tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post115514389896701622..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: Samuel Adams: "the psalm-singer"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-20679110147725888972008-03-19T20:57:00.000-05:002008-03-19T20:57:00.000-05:00I’m not sure we can take a satirical piece in the ...I’m not sure we can take a satirical piece in the newspaper as fully accurate. It does reflect, however, how religious gatherings and revivals in early America were often social events—including a way to meet young people of the opposite sex.<BR/><BR/>I agree that there’s no reason that psalm-singers couldn’t also frequent taverns. I don’t believe the posting implied otherwise.<BR/><BR/>Rather, my point was that we have two of Samuel Adams’s enemies and some of his friends and relations writing that he enjoyed psalm-singing, and one political foe complaining that he used that activity to recruit young men to his political cause. We have no contemporaries complaining that he frequented taverns or recruited men there. We have many historians misinterpreting the insult “Sam the Publican,” and giving readers a false sense of the man.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-38398237319722772592008-03-19T20:12:00.000-05:002008-03-19T20:12:00.000-05:00The main entry gives the impression that psalm-sin...The main entry gives the impression that psalm-singing and tavern-going would have been mutually exclusive, and that Sam Adams would have had to do one or the other. Not so, as shown most vividly in an open letter by "Clarissa" in the <I>Boston Gazette</I> of March 10, 1766. Clarissa says she is a new student in town. She had gone to a service at New South Church (where Sam Adams and William Billings often sang) and found the new style of music there "fitted to elevate the languid soul, and administer reproof to every untuned heart."<BR/><BR/>This "sublime entertainment," together with her belief that her own voice was a good one, led her to try a "singing party for the improvement of learners."<BR/><BR/>Clarissa was "surprized" to find, not a grave and pious assembly but "a large company, in all the spirit of gaity, professedly convened for amusement, or instruction in the use of the voice, and declaring by their whole conduct this was all they meant." They were indeed occupied in singing psalms, but moved quickly back and forth between that and "a chearful joke, a glass of wine, or the repeated plaudits of the hearers."<BR/><BR/>If a relatively decorous lot (a "Rev. Divine" was among its number) was drinking and joking, one would guess that Adams' "Mechanicks" singers were looser still.Town Commonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11576063060180559682noreply@blogger.com