Samuel Adams: Father Of The American Revolution
Never president like his cousin John, not a military leader like George Washington, Samuel Adams seems to have become simply “the other Adams” – the one who was believed to incite to action a gang of semi-ruffians known as the Sons of Liberty.
Samuel Adams was not always viewed so dismissively. Thomas Jefferson called him “the Patriarch of Liberty.” Sam Adams was an agitator, but he was also the chief philosopher behind arguments for independence from Britain. Eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, he wrote that men were “unalienably entitled to those essential rights in common with all men…” Others would rise up in response to particular issues such as the Stamp Act, but when the crisis was over, most again became complacent. In Sam Adams, though, the fire of liberty always burned. Independence from Britain seems to have been on his mind as early as his commencement address at Harvard in 1843.
In Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution, Mark Puls resurrects the true historical importance of Samuel Adams. This fascinating, engaging book most definitely deserves to join other recent histories and biographies of the Revolutionary period as a bestseller.
