title: Southern Ocean

text: In the 2002 draft edition, the IHO have designated 'seas' as being subdivisions within 'oceans', so the Bight would have still been within the Southern Ocean in 1937 if the 2002 convention were in place then. To perform direct comparisons of current and former limits of oceans it is necessary to consider, or at least be aware of, how the 2002 change in IHO terminology for 'seas' can affect the comparison.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean did not appear in the 1953 third edition of "Limits of Oceans and Seas", a note in the publication read:


title: Southern Ocean

text: Instead, in the IHO 1953 publication, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans were extended southward, the Indian and Pacific Oceans (which had not previously touched pre 1953, as per the first and second editions) now abutted at the meridian of South East Cape, and the southern limits of the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea were moved northwards.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The IHO readdressed the question of the Southern Ocean in a survey in 2000. Of its 68 member nations, 28 responded, and all responding members except Argentina agreed to redefine the ocean, reflecting the importance placed by oceanographers on ocean currents. The proposal for the name "Southern Ocean" won 18 votes, beating the alternative "Antarctic Ocean". Half of the votes supported a definition of the ocean's northern limit at the 60th parallel south—with no land interruptions at this latitude—with the other 14 votes cast for other definitions, mostly the 50th parallel south, but a few for as far north as the 35th parallel south. Notably the Southern Ocean Observing System collates data from latitudes higher than 40 degrees south.


title: Southern Ocean

text: A draft fourth edition of "Limits of Oceans and Seas" was circulated to IHO member states in August 2002 (sometimes referred to as the "2000 edition" as it summarized the progress to 2000). It has yet to be published due to 'areas of concern' by several countries relating to various naming issues around the world – primarily the Sea of Japan naming dispute – and there have been various changes, 60 seas were given new names, and even the name of the publication was changed. A reservation had also been lodged by Australia regarding the Southern Ocean limits. Effectively, the third edition—which did not delineate the Southern Ocean leaving delineation to local hydrographic offices—has yet to be superseded.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Despite this, the fourth edition definition has partial "de facto" usage by many nations, scientists, and organisations such as the U.S. (the "CIA World Factbook" uses "Southern Ocean", but none of the other new sea names within the "Southern Ocean", such as the "Cosmonauts Sea") and Merriam-Webster, scientists and nations – and even by some within the IHO. Some nations' hydrographic offices have defined their own boundaries; the United Kingdom used the 55th parallel south for example. Other organisations favour more northerly limits for the Southern Ocean. For example, "Encyclopædia Britannica" describes the Southern Ocean as extending as far north as South America, and confers great significance on the Antarctic Convergence, yet its description of the Indian Ocean contradicts this, describing the Indian Ocean as extending south to Antarctica.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Other sources, such as the National Geographic Society, show the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans as extending to Antarctica on its maps, although articles on the National Geographic web site have begun to reference the Southern Ocean.


title: Southern Ocean

text: A radical shift from past IHO practices (1928–1953) was also seen in the 2002 draft edition when the IHO delineated 'seas' as being subdivisions that lay within the boundaries of 'oceans'. While the IHO are often considered the authority for such conventions, the shift brought them into line with the practices of other publications (e.g. the CIA "World Fact Book") which already adopted the principle that seas are contained within oceans. This difference in practice is markedly seen for the Pacific Ocean in the adjacent figure. Thus, for example, previously the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand was not regarded by the IHO as being part of the Pacific, but as of the 2002 draft edition it is.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The new delineation of seas being subdivisions of oceans has avoided the need to interrupt the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean where intersected by Drake Passage which includes all of the waters from South America to the Antarctic coast, nor interrupt it for the Scotia Sea, which also extends below the 60th parallel south. The new delineation of seas has also meant that the long-time named seas around Antarctica, excluded from the 1953 edition (the 1953 map did not even extend that far south), are 'automatically' part of the Southern Ocean.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In Australia, cartographical authorities define the Southern Ocean as including the entire body of water between Antarctica and the south coasts of Australia and New Zealand, and up to 60°S elsewhere. Coastal maps of Tasmania and South Australia label the sea areas as "Southern Ocean" and Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia is described as the point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Exploration of the Southern Ocean was inspired by a belief in the existence of a "Terra Australis" – a vast continent in the far south of the globe to "balance" the northern lands of Eurasia and North Africa – which had existed since the times of Ptolemy. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 by Bartolomeu Dias first brought explorers within touch of the Antarctic cold, and proved that there was an ocean separating Africa from any Antarctic land that might exist. Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the Strait of Magellan in 1520, assumed that the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the south were an extension of this unknown southern land. In 1564, Abraham Ortelius published his first map, "Typus Orbis Terrarum", an eight-leaved wall map of the world, on which he identified the "Regio Patalis" with "Locach" as a northward extension of the "Terra Australis", reaching as far as New Guinea.


title: Southern Ocean

text: European geographers continued to connect the coast of Tierra del Fuego with the coast of New Guinea on their globes, and allowing their imaginations to run riot in the vast unknown spaces of the south Atlantic, south Indian and Pacific oceans they sketched the outlines of the "Terra Australis Incognita" ("Unknown Southern Land"), a vast continent stretching in parts into the tropics. The search for this great south land was a leading motive of explorers in the 16th and the early part of the 17th centuries.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla, who claimed having sighted "snow-covered mountains" beyond the 64° S in 1603, is recognized as the first explorer that discovered the continent of Antarctica, although he was ignored in his time.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In 1606, Pedro Fernández de Quirós took possession for the king of Spain all of the lands he had discovered in Australia del Espiritu Santo (the New Hebrides) and those he would discover "even to the Pole".


title: Southern Ocean

text: Francis Drake, like Spanish explorers before him, had speculated that there might be an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego. When Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire discovered the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego and named it Cape Horn in 1615, they proved that the Tierra del Fuego archipelago was of small extent and not connected to the southern land, as previously thought. Subsequently, in 1642, Abel Tasman showed that even New Holland (Australia) was separated by sea from any continuous southern continent.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The visit to South Georgia by Anthony de la Roché in 1675 was the first-ever discovery of land south of the Antarctic Convergence, i.e. in the Southern Ocean/Antarctic. Soon after the voyage cartographers started to depict "Roché Island", honouring the discoverer. James Cook was aware of la Roché's discovery when surveying and mapping the island in 1775.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Edmond Halley's voyage in for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic met the pack ice in 52° S in January 1700, but that latitude (he reached off the north coast of South Georgia) was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier to discover the "South Land" – described by a half legendary "sieur de Gonneyville" – resulted in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54°10′ S, and in the navigation of 48° of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55° S in 1730.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In 1771, Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of "a very large continent". He lighted upon a land in 50° S which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed the Isle of Desolation, but which was ultimately named after him.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, the brilliant and erratic hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769. The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook. Sailing in 1772 with "Resolution", a vessel of 462 tons under his own command and "Adventure" of 336 tons under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58° S, and then 30° eastward for the most part south of 60° S, a lower southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel. On 17 January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached by , where their course was stopped by ice.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Cook then turned northward to look for French Southern and Antarctic Lands, of the discovery of which he had received news at Cape Town, but from the rough determination of his longitude by Kerguelen, Cook reached the assigned latitude 10° too far east and did not see it. He turned south again and was stopped by ice in by 95° E and continued eastward nearly on the parallel of 60° S to 147° E. On 16 March, the approaching winter drove him northward for rest to New Zealand and the tropical islands of the Pacific. In November 1773, Cook left New Zealand, having parted company with the "Adventure", and reached 60° S by 177° W, whence he sailed eastward keeping as far south as the floating ice allowed. The Antarctic Circle was crossed on 20 December and Cook remained south of it for three days, being compelled after reaching to stand north again in 135° W.


title: Southern Ocean

text: A long detour to served to show that there was no land connection between New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. Turning south again, Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle for the third time at before his progress was once again blocked by ice four days later at by . This point, reached on 30 January 1774, was the farthest south attained in the 18th century. With a great detour to the east, almost to the coast of South America, the expedition regained Tahiti for refreshment. In November 1774, Cook started from New Zealand and crossed the South Pacific without sighting land between 53° and 57° S to Tierra del Fuego; then, passing Cape Horn on 29 December, he rediscovered Roché Island renaming it Isle of Georgia, and discovered the South Sandwich Islands (named "Sandwich Land" by him), the only ice-clad land he had seen, before crossing the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope between 55° and 60°. He thereby laid open the way for future Antarctic exploration by exploding the myth of a habitable southern continent. Cook's most southerly discovery of land lay on the temperate side of the 60th parallel, and he convinced himself that if land lay farther south it was practically inaccessible and without economic value.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Voyagers rounding Cape Horn frequently met with contrary winds and were driven southward into snowy skies and ice-encumbered seas; but so far as can be ascertained none of them before 1770 reached the Antarctic Circle, or knew it, if they did.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In a voyage from 1822 to 1824, James Weddell commanded the 160-ton brig "Jane", accompanied by his second ship "Beaufoy" captained by Matthew Brisbane. Together they sailed to the South Orkneys where sealing proved disappointing. They turned south in the hope of finding a better sealing ground. The season was unusually mild and tranquil, and on 20 February 1823 the two ships reached latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45″ W the southernmost position any ship had ever reached up to that time. A few icebergs were sighted but there was still no sight of land, leading Weddell to theorize that the sea continued as far as the South Pole. Another two days' sailing would have brought him to Coat's Land (to the east of the Weddell Sea) but Weddell decided to turn back.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The first land south of the parallel 60° south latitude was discovered by the Englishman William Smith, who sighted Livingston Island on 19 February 1819. A few months later Smith returned to explore the other islands of the South Shetlands archipelago, landed on King George Island, and claimed the new territories for Britain.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In the meantime, the Spanish Navy ship "San Telmo" sank in September 1819 when trying to cross Cape Horn. Parts of her wreckage were found months later by sealers on the north coast of Livingston Island (South Shetlands). It is unknown if some survivor managed to be the first to set foot on these Antarctic islands.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica cannot be accurately attributed to one single person. It can, however, be narrowed down to three individuals. According to various sources, three men all sighted the ice shelf or the continent within days or months of each other: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the Royal Navy; and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sailor out of Stonington, Connecticut. It is certain that the expedition, led by von Bellingshausen and Lazarev on the ships "Vostok" and "Mirny", reached a point within from Princess Martha Coast and recorded the sight of an ice shelf at that became known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf. On 30 January 1820, Bransfield sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland, while Palmer sighted the mainland in the area south of Trinity Peninsula in November 1820. Von Bellingshausen's expedition also discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Island, the first islands to be discovered south of the circle.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In December 1839, as part of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–42 conducted by the United States Navy (sometimes called "the Wilkes Expedition"), an expedition sailed from Sydney, Australia, on the sloops-of-war and , the brig , the full-rigged ship , and two schooners and . They sailed into the Antarctic Ocean, as it was then known, and reported the discovery "of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands" on 25 January 1840. That part of Antarctica was later named "Wilkes Land", a name it maintains to this day.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Explorer James Clark Ross passed through what is now known as the Ross Sea and discovered Ross Island (both of which were named for him) in 1841. He sailed along a huge wall of ice that was later named the Ross Ice Shelf. Mount Erebus and Mount Terror are named after two ships from his expedition: and .


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, led by Ernest Shackleton, set out to cross the continent via the pole, but their ship, , was trapped and crushed by pack ice before they even landed. The expedition members survived after an epic journey on sledges over pack ice to Elephant Island. Then Shackleton and five others crossed the Southern Ocean, in an open boat called "James Caird", and then trekked over South Georgia to raise the alarm at the whaling station Grytviken.


title: Southern Ocean

text: In 1946, US Navy Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and more than 4,700 military personnel visited the Antarctic in an expedition called Operation Highjump. Reported to the public as a scientific mission, the details were kept secret and it may have actually been a training or testing mission for the military. The expedition was, in both military or scientific planning terms, put together very quickly. The group contained an unusually high amount of military equipment, including an aircraft carrier, submarines, military support ships, assault troops and military vehicles. The expedition was planned to last for eight months but was unexpectedly terminated after only two months. With the exception of some eccentric entries in Admiral Byrd's diaries, no real explanation for the early termination has ever been officially given.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Captain Finn Ronne, Byrd's executive officer, returned to Antarctica with his own expedition in 1947–1948, with Navy support, three planes, and dogs. Ronne disproved the notion that the continent was divided in two and established that East and West Antarctica was one single continent, i.e. that the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea are not connected. The expedition explored and mapped large parts of Palmer Land and the Weddell Sea coastline, and identified the Ronne Ice Shelf, named by Ronne after his wife Edith "Jackie" Ronne. Ronne covered by ski and dog sled – more than any other explorer in history. The Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition discovered and mapped the last unknown coastline in the world and was the first Antarctic expedition to ever include women.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Antarctic Treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 and came into force on 23 June 1961. Among other provisions, this treaty limits military activity in the Antarctic to the support of scientific research.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The first person to sail single-handed to Antarctica was the New Zealander David Henry Lewis, in 1972, in a steel sloop "Ice Bird".


title: Southern Ocean

text: A baby, named Emilio Marcos de Palma, was born near Hope Bay on 7 January 1978, becoming the first baby born on the continent. He also was born further south than anyone in history.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The was a cruise ship operated by the Swedish explorer Lars-Eric Lindblad. Observers point to "Explorer"'s 1969 expeditionary cruise to Antarctica as the frontrunner for today's sea-based tourism in that region. "Explorer" was the first cruise ship used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean and the first to sink there when she struck an unidentified submerged object on 23 November 2007, reported to be ice, which caused a gash in the hull. "Explorer" was abandoned in the early hours of 23 November 2007 after taking on water near the South Shetland Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area which is usually stormy but was calm at the time. "Explorer" was confirmed by the Chilean Navy to have sunk at approximately position: 62° 24′ South, 57° 16′ West, in roughly 600 m of water.


title: Southern Ocean

text: British engineer Richard Jenkins designed an unmanned "saildrone" that completed the first autonomous circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean on 3 August 2019 after 196 days at sea.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The first completely human-powered expedition on the Southern Ocean was accomplished on 25 December 2019 by a team of rowers comprising captain Fiann Paul (Iceland), first mate Colin O'Brady (US), Andrew Towne (US), Cameron Bellamy (South Africa), Jamie Douglas-Hamilton (UK) and John Petersen (US).


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean, geologically the youngest of the oceans, was formed when Antarctica and South America moved apart, opening the Drake Passage, roughly 30 million years ago. The separation of the continents allowed the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.


title: Southern Ocean

text: With a northern limit at 60°S, the Southern Ocean differs from the other oceans in that its largest boundary, the northern boundary, does not abut a landmass (as it did with the first edition of "Limits of Oceans and Seas"). Instead, the northern limit is with the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.


title: Southern Ocean

text: One reason for considering it as a separate ocean stems from the fact that much of the water of the Southern Ocean differs from the water in the other oceans. Water gets transported around the Southern Ocean fairly rapidly because of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which circulates around Antarctica. Water in the Southern Ocean south of, for example, New Zealand, resembles the water in the Southern Ocean south of South America more closely than it resembles the water in the Pacific Ocean.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean has typical depths of between over most of its extent with only limited areas of shallow water. The Southern Ocean's greatest depth of occurs at the southern end of the South Sandwich Trench, at 60°00'S, 024°W. The Antarctic continental shelf appears generally narrow and unusually deep, its edge lying at depths up to , compared to a global mean of .


title: Southern Ocean

text: Equinox to equinox in line with the sun's seasonal influence, the Antarctic ice pack fluctuates from an average minimum of in March to about in September, more than a sevenfold increase in area.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Sub-divisions of oceans are geographical features such as "seas", "straits", "bays", "channels", and "gulfs". There are many sub-divisions of the Southern Ocean defined in the never-approved 2002 draft fourth edition of the IHO publication "Limits of Oceans and Seas". In clockwise order these include (with sector):


title: Southern Ocean

text: A number of these such as the 2002 Russian-proposed "Cosmonauts Sea", "Cooperation Sea", and "Somov (mid-1950s Russian polar explorer) Sea" are not included in the 1953 IHO document which remains currently in force, because they received their names largely originated from 1962 onward. Leading geographic authorities and atlases do not use these latter three names, including the 2014 10th edition World Atlas from the United States' National Geographic Society and the 2014 12th edition of the British Times Atlas of the World, but Soviet and Russian-issued maps do.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean probably contains large, and possibly giant, oil and gas fields on the continental margin. Placer deposits, accumulation of valuable minerals such as gold, formed by gravity separation during sedimentary processes are also expected to exist in the Southern Ocean.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Manganese nodules are expected to exist in the Southern Ocean. Manganese nodules are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization. Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The icebergs that form each year around in the Southern Ocean hold enough fresh water to meet the needs of every person on Earth for several months. For several decades there have been proposals, none yet to be feasible or successful, to tow Southern Ocean icebergs to more arid northern regions (such as Australia) where they can be harvested.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Icebergs can occur at any time of year throughout the ocean. Some may have drafts up to several hundred meters; smaller icebergs, iceberg fragments and sea-ice (generally 0.5 to 1 m thick) also pose problems for ships. The deep continental shelf has a floor of glacial deposits varying widely over short distances.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Sailors know latitudes from 40 to 70 degrees south as the "Roaring Forties", "Furious Fifties" and "Shrieking Sixties" due to high winds and large waves that form as winds blow around the entire globe unimpeded by any land-mass. Icebergs, especially in May to October, make the area even more dangerous. The remoteness of the region makes sources of search and rescue scarce.


title: Southern Ocean

text: While the Southern is the second smallest ocean it contains the unique and highly energetic Antarctic Circumpolar Current which moves perpetually eastward – chasing and joining itself, and at in length – it comprises the world's longest ocean current, transporting of water – 100 times the flow of all the world's rivers.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Several processes operate along the coast of Antarctica to produce, in the Southern Ocean, types of water masses not produced elsewhere in the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. One of these is the Antarctic Bottom Water, a very cold, highly saline, dense water that forms under sea ice. Another is Circumpolar Deep Water, a mixture of Antarctic Bottom Water and North Atlantic Deep Water.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Associated with the Circumpolar Current is the Antarctic Convergence encircling Antarctica, where cold northward-flowing Antarctic waters meet the relatively warmer waters of the subantarctic, Antarctic waters predominantly sink beneath subantarctic waters, while associated zones of mixing and upwelling create a zone very high in nutrients. These nurture high levels of phytoplankton with associated copepods and Antarctic krill, and resultant foodchains supporting fish, whales, seals, penguins, albatrosses and a wealth of other species.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Antarctic Convergence is considered to be the best natural definition of the northern extent of the Southern Ocean.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Large-scale upwelling is found in the Southern Ocean. Strong westerly (eastward) winds blow around Antarctica, driving a significant flow of water northwards. This is actually a type of coastal upwelling. Since there are no continents in a band of open latitudes between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, some of this water is drawn up from great depths. In many numerical models and observational syntheses, the Southern Ocean upwelling represents the primary means by which deep dense water is brought to the surface. Shallower, wind-driven upwelling is also found off the west coasts of North and South America, northwest and southwest Africa, and southwest and southeast Australia, all associated with oceanic subtropical high pressure circulations.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Some models of the ocean circulation suggest that broad-scale upwelling occurs in the tropics, as pressure driven flows converge water toward the low latitudes where it is diffusively warmed from above. The required diffusion coefficients, however, appear to be larger than are observed in the real ocean. Nonetheless, some diffusive upwelling does probably occur.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Ross Gyre and Weddell Gyre are two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyres are located in the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea respectively, and both rotate clockwise. The gyres are formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Sea ice has been noted to persist in the central area of the Ross Gyre. There is some evidence that global warming has resulted in some decrease of the salinity of the waters of the Ross Gyre since the 1950s.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Due to the Coriolis effect acting to the left in the Southern Hemisphere and the resulting Ekman transport away from the centres of the Weddell Gyre, these regions are very productive due to upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Observation of the Southern Ocean is coordinated through the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). This provides access to meta data for a significant proportion of the data collected in the regions over the past decades including hydrographic measurements and ocean currents. The data provision is set up to emphasize records that are related to Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) for the ocean region south of 40°S.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Sea temperatures vary from about −2 to 10 °C (28 to 50 °F). Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently become intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean-area from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth. In winter the ocean freezes outward to 65 degrees south latitude in the Pacific sector and 55 degrees south latitude in the Atlantic sector, lowering surface temperatures well below 0 degrees Celsius. At some coastal points, however, persistent intense drainage winds from the interior keep the shoreline ice-free throughout the winter.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean is one of the regions in which rapid climate change is the most visibly taking place. In this region, small perturbations in temperature lead to major environmental perturbation. The effects of climate change in the Southern Ocean are expected to manifest themselves in a regional and diverse manner. This will include changes in the climate and weather patterns across different time-scales with alterations to the long interdecadal background signals such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Increasing ocean temperatures and changes in the extent and seasonality of sea ice affect the biological productivity and community of this ecosystem. The magnitude and exact manifestation of these changes could lead to different populations of the same species responding and adapting differently to climate change depending on the region of the Southern Ocean they inhabit. Recent observations and analysis indicate the uptake of heat and carbon is increasing in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, in particular, the Subantarctic Front zone aided by its increasing current strength.


title: Southern Ocean

text: A variety of marine animals exist and rely, directly or indirectly, on the phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals. The emperor penguin is the only penguin that breeds during the winter in Antarctica, while the Adélie penguin breeds farther south than any other penguin. The rockhopper penguin has distinctive feathers around the eyes, giving the appearance of elaborate eyelashes. King penguins, chinstrap penguins, and gentoo penguins also breed in the Antarctic.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Antarctic fur seal was very heavily hunted in the 18th and 19th centuries for its pelt by sealers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The Weddell seal, a "true seal", is named after Sir James Weddell, commander of British sealing expeditions in the Weddell Sea. Antarctic krill, which congregates in large schools, is the keystone species of the ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, and is an important food organism for whales, seals, leopard seals, fur seals, squid, icefish, penguins, albatrosses and many other birds.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The benthic communities of the seafloor are diverse and dense, with up to 155,000 animals found in . As the seafloor environment is very similar all around the Antarctic, hundreds of species can be found all the way around the mainland, which is a uniquely wide distribution for such a large community. Deep-sea gigantism is common among these animals.


title: Southern Ocean

text: A census of sea life carried out during the International Polar Year and which involved some 500 researchers was released in 2010. The research is part of the global Census of Marine Life (CoML) and has disclosed some remarkable findings. More than 235 marine organisms live in both polar regions, having bridged the gap of . Large animals such as some cetaceans and birds make the round trip annually. More surprising are small forms of life such as mudworms, sea cucumbers and free-swimming snails found in both polar oceans. Various factors may aid in their distribution – fairly uniform temperatures of the deep ocean at the poles and the equator which differ by no more than , and the major current systems or marine conveyor belt which transport egg and larva stages. However, among smaller marine animals generally assumed to be the same in the Antarctica and the Arctic, more detailed studies of each population have often—but not always—revealed differences, showing that they are closely related cryptic species rather than a single bipolar species.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The rocky shores of mainland Antarctica and its offshore islands provide nesting space for over 100 million birds every spring. These nesters include species of albatrosses, petrels, skuas, gulls and terns. The insectivorous South Georgia pipit is endemic to South Georgia and some smaller surrounding islands. Freshwater ducks inhabit South Georgia and the Kerguelen Islands.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The flightless penguins are all located in the Southern Hemisphere, with the greatest concentration located on and around Antarctica. Four of the 18 penguin species live and breed on the mainland and its close offshore islands. Another four species live on the subantarctic islands. Emperor penguins have four overlapping layers of feathers, keeping them warm. They are the only Antarctic animal to breed during the winter.


title: Southern Ocean

text: There are relatively few fish species in few families in the Southern Ocean. The most species-rich family are the snailfish (Liparidae), followed by the cod icefish (Nototheniidae) and eelpout (Zoarcidae). Together the snailfish, eelpouts and notothenioids (which includes cod icefish and several other families) account for almost of the more than 320 described fish species of the Southern Ocean (tens of undescribed species also occur in the region, especially among the snailfish). Southern Ocean snailfish are generally found in deep waters, while the icefish also occur in shallower waters.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Cod icefish (Nototheniidae), as well as several other families, are part of the Notothenioidei suborder, collectively sometimes referred to as icefish. The suborder contains many species with antifreeze proteins in their blood and tissue, allowing them to live in water that is around or slightly below . Antifreeze proteins are also known from Southern Ocean snailfish.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The crocodile icefish (family Channichthyidae), also known as white-blooded fish, are only found in the Southern Ocean. They lack hemoglobin in their blood, resulting in their blood being colourless. One Channichthyidae species, the mackerel icefish ("Champsocephalus gunnari"), was once the most common fish in coastal waters less than deep, but was overfished in the 1970s and 1980s. Schools of icefish spend the day at the seafloor and the night higher in the water column eating plankton and smaller fish.


title: Southern Ocean

text: There are two species from the genus "Dissostichus", the Antarctic toothfish ("Dissostichus mawsoni") and the Patagonian toothfish ("Dissostichus eleginoides"). These two species live on the seafloor deep, and can grow to around long weighing up to , living up to 45 years. The Antarctic toothfish lives close to the Antarctic mainland, whereas the Patagonian toothfish lives in the relatively warmer subantarctic waters. Toothfish are commercially fished, and overfishing has reduced toothfish populations.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Another abundant fish group is the genus "Notothenia", which like the Antarctic toothfish have antifreeze in their bodies.


title: Southern Ocean

text: An unusual species of icefish is the Antarctic silverfish ("Pleuragramma antarcticum"), which is the only truly pelagic fish in the waters near Antarctica.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Seven pinniped species inhabit Antarctica. The largest, the elephant seal ("Mirounga leonina"), can reach up to , while females of the smallest, the Antarctic fur seal ("Arctophoca gazella"), reach only . These two species live north of the sea ice, and breed in harems on beaches. The other four species can live on the sea ice. Crabeater seals ("Lobodon carcinophagus") and Weddell seals ("Leptonychotes weddellii") form breeding colonies, whereas leopard seals ("Hydrurga leptonyx") and Ross seals ("Ommatophoca rossii") live solitary lives. Although these species hunt underwater, they breed on land or ice and spend a great deal of time there, as they have no terrestrial predators.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The four species that inhabit sea ice are thought to make up 50% of the total biomass of the world's seals. Crabeater seals have a population of around 15 million, making them one of the most numerous large animals on the planet. The New Zealand sea lion ("Phocarctos hookeri"), one of the rarest and most localised pinnipeds, breeds almost exclusively on the subantarctic Auckland Islands, although historically it had a wider range. Out of all permanent mammalian residents, the Weddell seals live the furthest south.


title: Southern Ocean

text: There are 10 cetacean species found in the Southern Ocean: six baleen whales, and four toothed whales. The largest of these, the blue whale ("Balaenoptera musculus"), grows to long weighing 84 tonnes. Many of these species are migratory, and travel to tropical waters during the Antarctic winter.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Five species of krill, small free-swimming crustaceans, have been found in the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic krill ("Euphausia superba") is one of the most abundant animal species on earth, with a biomass of around 500 million tonnes. Each individual is long and weighs over . The swarms that form can stretch for kilometres, with up to 30,000 individuals per , turning the water red. Swarms usually remain in deep water during the day, ascending during the night to feed on plankton. Many larger animals depend on krill for their own survival. During the winter when food is scarce, adult Antarctic krill can revert to a smaller juvenile stage, using their own body as nutrition.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Many benthic crustaceans have a non-seasonal breeding cycle, and some raise their young in a brood pouch. "Glyptonotus antarcticus" is an unusually large benthic isopod, reaching in length weighing . Amphipods are abundant in soft sediments, eating a range of items, from algae to other animals. The amphipods are highly diverse with more than 600 recognized species found south of the Antarctic Convergence and there are indications that many undescribed species remain. Among these are several "giants", such as the iconic epimeriids that are up to long.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Slow moving sea spiders are common, sometimes growing as large as a human hand. They feed on the corals, sponges, and bryozoans that litter the seabed.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Many aquatic molluscs are present in Antarctica. Bivalves such as "Adamussium colbecki" move around on the seafloor, while others such as "Laternula elliptica" live in burrows filtering the water above. There are around 70 cephalopod species in the Southern Ocean, the largest of which is the colossal squid ("Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni"), which at up to is among the largest invertebrate in the world. Squid makes up most of the diet of some animals, such as grey-headed albatrosses and sperm whales, and the warty squid ("Moroteuthis ingens") is one of the subantarctic's most preyed upon species by vertebrates.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The sea urchin genus "Abatus" burrow through the sediment eating the nutrients they find in it. Two species of salps are common in Antarctic waters: "Salpa thompsoni" and "Ihlea racovitzai". "Salpa thompsoni" is found in ice-free areas, whereas "Ihlea racovitzai" is found in the high-latitude areas near ice. Due to their low nutritional value, they are normally only eaten by fish, with larger animals such as birds and marine mammals only eating them when other food is scarce.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Antarctic sponges are long-lived and sensitive to environmental changes due to the specificity of the symbiotic microbial communities within them. As a result, they function as indicators of environmental health.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Increased solar ultraviolet radiation resulting from the Antarctic ozone hole has reduced marine primary productivity (phytoplankton) by as much as 15% and has started damaging the DNA of some fish. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, likely affects the sustainability of the stock. Long-line fishing for toothfish causes a high incidence of seabird mortality.


title: Southern Ocean

text: All international agreements regarding the world's oceans apply to the Southern Ocean. In addition, it is subject to these agreements specific to the region:


title: Southern Ocean

text: Many nations prohibit the exploration for and the exploitation of mineral resources south of the fluctuating Antarctic Convergence, which lies in the middle of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and serves as the dividing line between the very cold polar surface waters to the south and the warmer waters to the north. The Antarctic Treaty covers the portion of the globe south of sixty degrees south; it prohibits new claims to Antarctica.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The "Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources" applies to the area south of 60° South latitude as well as the areas further north up to the limit of the Antarctic Convergence.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Between 1 July 1998 and 30 June 1999, fisheries landed , of which 85% consisted of krill and 14% of Patagonian toothfish. International agreements came into force in late 1999 to reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, which in the 1998–99 season landed five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Major operational ports include: Rothera Station, Palmer Station, Villa Las Estrellas, Esperanza Base, Mawson Station, McMurdo Station, and offshore anchorages in Antarctica.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Few ports or harbors exist on the southern (Antarctic) coast of the Southern Ocean, since ice conditions limit use of most shores to short periods in midsummer; even then some require icebreaker escort for access. Most Antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, remain closed to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south are subject to inspection by Antarctic Treaty observers.


title: Southern Ocean

text: The Southern Ocean's southernmost port operates at McMurdo Station at . Winter Quarters Bay forms a small harbor, on the southern tip of Ross Island where a floating ice pier makes port operations possible in summer. Operation Deep Freeze personnel constructed the first ice pier at McMurdo in 1973.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Based on the original 1928 IHO delineation of the Southern Ocean (and the 1937 delineation if the Great Australian Bight is considered integral), Australian ports and harbors between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Otway on the Australian mainland and along the west coast of Tasmania would also be identified as ports and harbors existing in the Southern Ocean. These would include the larger ports and harbors of Albany, Thevenard, Port Lincoln, Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Adelaide, Portland, Warrnambool, and Macquarie Harbour.


title: Southern Ocean

text: Even though organizers of several yacht races define their routes as involving the Southern Ocean, the actual routes don't enter the actual geographical boundaries of the Southern Ocean. The routes involve instead South Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Ocean.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams ( – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams was born in Boston, brought up in a religious and politically active family. A graduate of Harvard College, he was an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector before concentrating on politics. He was an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760s, and he became a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent. His 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter calling for colonial non-cooperation prompted the occupation of Boston by British soldiers, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Adams and his colleagues devised a committee of correspondence system in 1772 to help coordinate resistance to what he saw as the British government's attempts to violate the British Constitution at the expense of the colonies, which linked like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Continued resistance to British policy resulted in the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the coming of the American Revolution. Adams was actively involved with colonial newspapers publishing accounts of colonial sentiment over British colonial rule, which were fundamental in uniting the colonies.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, at which time Adams attended the Continental Congress in Philadelphia which was convened to coordinate a colonial response. He helped guide Congress towards issuing the Continental Association in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and the Massachusetts Constitution. Adams returned to Massachusetts after the American Revolution, where he served in the state senate and was eventually elected governor.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams later became a controversial figure in American history. Accounts written in the 19th century praised him as someone who had been steering his fellow colonists towards independence long before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. This view was challenged by negative assessments of Adams in the first half of the 20th century, mostly by British historians, in which he was portrayed as a master of propaganda who provoked "mob violence" to achieve his goals. However, according to biographer Mark Puls, a different account emerges upon examination of Adams' many writings regarding the civil rights of the colonists, while the "mob" referred to were a highly reflective group of men inspired by Adams who made his case with reasoned arguments in pamphlets and newspapers, without the use of emotional rhetoric.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams was born in Boston in the British colony of Massachusetts on September 16, 1722, an Old Style date that is sometimes converted to the New Style date of September 27. Adams was one of twelve children born to Samuel Adams, Sr., and Mary (Fifield) Adams in an age of high infant mortality; only three of these children lived past their third birthday. Adams's parents were devout Puritans and members of the Old South Congregational Church. The family lived on Purchase Street in Boston. Adams was proud of his Puritan heritage, and emphasized Puritan values in his political career, especially virtue.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams, Sr. (1689–1748) was a prosperous merchant and church deacon. Deacon Adams became a leading figure in Boston politics through an organization that became known as the Boston Caucus, which promoted candidates who supported popular causes. Members of the Caucus helped shape the agenda of the Boston Town Meeting. A New England town meeting is a form of local government with elected officials, and not just a gathering of citizens; according to historian William Fowler, it was "the most democratic institution in the British empire". Deacon Adams rose through the political ranks, becoming a justice of the peace, a selectman, and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He worked closely with Elisha Cooke, Jr. (1678–1737), the leader of the "popular party", a faction that resisted any encroachment by royal officials on the colonial rights embodied in the Massachusetts Charter of 1691. In the coming years, members of the "popular party" became known as Whigs or Patriots.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The younger Samuel Adams attended Boston Latin School and then entered Harvard College in 1736. His parents hoped that his schooling would prepare him for the ministry, but Adams gradually shifted his interest to politics. After graduating in 1740, Adams continued his studies, earning a master's degree in 1743. In his thesis, he argued that it was "lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved", which indicated that his political views, like his father's, were oriented towards colonial rights.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams's life was greatly affected by his father's involvement in a banking controversy. In 1739, Massachusetts was facing a serious currency shortage, and Deacon Adams and the Boston Caucus created a "land bank" which issued paper money to borrowers who mortgaged their land as security. The land bank was generally supported by the citizenry and the popular party, which dominated the House of Representatives, the lower branch of the General Court. Opposition to the land bank came from the more aristocratic "court party", who were supporters of the royal governor Jonathan Belcher and controlled the Governor's Council, the upper chamber of the General Court. The court party used its influence to have the British Parliament dissolve the land bank in 1741. Directors of the land bank, including Deacon Adams, became personally liable for the currency still in circulation, payable in silver and gold. Lawsuits over the bank persisted for years, even after Deacon Adams's death, and the younger Samuel Adams often had to defend the family estate from seizure by the government. For Adams, these lawsuits "served as a constant personal reminder that Britain's power over the colonies could be exercised in arbitrary and destructive ways."


title: Samuel Adams

text: After leaving Harvard in 1743, Adams was unsure about his future. He considered becoming a lawyer but instead decided to go into business. He worked at Thomas Cushing's counting house, but the job only lasted a few months because Cushing felt that Adams was too preoccupied with politics to become a good merchant. Adams's father then lent him £1,000 to go into business for himself, a substantial amount for that time. Adams's lack of business instincts were confirmed; he lent half of this money to a friend who never repaid, and frittered away the other half. Adams always remained, in the words of historian Pauline Maier, "a man utterly uninterested in either making or possessing money".


title: Samuel Adams

text: After Adams had lost his money, his father made him a partner in the family's malthouse, which was next to the family home on Purchase Street. Several generations of Adamses were maltsters, who produced the malt necessary for brewing beer. Years later, a poet poked fun at Adams by calling him "Sam the maltster". Adams has often been described as a brewer, but the extant evidence suggests that he worked as a maltster and not a brewer.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In January 1748, Adams and some friends were inflamed by British impressment and launched "The Independent Advertiser", a weekly newspaper that printed many political essays written by Adams. His essays drew heavily upon English political theorist John Locke's "Second Treatise of Government", and they emphasized many of the themes that characterized his subsequent career. He argued that the people must resist any encroachment on their constitutional rights. He cited the decline of the Roman Empire as an example of what could happen to New England if it were to abandon its Puritan values.


title: Samuel Adams

text: When Deacon Adams died in 1748, Adams was given the responsibility of managing the family's affairs. In October 1749, he married Elizabeth Checkley, his pastor's daughter. Elizabeth gave birth to six children over the next seven years, but only two lived to adulthood: Samuel (born 1751) and Hannah (born 1756). In July 1757, Elizabeth died soon after giving birth to a stillborn son. Adams remarried in 1764 to Elizabeth Wells, but had no other children.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Like his father, Adams embarked on a political career with the support of the Boston Caucus. He was elected to his first political office in 1747, serving as one of the clerks of the Boston market. In 1756, the Boston Town Meeting elected him to the post of tax collector, which provided a small income. He often failed to collect taxes from his fellow citizens, which increased his popularity among those who did not pay, but left him liable for the shortage. By 1765, his account was more than £8,000 in arrears. The town meeting was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Adams was compelled to file suit against delinquent taxpayers, but many taxes went uncollected. In 1768, his political opponents used the situation to their advantage, obtaining a court judgment of £1,463 against him. Adams's friends paid off some of the deficit, and the town meeting wrote off the remainder. By then, he had emerged as a leader of the popular party, and the embarrassing situation did not lessen his influence.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams emerged as an important public figure in Boston soon after the British Empire's victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). The British Parliament found itself deep in debt and looking for new sources of revenue, and they sought to directly tax the colonies of British America for the first time. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In the years leading up to and into the revolution Adams made frequent use of colonial newspapers and began openly criticizing British colonial policy and by 1775 was advocating independence from Britain. Adams was foremost in actively using newspapers like the "Boston Gazette" to promote the ideals of colonial rights by publishing his letters and other accounts which sharply criticized British colonial policy and especially the practice of colonial taxation without representation.The "Boston Gazette" had a circulation of two thousand, published weekly, which was considerable number for that time. Its publishers, Benjamin Edes and John Gill, both founding members of the Sons of Liberty, were on friendly and cooperative terms with Adams, James Otis and the Boston Caucus. Historian Ralph Harlow maintains that there is no doubt of the influence these men had in arousing public feeling. In his writings in the "Boston Gazette", Adams often wrote under a variety of assumed names, including "Candidus", "Vindex", and others. In less common instances his letters were unsigned.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams earnestly endeavored to awaken his fellow citizens over the perceived attacks on their Constitutional rights, with emphasis aimed at Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Hutchinson stressed that no one matched Adams' efforts in promoting the radical Whig position and the revolutionary cause, which Adams accordingly demonstrated with his numerous published and pointedly written essays and letters. In each of its issues from early September through mid-October of 1771, the "Gazette" published Adams' inciteful essays, one of which criticized the Parliament for using colonial taxes to pay Hutchinson's annual salary of £2,000. In a letter of February 1770, published by the "New York Journal" Adams maintained that it became increasingly difficult to view King George III as one who was not passively involved in Parliamentary decisions. In it he asked if anyone of common sense could deny that the King had assumed a “personal and decisive” role against the Americans.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The first step in the new program was the Sugar Act of 1764, which Adams saw as an infringement of longstanding colonial rights. Colonists were not represented in Parliament, he argued, and therefore they could not be taxed by that body; the colonists were represented by the colonial assemblies, and only they could levy taxes upon them. Adams expressed these views in May 1764, when the Boston Town Meeting elected its representatives to the Massachusetts House. As was customary, the town meeting provided the representatives with a set of written instructions, which Adams was selected to write. Adams highlighted what he perceived to be the dangers of taxation without representation:


title: Samuel Adams

text: For if our Trade may be taxed, why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & everything we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain. If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?


title: Samuel Adams

text: "When the Boston Town Meeting approved the Adams instructions on May 24, 1764," writes historian John K. Alexander, "it became the first political body in America to go on record stating Parliament could not constitutionally tax the colonists. The directives also contained the first official recommendation that the colonies present a unified defense of their rights." Adams's instructions were published in newspapers and pamphlets, and he soon became closely associated with James Otis, Jr., a member of the Massachusetts House famous for his defense of colonial rights. Otis boldly challenged the constitutionality of certain acts of Parliament, but he would not go as far as Adams, who was moving towards the conclusion that Parliament did not have sovereignty over the colonies.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act which required colonists to pay a new tax on most printed materials. News of the passage of the Stamp Act produced an uproar in the colonies. The colonial response echoed Adams's 1764 instructions. In June 1765, Otis called for a Stamp Act Congress to coordinate colonial resistance. The Virginia House of Burgesses passed a widely reprinted set of resolves against the Stamp Act that resembled Adams's arguments against the Sugar Act. Adams argued that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional; he also believed that it would hurt the economy of the British Empire. He supported calls for a boycott of British goods to put pressure on Parliament to repeal the tax.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In Boston, a group called the Loyal Nine, a precursor to the Sons of Liberty, organized protests of the Stamp Act. Adams was friendly with the Loyal Nine but was not a member. On August 14, stamp distributor Andrew Oliver was hanged in effigy from Boston's Liberty Tree; that night, his home was ransacked and his office demolished. On August 26, lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson's home was destroyed by an angry crowd.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Officials such as Governor Francis Bernard believed that common people acted only under the direction of agitators and blamed the violence on Adams. This interpretation was revived by scholars in the early 20th century, who viewed Adams as a master of propaganda who manipulated mobs into doing his bidding. For example, historian John C. Miller wrote in 1936 in what became the standard biography of Adams that Adams "controlled" Boston with his "trained mob". Some modern scholars have argued that this interpretation is a myth, and that there is no evidence that Adams had anything to do with the Stamp Act riots. After the fact, Adams did approve of the August 14 action because he saw no other legal options to resist what he viewed as an unconstitutional act by Parliament, but he condemned attacks on officials' homes as "mobbish". According to the modern scholarly interpretation of Adams, he supported legal methods of resisting parliamentary taxation, such as petitions, boycotts, and nonviolent demonstrations, but he opposed mob violence which he saw as illegal, dangerous, and counter-productive.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In September 1765, Adams was once again appointed by the Boston Town Meeting to write the instructions for Boston's delegation to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. As it turned out, he wrote his own instructions; on September 27, the town meeting selected him to replace the recently deceased Oxenbridge Thacher as one of Boston's four representatives in the assembly. James Otis was attending the Stamp Act Congress in New York City, so Adams was the primary author of a series of House resolutions against the Stamp Act, which were more radical than those passed by the Stamp Act Congress. Adams was one of the first colonial leaders to argue that mankind possessed certain natural rights that governments could not violate.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect on November 1, 1765, but it was not enforced because protestors throughout the colonies had compelled stamp distributors to resign. Eventually, British merchants were able to convince Parliament to repeal the tax. By May 16, 1766, news of the repeal had reached Boston. There was celebration throughout the city, and Adams made a public statement of thanks to British merchants for helping their cause.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The Massachusetts popular party gained ground in the May 1766 elections. Adams was re-elected to the House and selected as its clerk, in which position he was responsible for official House papers. In the coming years, Adams used his position as clerk to great effect in promoting his political message. Joining Adams in the House was John Hancock, a new representative from Boston. Hancock was a wealthy merchant—perhaps the richest man in Massachusetts—but a relative newcomer to politics. He was initially a protégé of Adams, and he used his wealth to promote the Whig cause.


title: Samuel Adams

text: After the repeal of the Stamp Act, Parliament took a different approach to raising revenue, passing the Townshend Acts in 1767 which established new duties on various goods imported into the colonies. These duties were relatively low because the British ministry wanted to establish the precedent that Parliament had the right to impose tariffs on the colonies before raising them. Revenues from these duties were to be used to pay for governors and judges who would be independent of colonial control. To enforce compliance with the new laws, the Townshend Acts created a customs agency known as the American Board of Custom Commissioners, which was headquartered in Boston.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Resistance to the Townshend Acts grew slowly. The General Court was not in session when news of the acts reached Boston in October 1767. Adams therefore used the Boston Town Meeting to organize an economic boycott, and called for other towns to do the same. By February 1768, towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had joined the boycott. Opposition to the Townshend Acts was also encouraged by "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania", a series of popular essays by John Dickinson which started appearing in December 1767. Dickinson's argument that the new taxes were unconstitutional had been made before by Adams, but never to such a wide audience.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In January 1768, the Massachusetts House sent a petition to King George asking for his help. Adams and Otis requested that the House send the petition to the other colonies, along with what became known as the Massachusetts Circular Letter, which became "a significant milestone on the road to revolution". The letter written by Adams called on the colonies to join with Massachusetts in resisting the Townshend Acts. The House initially voted against sending the letter and petition to the other colonies but, after some politicking by Adams and Otis, it was approved on February 11.


title: Samuel Adams

text: British colonial secretary Lord Hillsborough, hoping to prevent a repeat of the Stamp Act Congress, instructed the colonial governors in America to dissolve the assemblies if they responded to the Massachusetts Circular Letter. He also directed Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to have the Massachusetts House rescind the letter. On June 30, the House refused to rescind the letter by a vote of 92 to 17, with Adams citing their right to petition as justification. Far from complying with the governor's order, Adams instead presented a new petition to the king asking that Governor Bernard be removed from office. Bernard responded by dissolving the legislature.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The commissioners of the Customs Board found that they were unable to enforce trade regulations in Boston, so they requested military assistance. Help came in the form of , a fifty-gun warship which arrived in Boston Harbor in May 1768. Tensions escalated after the captain of "Romney" began to impress local sailors. The situation exploded on June 10, when customs officials seized , a sloop owned by John Hancock—a leading critic of the Customs Board—for alleged customs violations. Sailors and marines came ashore from "Romney" to tow away "Liberty", and a riot broke out. Things calmed down in the following days, but fearful customs officials packed up their families and fled for protection to "Romney" and eventually to Castle William, an island fort in the harbor.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Governor Bernard wrote to London in response to the "Liberty" incident and the struggle over the Circular Letter, informing his superiors that troops were needed in Boston to restore order. Lord Hillsborough ordered four regiments of the British Army to Boston.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Learning that British troops were on the way, the Boston Town Meeting met on September 12, 1768, and requested that Governor Bernard convene the General Court. Bernard refused, so the town meeting called on the other Massachusetts towns to send representatives to meet at Faneuil Hall beginning on September 22. About 100 towns sent delegates to the convention, which was effectively an unofficial session of the Massachusetts House. The convention issued a letter which insisted that Boston was not a lawless town, using language more moderate than what Adams desired, and that the impending military occupation violated Bostonians' natural, constitutional, and charter rights. By the time that the convention adjourned, British troop transports had arrived in Boston Harbor. Two regiments disembarked in October 1768, followed by two more in November.


title: Samuel Adams

text: According to some accounts, the occupation of Boston was a turning point for Adams, after which he gave up hope of reconciliation and secretly began to work towards American independence. However, historian Carl Becker wrote in 1928 that "there is no clear evidence in his contemporary writings that such was the case. Nevertheless, the traditional, standard view of Adams is that he desired independence before most of his contemporaries and steadily worked towards this goal for years. There is much speculation among historians, with compelling arguments either way, over whether and when before the war Adams openly advocated independence from Britain. Historian Pauline Maier challenged the idea that he had in 1980, arguing instead that Adams, like most of his peers, did not embrace independence until after the American Revolutionary War had begun in 1775. According to Maier, Adams at this time was a reformer rather than a revolutionary; he sought to have the British ministry change its policies, and warned Britain that independence would be the inevitable result of a failure to do so. Adams biographer Stewart Beach also questioned whether Adams sought independence before the mid-1770s, in that Hutchinson, who despised Adams, and had reason enough to, never once in his papers accused Adams of pushing the idea of independence from Britain, though he notes that Adams had publicly promised retaliation to any British troops sent over to quell the rebellion, moreover, that Adams was never accused of treason by the Parliament before the war.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams wrote numerous letters and essays in opposition to the occupation, which he considered a violation of the 1689 Bill of Rights. The occupation was publicized throughout the colonies in the "Journal of Occurrences", an unsigned series of newspaper articles that may have been written by Adams in collaboration with others. The "Journal" presented what it claimed to be a factual daily account of events in Boston during the military occupation, an innovative approach in an era without professional newspaper reporters. It depicted a Boston besieged by unruly British soldiers who assaulted men and raped women with regularity and impunity, drawing upon the traditional Anglo-American distrust of standing armies garrisoned among civilians. The "Journal" ceased publication on August 1, 1769, which was a day of celebration in Boston: Governor Bernard had left Massachusetts, never to return.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams continued to work on getting the troops withdrawn and keeping the boycott going until the Townshend duties were repealed. Two regiments were removed from Boston in 1769, but the other two remained. Tensions between soldiers and civilians eventually resulted in the killing of five civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 1770. According to the "propagandist interpretation" of Adams popularized by historian John Miller, Adams deliberately provoked the incident to promote his secret agenda of American independence. According to Pauline Maier, however, "There is no evidence that he prompted the Boston Massacre riot".


title: Samuel Adams

text: After the Boston Massacre, Adams and other town leaders met with Bernard's successor Governor Thomas Hutchinson and with Colonel William Dalrymple, the army commander, to demand the withdrawal of the troops. The situation remained explosive, and so Dalrymple agreed to remove both regiments to Castle William. Adams wanted the soldiers to have a fair trial, because this would show that Boston was not controlled by a lawless mob, but was instead the victim of an unjust occupation. He convinced his cousins John Adams and Josiah Quincy to defend the soldiers, knowing that those Whigs would not slander Boston to gain an acquittal. However, Adams wrote essays condemning the outcome of the trials; he thought that the soldiers should have been convicted of murder.


title: Samuel Adams

text: After the Boston Massacre, politics in Massachusetts entered what is sometimes known as the "quiet period". In April 1770, Parliament repealed the Townshend duties, except for the tax on tea. Adams urged colonists to keep up the boycott of British goods, arguing that paying even one small tax allowed Parliament to establish the precedent of taxing the colonies, but the boycott faltered. As economic conditions improved, support waned for Adams's causes. In 1770, New York City and Philadelphia abandoned the non-importation boycott of British goods and Boston merchants faced the risk of being economically ruined, so they also agreed to end the boycott, effectively defeating Adams's cause in Massachusetts. John Adams withdrew from politics, while John Hancock and James Otis appeared to become more moderate. In 1771, Samuel Adams ran for the position of Register of Deeds, but he was beaten by Ezekiel Goldthwait by more than two to one. He was re-elected to the Massachusetts House in April 1772, but he received far fewer votes than ever before.


title: Samuel Adams

text: A struggle over the power of the purse brought Adams back into the political limelight. Traditionally, the Massachusetts House of Representatives paid the salaries of the governor, lieutenant governor, and superior court judges. From the Whig perspective, this arrangement was an important check on executive power, keeping royally appointed officials accountable to democratically elected representatives. In 1772, Massachusetts learned that those officials would henceforth be paid by the British government rather than by the province. To protest this, Adams and his colleagues devised a system of committees of correspondence in November 1772; the towns of Massachusetts would consult with each other concerning political matters via messages sent through a network of committees that recorded British activities and protested imperial policies. Committees of correspondence soon formed in other colonies, as well.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Governor Hutchinson became concerned that the committees of correspondence were growing into an independence movement, so he convened the General Court in January 1773. Addressing the legislature, Hutchinson argued that denying the supremacy of Parliament, as some committees had done, came dangerously close to rebellion. "I know of no line that can be drawn", he said, "between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies." Adams and the House responded that the Massachusetts Charter did not establish Parliament's supremacy over the province, and so Parliament could not claim that authority now. Hutchinson soon realized that he had made a major blunder by initiating a public debate about independence and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies. The Boston Committee of Correspondence published its statement of colonial rights, along with Hutchinson's exchange with the Massachusetts House, in the widely distributed "Boston Pamphlet".


title: Samuel Adams

text: The quiet period in Massachusetts was over. Adams was easily re-elected to the Massachusetts House in May 1773, and was also elected as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting. In June 1773, he introduced a set of private letters to the Massachusetts House, written by Hutchinson several years earlier. In one letter, Hutchinson recommended to London that there should be "an abridgement of what are called English liberties" in Massachusetts. Hutchinson denied that this is what he meant, but his career was effectively over in Massachusetts, and the House sent a petition asking the king to recall him.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams took a leading role in the events that led up to the famous Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, although the precise nature of his involvement has been disputed.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In May 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a tax law to help the struggling East India Company, one of Great Britain's most important commercial institutions. Britons could buy smuggled Dutch tea more cheaply than the East India Company's tea because of the heavy taxes imposed on tea imported into Great Britain, and so the company amassed a huge surplus of tea that it could not sell. The British government's solution to the problem was to sell the surplus in the colonies. The Tea Act permitted the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies for the first time, bypassing most of the merchants who had previously acted as middlemen. This measure was a threat to the American colonial economy because it granted the Tea Company a significant cost advantage over local tea merchants and even local tea smugglers, driving them out of business. The act also reduced the taxes on tea paid by the company in Britain, but kept the controversial Townshend duty on tea imported in the colonies. A few merchants in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charlestown were selected to receive the company's tea for resale. In late 1773, seven ships were sent to the colonies carrying East India Company tea, including four bound for Boston.


title: Samuel Adams

text: News of the Tea Act set off a firestorm of protest in the colonies. This was not a dispute about high taxes; the price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act. Protesters were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar "no taxation without representation" argument remained prominent, along with the question of the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies. Some colonists worried that, by buying the cheaper tea, they would be conceding that Parliament had the right to tax them. The "power of the purse" conflict was still at issue. The tea tax revenues were to be used to pay the salaries of certain royal officials, making them independent of the people. Colonial smugglers played a significant role in the protests, since the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, which threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business. Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act and other merchants worried about the precedent of a government-created monopoly.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams and the correspondence committees promoted opposition to the Tea Act. In every colony except Massachusetts, protesters were able to force the tea consignees to resign or to return the tea to England. In Boston, however, Governor Hutchinson was determined to hold his ground. He convinced the tea consignees, two of whom were his sons, not to back down. The Boston Caucus and then the Town Meeting attempted to compel the consignees to resign, but they refused. With the tea ships about to arrive, Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence contacted nearby committees to rally support.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The tea ship "Dartmouth" arrived in the Boston Harbor in late November, and Adams wrote a circular letter calling for a mass meeting to be held at Faneuil Hall on November 29. Thousands of people arrived, so many that the meeting was moved to the larger Old South Meeting House. British law required the "Dartmouth" to unload and pay the duties within twenty days or customs officials could confiscate the cargo. The mass meeting passed a resolution introduced by Adams urging the captain of the "Dartmouth" to send the ship back without paying the import duty. Meanwhile, the meeting assigned twenty-five men to watch the ship and prevent the tea from being unloaded.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Governor Hutchinson refused to grant permission for the "Dartmouth" to leave without paying the duty. Two more tea ships arrived in Boston Harbor, the "Eleanor" and the "Beaver". The fourth ship, the "William", was stranded near Cape Cod and never arrived to Boston. December 16 was the last day of the "Dartmouth's" deadline, and about 7,000 people gathered around the Old South Meeting House. Adams received a report that Governor Hutchinson had again refused to let the ships leave, and he announced, "This meeting can do nothing further to save the country." According to a popular story, Adams's statement was a prearranged signal for the "tea party" to begin. However, this claim did not appear in print until nearly a century after the event, in a biography of Adams written by his great-grandson, who apparently misinterpreted the evidence. According to eyewitness accounts, people did not leave the meeting until ten or fifteen minutes after Adams's alleged "signal", and Adams in fact tried to stop people from leaving because the meeting was not yet over.


title: Samuel Adams

text: While Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House and headed to Boston Harbor. That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men boarded the three vessels, some of them thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, and dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water over the course of three hours. Adams never revealed whether he went to the wharf to witness the destruction of the tea. Whether or not he helped plan the event is unknown, but Adams immediately worked to publicize and defend it. He argued that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option that the people had to defend their constitutional rights.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Great Britain responded to the Boston Tea Party in 1774 with the Coercive Acts. The first of these acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston's commerce until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. The Massachusetts Government Act rewrote the Massachusetts Charter, making many officials royally appointed rather than elected, and severely restricting the activities of town meetings. The Administration of Justice Act allowed colonists charged with crimes to be transported to another colony or to Great Britain for trial. A new royal governor was appointed to enforce the acts: General Thomas Gage, who was also commander of British military forces in North America.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams worked to coordinate resistance to the Coercive Acts. In May 1774, the Boston Town Meeting (with Adams serving as moderator) organized an economic boycott of British goods. In June, Adams headed a committee in the Massachusetts House—with the doors locked to prevent Gage from dissolving the legislature—which proposed that an inter-colonial congress meet in Philadelphia in September. He was one of five delegates chosen to attend the First Continental Congress. Adams was never fashionably dressed and had little money, so friends bought him new clothes and paid his expenses for the journey to Philadelphia, his first trip outside of Massachusetts.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In Philadelphia, Adams promoted colonial unity while using his political skills to lobby other delegates. On September 16, messenger Paul Revere brought Congress the Suffolk Resolves, one of many resolutions passed in Massachusetts that promised strident resistance to the Coercive Acts. Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, issued a Declaration of Rights that denied Parliament's right to legislate for the colonies, and organized a colonial boycott known as the Continental Association.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams returned to Massachusetts in November 1774, where he served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, an extralegal legislative body independent of British control. The Provincial Congress created the first minutemen companies, consisting of militiamen who were to be ready for action on a moment's notice. Adams also served as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, which convened despite the Massachusetts Government Act, and was appointed to the Committee of Inspection to enforce the Continental Association. He was also selected to attend the Second Continental Congress, scheduled to meet in Philadelphia in May 1775.


title: Samuel Adams

text: John Hancock had been added to the delegation, and he and Adams attended the Provincial Congress in Concord, Massachusetts, before Adams's journey to the second Congress. The two men decided that it was not safe to return to Boston before leaving for Philadelphia, so they stayed at Hancock's childhood home in Lexington. On April 14, 1775, General Gage received a letter from Lord Dartmouth advising him "to arrest the principal actors and abettors in the Provincial Congress whose proceedings appear in every light to be acts of treason and rebellion". On the night of April 18, Gage sent out a detachment of soldiers on the fateful mission that sparked the American Revolutionary War. The purpose of the British expedition was to seize and destroy military supplies that the colonists had stored in Concord. According to many historical accounts, Gage also instructed his men to arrest Hancock and Adams, but the written orders issued by Gage made no mention of arresting the Patriot leaders. Gage had evidently decided against seizing Adams and Hancock, but Patriots initially believed otherwise, perhaps influenced by London newspapers that reached Boston with the news that the patriot leader would be hanged if he were caught. From Boston, Joseph Warren dispatched Paul Revere to warn the two that British troops were on the move and might attempt to arrest them. As Hancock and Adams made their escape, the first shots of the war began at Lexington and Concord. Soon after the battle, Gage issued a proclamation granting a general pardon to all who would "lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects"—with the exceptions of Hancock and Samuel Adams. Singling out Hancock and Adams in this manner only added to their renown among Patriots and, according to Patriot historian Mercy Otis Warren, perhaps exaggerated the importance of the two men.


title: Samuel Adams

text: The Continental Congress worked under a secrecy rule, so Adams's precise role in congressional deliberations is not fully documented. He appears to have had a major influence, working behind the scenes as a sort of "parliamentary whip" and Thomas Jefferson credits Samuel Adams—the lesser-remembered Adams—with steering the Congress toward independence, saying, "If there was any Palinurus to the Revolution, Samuel Adams was the man." He served on numerous committees, often dealing with military matters. Among his more noted acts, Adams nominated George Washington to be commander in chief over the Continental Army.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams was a cautious advocate for a declaration of independence, urging eager correspondents back in Massachusetts to wait for more moderate colonists to come around to supporting separation from Great Britain. He was pleased in 1775 when the colonies began to replace their old governments with independent republican governments. He praised Thomas Paine's popular pamphlet "Common Sense", writing as "Candidus" in early 1776, and supported the call for American independence. On June 7, Adams's political ally Richard Henry Lee introduced a three-part resolution calling for Congress to declare independence, create a colonial confederation, and seek foreign aid. After a delay to rally support, Congress approved the language of the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which Adams signed.


title: Samuel Adams

text: After the Declaration of Independence, Congress continued to manage the war effort. Adams served on military committees, including an appointment to the Board of War in 1777. He advocated paying bonuses to Continental Army soldiers to encourage them to reenlist for the duration of the war. He called for harsh state legislation to punish Loyalists—Americans who continued to support the British crown—who Adams believed were as dangerous to American liberty as British soldiers. In Massachusetts, more than 300 Loyalists were banished and their property confiscated. After the war, Adams opposed allowing Loyalists to return to Massachusetts, fearing that they would work to undermine republican government.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams was the Massachusetts delegate appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, the plan for the colonial confederation. With its emphasis on state sovereignty, the Articles reflected Congress's wariness of a strong central government, a concern shared by Adams. Like others at the time, Adams considered himself a citizen of the United States while continuing to refer to Massachusetts as his "country". After much debate, the Articles were sent to the states for ratification in November 1777. From Philadelphia, Adams urged Massachusetts to ratify, which it did. Adams signed the Articles of Confederation with the other Massachusetts delegates in 1778, but they were not ratified by all the states until 1781.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams returned to Boston in 1779 to attend a state constitutional convention. The Massachusetts General Court had proposed a new constitution the previous year, but voters rejected it, and so a convention was held to try again. Adams was appointed to a three-man drafting committee with his cousin John Adams and James Bowdoin. They drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, which was amended by the convention and approved by voters in 1780. The new constitution established a republican form of government, with annual elections and a separation of powers. It reflected Adams's belief that "a state is never free except when each citizen is bound by no law whatever that he has not approved of, either directly, or through his representatives". By modern standards, the new constitution was not "democratic"; Adams, like most of his peers, believed that only free males who owned property should be allowed to vote, and that the senate and the governor served to balance any excesses that might result from majority rule.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In 1781, Adams retired from the Continental Congress. His health was one reason; he was approaching his sixtieth birthday and suffered from tremors that made writing difficult. But he also wanted to return to Massachusetts to influence politics in the Commonwealth. He returned to Boston in 1781, and never left Massachusetts again.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams remained active in politics upon his return to Massachusetts. He frequently served as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, and was elected to the state senate, where he often served as that body's president.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams focused his political agenda on promoting virtue, which he considered essential in a republican government. If republican leaders lacked virtue, he believed, liberty was endangered. His major opponent in this campaign was his former protégé John Hancock; the two men had a falling out in the Continental Congress. Adams disapproved of what he viewed as Hancock's vanity and extravagance, which Adams believed were inappropriate in a republican leader. When Hancock left Congress in 1777, Adams and the other Massachusetts delegates voted against thanking him for his service as president of Congress. The struggle continued in Massachusetts. Adams thought that Hancock was not acting the part of a virtuous republican leader by acting like an aristocrat and courting popularity. Adams favored James Bowdoin for governor, and was distressed when Hancock won annual landslide victories.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams's promotion of public virtue took several forms. He played a major role in getting Boston to provide a free public education for children, even for girls, which was controversial. Adams was one of the charter members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780. After the Revolutionary War, Adams joined others, including Thomas Jefferson, in denouncing the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of former army officers. Adams worried that the Society was "a stride towards an hereditary military nobility", and thus a threat to republicanism. Adams also believed that public theaters undermined civic virtue, and he joined an ultimately unsuccessful effort to keep theaters banned in Boston. Decades after Adams's death, orator Edward Everett called him "the last of the Puritans".


title: Samuel Adams

text: Postwar economic troubles in western Massachusetts led to an uprising known as Shays' Rebellion, which began in 1786. Small farmers, angered by high taxes and debts, armed themselves and shut down debtor courts in Worcester and Hampshire Counties, prompting Governor James Bowdoin to consult Adams first. Adams at a Boston town meeting oversaw the drafting of a circular letter which denounced these actions as unconstitutional and as acts treason. As Massachusetts' senator representing Boston, Adams played an important role in forming Governor Bowdoin's hard-line policy to suppress the rebellion. His old political ally James Warren thought that Adams had forsaken his principles, but Adams saw no contradiction. He approved of rebellion against an unrepresentative government, as had happened during the American Revolution, but he opposed taking up arms against a republican government, composed of fellow American citizens, where problems should be remedied through elections. He thought that the leaders of Shays's Rebellion should be hanged, reportedly saying that "the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death", and urged Governor Bowdoin to use military force, who obliged and sent four thousand militiamen to put down the uprising.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Shays's Rebellion contributed to the belief that the Articles of Confederation needed to be revised. In 1787, delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, instead of revising the Articles, created a new United States Constitution with a much stronger national government. The Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, when Adams expressed his displeasure. "I confess," he wrote to Richard Henry Lee on Boston December 3, 1787, "as I enter the Building I stumble at the Threshold. I meet with a National Government, instead of a Federal Union of States." Adams was one of those derisively labeled "Anti-Federalists" by proponents of the new Constitution, who called themselves "Federalists". Adams was elected to the Massachusetts ratifying convention which met in January 1788. Despite his reservations, Adams rarely spoke at the convention, and listened carefully to the arguments rather than raising objections. Adams and John Hancock had reconciled, and they finally agreed to give their support for the Constitution, with the proviso that some amendments be added later. Even with the support of Hancock and Adams, the Massachusetts convention narrowly ratified the Constitution by a vote of 187 to 168.


title: Samuel Adams

text: While Adams was attending the ratifying convention, his only son Samuel Adams, Jr. died at just 37 years of age. The younger Adams had served as surgeon in the Revolutionary War, but had fallen ill and never fully recovered. The death was a stunning blow to the elder Adams. The younger Adams left his father the certificates that he had earned as a soldier, giving Adams and his wife unexpected financial security in their final years. Investments in land made them relatively wealthy by the mid-1790s, but this did not alter their frugal lifestyle.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams was concerned about the new Constitution and made an attempt to re-enter national politics. He allowed his name to be put forth as a candidate for the House of Representatives in the December 1788 election, but lost to Fisher Ames, apparently because Ames was a stronger supporter of the Constitution, a more popular position. Adams belonged to the school of revolutionary crusaders, whose purpose and influence became obscured by 1776 and all but disappeared by war's end. By the late 1780s Adams appeared to be an aging politician whose glory days were obscured by present day constitutional issues. Ames, however, belonged to the group of constructive statesmen who built up out of the wreck of revolution and strived to bring the young nation into a rapidly changing world by establishing a strong federal constitution. During this time the newspapers outlined the stark contrast in politics between Adams and Ames in their pages. Despite his defeat, Adams continued to work for amendments to the Constitution, a movement that ultimately resulted in the addition of a Bill of Rights in 1791. Adams subsequently became a firm supporter of the Constitution, with these amendments and the possibility of more.


title: Samuel Adams

text: In 1789, Adams was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and served in that office until Governor Hancock's death in 1793, when he became acting governor. The next year, Adams was elected as governor in his own right, the first of four annual terms. He was generally regarded as the leader of his state's Jeffersonian Republicans, who were opposed to the Federalist Party. Unlike some other Republicans, Adams supported the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 for the same reasons that he had opposed Shays's Rebellion. Like his fellow Republicans, he spoke out against the Jay Treaty in 1796, a position that drew criticism in a state that was increasingly Federalist. In that year's U. S. presidential election, Republicans in Virginia cast 15 electoral votes for Adams in an effort to make him Jefferson's vice-president, but Federalist John Adams won the election, with Jefferson becoming vice-president. The Adams cousins remained friends, but Samuel was pleased when Jefferson defeated John Adams in the 1800 presidential election.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams took a cue from President Washington, who declined to run for reelection in 1796: he retired from politics at the end of his term as governor in 1797. Adams suffered from what is now believed to have been essential tremor, a movement disorder that rendered him unable to write in the final decade of his life. He died at the age of 81 on October 2, 1803, and was interred at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston. Boston's Republican newspaper the "Independent Chronicle" eulogized him as the "Father of the American Revolution".


title: Samuel Adams

text: Samuel Adams is a controversial figure in American history. Disagreement about his significance and reputation began before his death and continues to the present.


title: Samuel Adams

text: Adams's contemporaries, both friends and foes, regarded him as one of the foremost leaders of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, for example, characterized Adams as "truly the "Man of the Revolution"." Leaders in other colonies were compared to him; Cornelius Harnett was called the "Samuel Adams of North Carolina", Charles Thomson the "Samuel Adams of Philadelphia", and Christopher Gadsden the "Sam Adams of the South". When John Adams traveled to France during the Revolution, he had to explain that he was not Samuel, "the famous Adams".