托福写作素材之名人篇.docVIP

Samuel Adams Revolutionary leader The Famous Adams. When John Adams arrived in France in 1778, he was greeted with a persistent question: was he “le fameaux Adams?” John Adams often bristled at the attention paid to others in the Patriot cause, such as James Otis, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. But in 1778 he acknowledged that he was not the famous Adams; that was his cousin, Samuel, leader of the Massachusetts Patriots, and the only American whom King George III exempted from a promise of amnesty. “If the American Revolution was a blessing, and not a curse,” John Adams wrote later, “the name and character of Samuel Adams ought to be preserved. It will bear a strict and critical examination even by the inveterate malice of his enemies.... His merits and services and sacrifices and suffering are beyond all calculation.” Education. Samuel Adams was born in Boston on 27 September 1722. His father, Samuel, a successful brewer, had served as a deacon of both the Old South Church and New South Church and as a Boston selectman and representative to the assembly. Samuel’s mother, Mary, was deeply religious, influenced by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. Only three of their twelve children survived infancy. Samuel and his sister and brother were kept away from the influence of other children, instead instilled with deep feelings of personal responsiblity and isolation. At the age of fourteen Samuel entered Harvard. With class rank determined by a family’s social position, he was ranked fifth in a class of twenty-two. At graduation (1740) he won the class debate on the subject of liberty, and in 1743 he was awarded a master’s degree for his thesis “Whether It Be Lawful To Resist The Supreme Magistrate, If The Commonwealth Cannot Be Otherwise Preserved.” Entrance to Public Life. Adams studied for the bar briefly and then went into business. He was not a good businessman, and he quickly went bankrupt. His father paid off his debts and established Samuel as the m