The image of an historical figure often depends upon the labor of historians who fill in gaps of knowledge with plausible extrapolations or pleasing embellishments. The idea of Samuel Adams as the Whig leader of Boston, as the one who was supposed to know everything that the Whigs were up to receives a boost from a story first told by George Bancroft. In involves the secret code with which Adams tells the huge meeting of “the body of the people” at Old South Church on 16 December 1773, that the meeting is now over and it is time to start the destruction of the tea.
“It had been dark for more than an hour. The Church in which they met was dimly lighted; when at a quarter before six [Captain] Rotch appeared, and satisfied the people by relating that the Governor had refused him a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he had finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word: ‘This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.’ On the instant a shout was heard at the porch; the war whoop resounded; a body of men, forty or fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door; …” (Bancroft 1866, VI: 486)
Bancroft found the 10 words of Adams that he quotes in the long deposition of Captain Francis Rotch to Privy Council and connects it with separate reports that men disguised as Mohawks left for Griffin’s Wharf soon after the breakup of the meeting at Old South. Putting these two reports together, Bancroft surmised that the words Adams’ spoke were not just any words from a meeting but “the word,” a signal to begin destroying tea.

There are a number of reasons to be skeptical of Bancroft’s account. First, while there is no dispute that Adams was one of the speakers at the 16 December meeting—along with Josiah Quincy, Dr. Thomas Young, Dr. Joseph Warren—the moderator of meeting was not Samuel Adams (as most tellings of this anecdote imply) but Mr. Samuel Phillips Savage. Secondly, given the secrecy of the planning for the destruction of the tea, and the successful effort to shield any of the Whig leaders from implication in the destruction of the tea, it seems very odd that Adams could have sent such a signal so publicly. Adams’ words are routine expression of Whig worry about the political danger of the tea. They only get their inflammatory charge in Bancroft’s retelling from an emphasis upon its first few words: [since] “this meeting can do nothing more to save the country…” [then, it is time to do something else, like destroy tea].  Adams’ ten words do not appear in the local records of the meeting: the minutes kept by town clerk William Cooper, the letters sent by the Boston Committee to other colonies, or Samuel Adams’ long account of the destruction of the tea in a letter to Arthur Lee in London. Of course for those who believe in Sam Adams’ iron control of Boston politics, these absences speak volumes. In the only place where the words appear, Captain Francis Rotch’s deposition before the Privy Council in London, they are not connected with the beginning of the destruction of the tea. (19 February 1774; Documents 1975, VIII: 51-52).  Yet George Bancroft’s story of Samuel Adams’ secret signal has, in spite of the absence of documentary evidence to support it, proved irresistible. If you go to Old South Church today, you can hear an audio ‘recreation’ of the moment. It’s fun.