Read the Revolution Speaker Series with Stacy Schiff

In partnership with The Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff will join the Museum on Wednesday, Jan. 31, for a lively discussion with Museum President & CEO Dr. R. Scott Stephenson inspired by her most recent book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, and Adams’s attendance at the First Continental Congress in 1774 at Philadelphia’s Carpenters’ Hall. In 2024, The Carpenters’ Company celebrates their 300th anniversary as well as the 250th anniversaries of the First Continental Congress and the completion of Carpenters’ Hall.

As Schiff argues in The Revolutionary, Samuel Adams was a political genius who was rare for his ability to keep a secret and saw democracy as a virtue. As an early and fiery advocate for American independence, he did not preen for posterity. Adams wrote no memoir, resisted calls to assemble his political writings, and was often confused with his younger cousin John Adams’s prolific writing for the historical record. Elected to represent Boston in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1765, the Harvard-educated politician praised the 1773 Boston Tea Party as an act of resistance. In 1774, the 51-year-old was among the oldest delegates at the First Continental Congress at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson called Samuel Adams “the earliest, most active, and persevering man of the Revolution,” and he retired from political life in 1797 as acting governor of Massachusetts.

The program will be held in the Museum’s Liberty Hall and will be broadcast live via Zoom. Following an interview with Schiff, Museum President & CEO Dr. R. Scott Stephenson will facilitate a live Q&A with both onsite and online audiences.  

Doors open at 6 p.m. for onsite guests to see a featured artifact, enjoy refreshments at a cash bar, and have the opportunity to purchase signed copies of the featured book. 

About Stacy Schiff