Did Samuel Adams Ever Say This?

September 22, 2011 2:06 PM

Has anybody ever heard of a quote, supposedly attributed to Samuel Adams during the lead-up to the American Revolution, about how "the revolution will need exactly three martyrs; Less than three won't have enough effect, and more than three is a sanitation problem"? I can't find any evidence of it online even though I thought I might find a Snopes/misattribution article on the topic. Anybody heard of it before -- maybe attributed to somebody else?
posted by destro to Society & Culture (8 answers total)

Where did you hear about the quote?
posted by empath at 2:16 PM on September 22, 2011

He probably didn't say "sanitation" as that word isn't recorded until 1848. So if that's the definite wording you might want to doubt its attribution.
posted by Jehan at 2:35 PM on September 22, 2011

I read a lot about that time period and I've never heard it. (Which doesn't mean anything of course.) Though it sounds more like the kind of thing someone would misattribute to John Adams. It sort of reminds me of the line when he's complaining that he'll be forgotten in history: They’ll say that “Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them—Franklin, Washington and the horse—conducted the entire revolution by themselves.” But I've never heard anyone say that he said it either, sorry!
posted by DestinationUnknown at 2:51 PM on September 22, 2011

Response by poster: I certainly might have the wording wrong as it's been a while since I heard it (I forget the context). Most likely, it's related to the Boston massacre. I did find this quote:

Josiah Warren could caution the children who visited the scene of their fathers' 'martyrdom' after the Boston 'massacre' to take heed, lest 'your feet slide on the stones bespattered with your fathers' brains'

Maybe somebody butchered it into something else from there?
posted by destro at 3:10 PM on September 22, 2011

That just doesn't sound like Samuel Adams. He was a firebrand and strongman, not a wag.
posted by foursentences at 4:06 PM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

He was a firebrand and strongman, not a wag.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Do you remember if the quote you're thinking of is definitely set up as a quip like that? Or was it just gory? This is John Hancock on the Boston Massacre, and it's full of bloody images...And I assume you've already looked at this, which Sam Adams might have written. I hope you find out, now I want to know!
posted by DestinationUnknown at 4:31 PM on September 22, 2011

Best answer: There is a quote, in various forms, often misattributed to Stalin: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. (It was probably German journalist and satirist Kurt Tucholsky.) Anyway, I found a variant on some white nationalist websites I won't link to that end "A million deaths is a sanitation problem." I can't find a legit corollary or notional origin to that one, either.

It really sounds 20th century to me, regardless. The American Revolutionaries lived in a world with little experience of revolution. By the time of Lenin, though, it was practically a science.
posted by dhartung at 2:14 PM on September 23, 2011

Best answer: I also remember reading something like that, probably in Saul Alinsky's (1971) Rules for Radicals

[...] What is of particular importance here however is the fact that you were dealing with one specific person and not a general mass.

It is what is implicit in the reputed statement of that organizational genius Samuel Adams, at the time when he was allegedly planning the Boston Massacre; he was quoted as saying that there ought to be no less than three or four killed so that we will have martyrs for the Revolution, but there must be no more than ten, because after you get beyond that number we no longer have martyrs but simply a sewage problem.

It also is quoted(sic) in Herb Cohen's (1991) You Can Negotiate Anything

[...] No one identifies with large numbers, but almost everyone commiserates with the anguish of a flesh-and-blood person.

This fact is implicit in the reputed statement of Samuel Adams, just prior to the American Revolution. During the planning of the Boston Massacre, Adams was reported to have said something to this effect: "There ought to be no less than three or four killed so we will have martyrs for the Revolution. However, there should be no more than twenty, because once you get beyond that number, we no longer have martyrs, but simply a sewage problem.

Both of these books seem to be referring to a passage in John C Miller's (1936; repub 1960) Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, (quoted online in the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt Blog:

*Samuel Adams, at the time when he was allegedly planning the Boston Massacre, was quoted as saying that there ought to be no less than three or four killed so that we will have martyrs for the Revolution, but there must be no more than ten, because after you get beyond that number we no longer have martyrs but simply a sewage problem.

John C Miller, Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda.
Brenton Groves of TOORAK (Reply)

Tue 19 May 09 (07:11am)

I'm not sure I can agree that it doesn't sound like Samuel Adams -- while not a wag, he was politically astute, and didn't let trifles like 'fair play' (however one takes that) restrain his tactics. Consider the events just prior to the Boston Massacre, and the trial afterwords:

One morning shortly before that day, the citizens of Boston awoke to find the streets plastered with notices, signed by many of the soldiers garrisoned in the town, that the troops intended to attack the townspeople. This startling news threw the town into a ferment, for apparently few citizens doubted the genuineness of these papers. It is singular, nevertheless, that the soldiers should have given their plans away in this manner if they really contemplated an attack and that they signed their names do documents that might be used as damning evidence against them. These notices were doubtless forgeries made by Adams and his followers and posted during the night by the "Loyal Nine" to produce an explosion that would sweep Boston clear of redcoats; for during the Massacre trials it is significant that the prosecution did not enter them as evidence of the soldiers' guilt. The events of the night of March 5 bear out this explanation of their origin. [Miller, p178]

The trial nearly fell apart before it began:

...there was the deathbed confession of Patrick Carr, that the townspeople had been the aggressors and that the soldiers had fired in self-defense. This unlooked-for recantation from one of the martyrs who was dying in the odor of sanctity with which Sam Adams had invested them sent a wave of alarm through the patriot ranks. But Adams blasted Carr's testimony in the eyes of all pious New Englanders by pointing out that he was an Irish "papist" who had probably died in the confession of the Roman Catholic Church. After Sam Adams had finished with Patrick Carr even Tories did not dare to quote him to prove Bostonians were responsible for the Massacre. [Miller, p189]

One of the interesting points about the Boston Massacre is that John Adams & his law partner, Josiah Quincy, became the defense lawyers at Samuel Adam's urging.

Adam's action sprang from his conviction that if patriot lawyers defended Preston and his men, the town's witnesses would not be cross-examined so closely as to bring to light evidence which proved Bostonians responsible for the Massacre. In John Adams, Sam did not mistake his man.

The younger Adams saw as clearly as did his cousin that Boston's reputation was at stake and that the town's witnesses should not be pressed too warmly: when Josiah Quincy's ardor for his clients caused him to interrogate sharply the prosecution's witnesses, John Adams quickly stopped him by declaring that unless Quincy ceased he would resign as counsel. [Miller, p 185]

Having said all that (apologies for length), here are two pieces of counter-evidence:
(1) Skimming through Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, I couldn't find the sought quote. Negative evidence is not evidence for the negative, but still..
(2) The OED places the term "sewer" as originating in 1834 (although there is a special, presumed unrelated usage dated 1610)

ps./on preview: I am swayed by the modernity argument - Kurt Tucholsky died in 1935, the year before Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda was published.
posted by Tuesday After Lunch at 1:23 PM on September 24, 2011 [1 favorite]