishments. The narrative describes a life of crime, including theft, counterfeiting, and Continental Army desertion. Additionally, Tufts was a serial bigamist with several wives and many children. While Henry’s long-term crime spree elicits the reader’s interest, the three years living with an Eastern Abenaki band and working as an overseer of enslaved people on a Virginia plantation are the most noteworthy events in his life.

In 1772, Tufts suffered a severe cut in his thigh from a jackknife accident. Seeking more competent medical care than available in his locale, Tufts traveled to an Abenaki band in Western Maine for treatment by a noted medicine woman, Mary Ockett. The treatment was quite effective. Henry lingered with the Abenaki, learning their language, customs, and medical practices. Further integrating into the Native American society, he cohabitated with tribal member Polly Susap seeking, to “remedy the want of a female companion while in these rude regions (82).” Despite effective wound care and friendly relations, Henry characterized the Native Americans as savages, an appellation also echoed by Samuel Adams.

The author asserts that both Adams and Tufts displayed a “nonchalance” towards slavery, which personifies the prevailing view of British colonists that “commonly accepted slavery as a fact of life” (98). While Adams found slavery objectionable, he did not work to end the institution or place a focus on the plight of enslaved people. Adams used the metaphor of slavery to denounce British policies towards the colonies but not the same level of attack against American slavery. Tuft’s autobiography indicates that the vagabond criminal traveled to Virginia to become an overseer of enslaved people. Unfortunately, Tufts leaves the reader’s imagination to wonder how and why he moved from rural New England to the Middle Atlantic states.

Peculiar for a man who continually needed money, Tufts reports that he received no compensation for his overseer’s work. Instead, he wanted to be close to the “personal charms “of the enslaver’s daughter. Henry regarded the work of an overseer as “irksome” as enslaved people were prone to “tardiness: and exhibited a disinclination to labour” (98). However, Tufts completed his job to the satisfaction of the enslaver through “strenuous management” (98). Either the match with their daughter did not work out, or he did not like the overseer job, Tufts returned to New Hampshire and his criminal activity. Both Adams and Tufts treated the enslavement of people as a matter of fact and normal in American society. 

While Adams and Tufts expressed similar racial views of Native Americans and enslaved Blacks, they differed on the question of American independence. Samuel Adams fervently pursued American independence by radicalizing partisans in Boston and vigorously pursuing separation from Britain in the First and Second Continental Congress. On the other hand, Henry Tufts expressed ambivalence towards the rebellion. He volunteered for Continental Army service to garner the enlistment bounty and promptly deserted. Parry notes that many others followed Henry’s lead by deserting from army service, with countless changing sides to fight for the British. While prevalent, authorities regarded desertion as a serious crime, and Henry faced potential prosecution for the remainder of his life.

The duo also differed in their reaction to the post-war Shay’s Rebellion. In 1786, violence erupted in Western Massachusetts and Southern Vermont over relief from debt foreclosures. A Vermont local history reports that Henry Tufts brandished a gun and published an “inflammatory speech” at the Newbury courthouse (167). On the other hand, Adams, a populous revolutionary firebrand before the revolution, sided with the wealthy merchants and financiers in this dispute. He even advocated invoking the Riot Act, which “criminalized gatherings of more than twelve armed persons” (169). Adams’s response to the post-war debt crises signaled his shift to more conservative politics while serving as Massachusetts governor.

In the concluding chapter, Nathaniel Parry reflects on the American Revolution’s legacy. He invokes the scholarship of a wide range of historical and contemporary historians and their positive and negative views on the memory of the American Revolution. Parry describes the extensive development of myths and idealism from the nineteenth century forward, which makes Americans proud of their past and comfortable with its contradictions. Many readers will cringe at his conclusion that there is a “direct line between the visionary republicanism that the patriots spearheaded and the imperialistic policies that modern neoconservative and liberal interventionists continue to champion” (244). On the one hand, this is another instance of appropriating American Revolution symbols, flags, and writing to further a current political position. On the other hand, Parry’s conclusion is ardently advocated in many contemporary circles and is gaining prominence. Despite your views on his controversial conclusion, I recommend contemplating the issues Parry raises, as they require additional open-minded study and civil discourse.

The book’s strength is innovatively comparing the lives of Samuel Adams and Henry Tufts, demonstrating that celebrating the accomplishments and wisdom of national heroes and the stories of scoundrels are equally important (2). The author’s assertion that the nation’s founding was the product of elites and ordinary people is artfully demonstrated. However, the differing societal order view is sometimes a strength overdone. For example, the author overplays class conflict by asserting that Continental Army officers were “motivated more by class advancement than by deeply held convictions for the revolution” and, as evidence, cites a lieutenant who fought at Bunker Hill and Benedict Arnold’s self-aggrandizement (142, 241). However, for the vast majority in the Continental Army, officer advancement did not lead to newly found post-war wealth or status. Most senior generals ended the war substantially less well off, with some, such as Robert Howe, losing their entire wealth to the fortunes of war. Over twenty percent of the major generals made the ultimate sacrifice and did not live to see the war’s end. Others died with little wealth and political influence, such as Major Generals Nathanael Greene, Anthony Wayne, and Arthur St. Clair. All officers gave up substantial personal earnings during their wartime service and earned little from promised land grants and pensions, and with only a few exceptions, the survivors were socially and financially unsuccessful.

Other minor weaknesses include several technical misstatements such as mislabeling Congressional members (Roger Sherman represented Connecticut, not Massachusetts), the object of British troops on the Lexington and Concord raid (General Thomas Gage sought four missing cannons and not the capture of Samuel Adams and John Hancock) and the number of allowable lashes in the Continental Army (100 was the maximum, not 500).

However, these minor issues should not dissuade readers from learning more from the creative juxtaposition of a prominent founder with an ordinary citizen. While Henry Tufts was an outsized character who led a life of crime, his political and racial views generally represented the populous of the Revolutionary Era. His life story demonstrates prevailing societal racial prejudices, not all people were ardent revolutionaries, and stark class divisions existed. As to Tufts’ criminality, the author asserts that if he were a tea smuggler rather than a thief, Tufts would be lauded as a Revolutionary hero. In this regard, the line between accepted and unaccepted criminal behavior can be murky in uncertain times. As we near the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a worthy reason to read about the renowned radical rebel and the common thief is contemplating the nature of Revolutionary Era virtue and vice.