Who was Samuel Adams?
Adams, Samuel It is sure that no one did more to make the United States a free and independent nation than did Samuel Adams of Boston, one of the great founding fathers. It may be that no one else did so much. Samuel Adams wanted the revolution more than anyone else. He stirred up the spirits and tempers of Americans when otherwise they might have been content to make a bad peace with the English king. He started some of the dramatic events, like the Boston Tea Party, that “stirred men’s souls.” He faced danger and dared the fates time after time. From the success of the revolution he gained far less in fame and fortune than any of the others who approached him in stature. Yet he did not seem to care. A cousin of John Adams, the second president, but a few years older, Samuel Adams was born in Boston in 1722. Like his cousin John, he went to Harvard. Also like his cousin John, he had independent ideas when he was quite young; at the age of 21, he proposed the question, “Is it not lawfu
