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NAME: John Adams

NICKNAME: Father of American Independence, Father of the American Navy

BORN: October 30, 1735, in Quincy, Massachusetts

DIED: July 4, 1826, in Quincy, Massachusetts

TIME IN OFFICE: March 4, 1797, to March 3, 1801

VICE PRESIDENT: Thomas Jefferson

POLITICAL PARTY: Federalist

EARLY LIFE

The man who became known as the "Father of American Independence" was born a British subject in the colony of Massachusetts on October 30, 1735. The son of an educated farmer and leather craftsman, Adams grew up enjoying toy boats, marbles, kites, hunting, and reading. He graduated from Harvard University in 1755 before becoming a lawyer.

Adams practiced law in Boston for 12 years and served briefly in the state legislature, or government, of Massachusetts before becoming a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, a group of representatives from the 13 colonies that would eventually become the United States.

AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR

Adams, like other members of the Second Continental Congress, helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, which proclaimed that the 13 colonies were now independent states and no longer under British rule. An army was formed to oppose the British, it was Adams suggested that George Washington lead it.

Adams was overseas during much of the Revolutionary War, the fight for independence from Great Britain. He represented his new country to governments in Europe, hoping they would help the United States. During his stay in the Netherlands, he arranged for important loans to help fund the war effort. Later he helped negotiate the peace treaty that ended the war in 1781.

After the war, Adams served as the first U.S. ambassador, or representative, to Great Britain. He lived in Great Britain and worked with officials there to improve the relationship between the two countries.

THE FIRST VICE PRESIDENT

Adams returned to the United States in 1788, just after the Constitution of the United States had been drafted. This document created a strong federal government in the new country: two chambers of legislators (also called lawmakers), a federal court system, and a president and vice president to oversee everything. The Constitution still serves as the foundation for the United States government today.

Based on the Constitution's directions, states chose representatives to elect a president. Washington won the vote, making him the first-ever president of the United States. Adams received the second most votes and became vice president. (Before presidents ran with a vice presidential partner like they do today, the Constitution originally called for all candidates to run separately and be considered for president. The runner-up, or second-place finisher, became vice president.)

Adams held the post for both of Washington's terms, but he found the job boring. He observed: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."

THE SECOND PRESIDENT

After eight years as president, Washington retired in 1797. Adams ran for president again. In 1796 Adams became the second president of the United States by only a three-vote margin over Thomas Jefferson, who became his vice president. Though they'd been good friends during the Revolutionary War, the two men fought during their administration over how to run the country.

FIGHTING WITH FRANCE

Adams devoted much of his presidency to avoiding war with France after fighting broke out in Europe over the bloody French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799. During the revolution, the French overthrew their monarchy and established a republic, similar to what the United States did during their own Revolutionary War.

During the American Revolutionary War, France supported U.S. independence and loaned the colonies money to fight the British. But after a revolution overthrew the French royalty, the United States refused to pay the debt, saying that the government they owed money to no longer existed. This angered France. France was also upset that the United States traded goods with Great Britain while France was at war with them. The country began attacking U.S. merchant ships. For two years, France and the United States waged what was called a "quasi-war" at sea. Though some government officials wanted a full-blown war with France, Adams used diplomacy, or peaceful negotiations, to reach an end to the fighting.

ADAMS VERSUS JEFFERSON-AGAIN

Not all of Adams decisions as president were admired. Congress pressured him into signing laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws allowed the government to arrest and imprison newspaper editors and writers who disagreed with the government's policies. These laws also made it possible to deport immigrants who spoke out against the government.

In 1800, Adams ran against Jefferson again for a second term as president. This time, Jefferson won. It was a mean campaign and added to the hard feelings between Adams and Jefferson. Adams did not attend Jefferson's inauguration.

LASTING LEGACY

In 1801 Adams retired to his home in Massachusetts with his wife, Abigail. After their presidencies were over, Adams and Jefferson restored the friendship of their Revolutionary War days through letter writing. The two men were the only signers of the Declaration of Independence to become presidents. Curiously, they both died on the same day-July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the approval of the Declaration of Independence. Adams's final words were reportedly: "Thomas Jefferson still survives." He did not know his friend had died only a short while earlier.

Adams-as the president who succeeded, or followed, George Washington-showed that the nation's most important office could survive a change of leadership, which countries ruled by kings and queens sometimes did not. He helped his new country avoid war with France during his single term in office and he's remembered today as the "Father of American Independence." Adams was also one of the few Founding Fathers who did not own enslaved people. He believed the Revolution would never be complete until enslaved people were free.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt

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Learn about the life and achievements of the 2nd president of the United States.

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Learn about the life and achievements of the first president of the United States.

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NAME: Thomas Jefferson

NICKNAME: Father of the Declaration of Independence

BORN: April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia

DIED: July 4, 1826, in Charlottesville, Virginia

TIME IN OFFICE: March 4, 1801, to March 3, 1809

VICE PRESIDENTS: Aaron Burr (first term), George Clinton (second term)

POLITICAL PARTY: Democratic-Republican

EARLY LIFE

Thomas Jefferson was born near the Blue Ridge Mountains of the British-ruled colony of Virginia on April 13, 1743. From the age of nine, Jefferson studied away from home and lived with his tutor. His father-a landowner, surveyor, and government official-died when his son was 14. Later Jefferson enrolled at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. His education included science, mathematics, philosophy, law, English language and literature, Latin, Greek, French, and dancing.

"LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

After college, Jefferson became a lawyer. By age 26 he was a member of Virginia's colonial legislature, or government. Like George Washington, Jefferson spoke out against Great Britain's rule over the 13 North American colonies. When the colonists decided to demand their independence from Great Britain, Jefferson was chosen to write a document explaining why the colonies should be free. The document became known as the Declaration of Independence. It's still admired today for its call for freedom, equality, and its demand that all citizens deserve "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Before he became president, Jefferson was governor of Virginia before the Revolutionary War. After the war, he served as U.S. minister to France, secretary of state for President George Washington, and vice president for President John Adams, the country's second president.

GO WEST, YOUNG NATION

When Jefferson became the third president of the United States in 1801, the country basically ended at the Mississippi River; France controlled much of what was west. That included the Port of New Orleans, in what is now Louisiana. It's coastal location made it a key spot for trade-and Jefferson wanted it. In 1803, he made what's known as one of the greatest real estate deals in history: the Louisiana Purchase.

France agreed to sell the entire city of New Orleans, which included the port, to the United States for $10 million; they threw in the rest of the territory they owned for an additional $5 million. The agreement-which gave the United States about 828,000 square miles of land-almost doubled the size of the nearly 30-year-old nation. Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to join William Clark in leading an expedition to the West Coast to explore the country's new land. The Louisiana Purchase is thought by many to be Jefferson's greatest accomplishment as president.

LASTING LEGACY

Jefferson retired to Monticello, his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the end of his second term. He designed and founded the University of Virginia in Charlottesville during his retirement.

Jefferson left a complicated legacy: The man who wrote the Declaration of Independence-which states that "all men are created equal"-also enslaved more than 600 people during his lifetime. But according to his writings, Jefferson knew that future generations would have to end the enslavement of people, and that it would be a long, terrible process.

Like his friend John Adams, Jefferson died 50 years to the day after the approval of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1826.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt

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Learn about the life and achievements of the 3rd president of the United States.

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Benjamin Franklin, (born January 17 [January 6, Old Style], 1706, Boston, Massachusetts [U.S.]-died April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers, represented the United States in France during the American Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of electricity, and is remembered for the wit, wisdom, and elegance of his writing.

Early life

Franklin was born the 10th son of the 17 children of a man who made soap and candles, one of the lowliest of the artisan crafts. In an age that privileged the firstborn son, Franklin was, as he tartly noted in his Autobiography, "the youngest Son of the youngest Son for five Generations back." He learned to read very early and had one year in grammar school and another under a private teacher, but his formal education ended at age 10. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. His mastery of the printer's trade, of which he was proud to the end of his life, was achieved between 1718 and 1723. In the same period he read tirelessly and taught himself to write effectively.

His first enthusiasm was for poetry, but, discouraged with the quality of his own, he gave it up. Prose was another matter. Young Franklin discovered a volume of The Spectator-featuring Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele's famous periodical essays, which had appeared in England in 1711-12-and saw in it a means for improving his writing. He read these Spectator papers over and over, copied and recopied them, and then tried to recall them from memory. He even turned them into poetry and then back into prose. Franklin realized, as all the Founders did, that writing competently was such a rare talent in the 18th century that anyone who could do it well immediately attracted attention. "Prose writing" became, as he recalled in his Autobiography, "of great Use to me in the Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement."

In 1721 James Franklin founded a weekly newspaper, the New-England Courant, to which readers were invited to contribute. Benjamin, now 16, read and perhaps set in type these contributions and decided that he could do as well himself. In 1722 he wrote a series of 14 essays signed "Silence Dogood" in which he lampooned everything from funeral eulogies to the students of Harvard College. For one so young to assume the persona of a middle-aged woman was a remarkable feat, and Franklin took "exquisite Pleasure" in the fact that his brother and others became convinced that only a learned and ingenious wit could have written these essays.

Late in 1722 James Franklin got into trouble with the provincial authorities and was forbidden to print or publish the Courant. To keep the paper going, he discharged his younger brother from his original apprenticeship and made him the paper's nominal publisher. New indentures were drawn up but not made public. Some months later, after a bitter quarrel, Benjamin secretly left home, sure that James would not "go to law" and reveal the subterfuge he had devised.

Youthful adventures

Failing to find work in New York City, Franklin at age 17 went on to Quaker-dominated Philadelphia, a much more open and religiously tolerant place than Puritan Boston. One of the most memorable scenes of the Autobiography is the description of his arrival on a Sunday morning, tired and hungry. Finding a bakery, he asked for three pennies' worth of bread and got "three great Puffy Rolls." Carrying one under each arm and munching on the third, he walked up Market Street past the door of the Read family, where stood Deborah, his future wife. She saw him and "thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward ridiculous Appearance."

A few weeks later he was rooming at the Reads' and employed as a printer. By the spring of 1724 he was enjoying the companionship of other young men with a taste for reading, and he was also being urged to set up in business for himself by the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. At Keith's suggestion, Franklin returned to Boston to try to raise the necessary capital. His father thought him too young for such a venture, so Keith offered to foot the bill himself and arranged Franklin's passage to England so that he could choose his type and make connections with London stationers and booksellers. Franklin exchanged "some promises" about marriage with Deborah Read and, with a young friend, James Ralph, as his companion, sailed for London in November 1724, just over a year after arriving in Philadelphia. Not until his ship was well out at sea did he realize that Governor Keith had not delivered the letters of credit and introduction he had promised.

In London Franklin quickly found employment in his trade and was able to lend money to Ralph, who was trying to establish himself as a writer. The two young men enjoyed the theatre and the other pleasures of the city, including women. While in London, Franklin wrote A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), a Deistical pamphlet inspired by his having set type for William Wollaston's moral tract, The Religion of Nature Delineated. Franklin argued in his essay that since human beings have no real freedom of choice, they are not morally responsible for their actions. This was perhaps a nice justification for his self-indulgent behaviour in London and his ignoring of Deborah, to whom he had written only once. He later repudiated the pamphlet, burning all but one of the copies still in his possession.

By 1726 Franklin was tiring of London. He considered becoming an itinerant teacher of swimming, but, when Thomas Denham, a Quaker merchant, offered him a clerkship in his store in Philadelphia with a prospect of fat commissions in the West Indian trade, he decided to return home.

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Benjamin Franklin | Biography, Inventions, Books, American Revolution, & Facts

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Benjamin Franklin, American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the American Founding Fathers, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He also made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of technology.

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Benjamin Franklin - Quotes, Inventions & Facts

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Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of the Founding Fathers who never served as president but was a respected inventor, publisher, scientist and diplomat.

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Benedict Arnold, (born January 14, 1741, Norwich, Connecticut [U.S.]-died June 14, 1801, London, England), patriot officer who served the cause of the American Revolution until 1779, when he shifted his allegiance to the British. Thereafter his name became an epithet for traitor in the United States.

Who was Benedict Arnold?

How did Benedict Arnold betray the Continental Army to the British?

Why did Benedict Arnold betray the Continental Army to the British?

What happened to Benedict Arnold after he betrayed the Continental Army to the British?

What does it mean to call someone a "Benedict Arnold"?

Upon the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington, Massachusetts ( April 1775), Arnold volunteered for service and participated with Ethan Allen in the successful colonial attack on British-held Fort Ticonderoga, New York, the following month. That autumn he was appointed by General George Washington to command an expedition to capture Quebec. He marched with 700 men by way of the Maine wilderness, a remarkable feat of woodsmanship and endurance, and, reinforced by General Richard Montgomery, attacked the well-fortified city. The combined assault ( December 31, 1775) failed, Montgomery was killed, and Arnold was severely wounded.

Promoted to the rank of brigadier general, Arnold constructed a flotilla on Lake Champlain and inflicted severe losses on a greatly superior enemy fleet near Valcour Island, New York ( October 11, 1776). He returned a hero, but his rash courage and impatient energy had aroused the enmity of several officers. When in February 1777 Congress created five new major generalships, Arnold was passed over in favour of his juniors. Arnold resented this affront, and only Washington's personal persuasion kept him from resigning.

Two months later he repelled a British attack on Danbury, Connecticut, and was made a major general, but his seniority was not restored and Arnold felt his honour impugned. Again he tried to resign, but in July he accepted a government order to help stem the British advance into upper New York. He won a victory at Fort Stanwix (now Rome) in August 1777 and commanded advance battalions at the Battle of Saratoga that autumn, fighting brilliantly until seriously wounded. For his services he was restored to his proper relative rank.

Crippled from his wounds, Arnold was placed in command of Philadelphia (June 1778), where he socialized with families of loyalist sympathies and lived extravagantly. To raise money, he violated several state and military regulations, arousing the suspicions and, finally, the denunciations of Pennsylvania's supreme executive council. These charges were then referred to Congress, and Arnold asked for an immediate court-martial to clear himself.

Meanwhile, in April 1779, Arnold married Margaret (Peggy) Shippen, a young woman of loyalist sympathies. Early in May he made secret overtures to British headquarters, and a year later he informed the British of a proposed American invasion of Canada. He later revealed that he expected to obtain the command of West Point, New York, and asked the British for £20,000 for betraying this post. When his British contact, Major John André, was captured by the Americans, Arnold escaped on a British ship, leaving André to be hanged as a spy. The sacrifice of André made Arnold odious to loyalists, and his reputation was further tarnished among his former neighbours when he led a raid on New London, Connecticut, in September 1781.

Arnold, Benedict: meeting with Maj. John André Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-30575)

At the end of 1781 Arnold went to England. Unable to obtain a regular commission in the British army, he later pursued various business ventures, including land speculation in Canada. Arnold returned to England in 1791, but he left to spend several years privateering in the West Indies before permanently settling in London.

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Benedict Arnold, (born January 14, 1741, Norwich, Connecticut [U.S.]-died June 14, 1801, London, England), patriot officer who served the cause of the American Revolution until 1779, when he shifted his allegiance to the British. Thereafter his name became an epithet for traitor in the United States.

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George Washington, (born February 22 [February 11, Old Style], 1732, Westmoreland county, Virginia [U.S.]-died December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia, U.S.), American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775-83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789-97).

Washington's father, Augustine Washington, had gone to school in England, tasted seafaring life, and then settled down to manage his growing Virginia estates. His mother was Mary Ball, whom Augustine, a widower, had married early the previous year. Washington's paternal lineage had some distinction; an early forebear was described as a "gentleman," Henry VIII later gave the family lands, and its members held various offices. But family fortunes fell with the Puritan revolution in England, and John Washington, grandfather of Augustine, migrated in 1657 to Virginia. The ancestral home at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, is maintained as a Washington memorial. Little definite information exists on any of the line until Augustine. He was an energetic, ambitious man who acquired much land, built mills, took an interest in opening iron mines, and sent his two eldest sons to England for schooling. By his first wife, Jane Butler, he had four children. By his second wife, Mary Ball, he had six. Augustine died April 12, 1743.

Childhood and youth

Little is known of George Washington's early childhood, spent largely on the Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mason L. Weems's stories of the hatchet and cherry tree and of young Washington's repugnance to fighting are apocryphal efforts to fill a manifest gap. He attended school irregularly from his 7th to his 15th year, first with the local church sexton and later with a schoolmaster named Williams. Some of his schoolboy papers survive. He was fairly well trained in practical mathematics-gauging, several types of mensuration, and such trigonometry as was useful in surveying. He studied geography, possibly had a little Latin, and certainly read some of The Spectator and other English classics. The copybook in which he transcribed at 14 a set of moral precepts, or Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, was carefully preserved. His best training, however, was given him by practical men and outdoor occupations, not by books. He mastered tobacco growing and stock raising, and early in his teens he was sufficiently familiar with surveying to plot the fields about him.

At his father's death, the 11-year-old boy became the ward of his half brother Lawrence, a man of fine character who gave him wise and affectionate care. Lawrence inherited the beautiful estate of Little Hunting Creek, which had been granted to the original settler, John Washington, and which Augustine had done much since 1738 to develop. Lawrence married Anne (Nancy) Fairfax, daughter of Col. William Fairfax, a cousin and agent of Lord Fairfax and one of the chief proprietors of the region. Lawrence also built a house and named the 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) holding Mount Vernon in honour of the admiral under whom he had served in the siege of Cartagena. Living there chiefly with Lawrence (though he spent some time near Fredericksburg with his other half brother, Augustine, called Austin), George entered a more spacious and polite world. Anne Fairfax Washington was a woman of charm, grace, and culture; Lawrence had brought from his English school and naval service much knowledge and experience. A valued neighbour and relative, George William Fairfax, whose large estate, Belvoir, was about 4 miles (6 km) distant, and other relatives by marriage, the Carlyles of Alexandria, helped form George's mind and manners.

The youth turned first to surveying as a profession. Lord Fairfax, a middle-aged bachelor who owned more than 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, came to America in 1746 to live with his cousin George William at Belvoir and to look after his properties. Two years later he sent to the Shenandoah Valley a party to survey and plot his lands to make regular tenants of the squatters moving in from Pennsylvania. With the official surveyor of Prince William county in charge, Washington went along as assistant. The 16-year-old lad kept a disjointed diary of the trip, which shows skill in observation. He describes the discomfort of sleeping under "one thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas & c"; an encounter with an Indian war party bearing a scalp; the Pennsylvania-German emigrants, "as ignorant a set of people as the Indians they would never speak English but when spoken to they speak all Dutch"; and the serving of roast wild turkey on "a Large Chip," for "as for dishes we had none."

The following year (1749), aided by Lord Fairfax, Washington received an appointment as official surveyor of Culpeper county, and for more than two years he was kept almost constantly busy. Surveying not only in Culpeper but also in Frederick and Augusta counties, he made journeys far beyond the Tidewater region into the western wilderness. The experience taught him resourcefulness and endurance and toughened him in both body and mind. Coupled with Lawrence's ventures in land, it also gave him an interest in western development that endured throughout his life. He was always disposed to speculate in western holdings and to view favourably projects for colonizing the West, and he greatly resented the limitations that the crown in time laid on the westward movement. In 1752 Lord Fairfax determined to take up his final residence in the Shenandoah Valley and settled there in a log hunting lodge, which he called Greenway Court after a Kentish manor of his family's. There Washington was sometimes entertained and had access to a small library that Fairfax had begun accumulating at Oxford.

The years 1751-52 marked a turning point in Washington's life, for they placed him in control of Mount Vernon. Lawrence, stricken by tuberculosis, went to Barbados in 1751 for his health, taking George along. From this sole journey beyond the present borders of the United States, Washington returned with the light scars of an attack of smallpox. In July of the next year, Lawrence died, making George executor and residuary heir of his estate should his daughter, Sarah, die without issue. As she died within two months, Washington at age 20 became head of one of the best Virginia estates. He always thought farming the "most delectable" of pursuits. "It is honorable," he wrote, "it is amusing, and, with superior judgment, it is profitable." And, of all the spots for farming, he thought Mount Vernon the best. "No estate in United America," he assured an English correspondent, "is more pleasantly situated than this." His greatest pride in later days was to be regarded as the first farmer of the land.

He gradually increased the estate until it exceeded 8,000 acres (3,000 hectares). He enlarged the house in 1760 and made further enlargements and improvements on the house and its landscaping in 1784-86. He also tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific advances.

For the next 20 years the main background of Washington's life was the work and society of Mount Vernon. He gave assiduous attention to the rotation of crops, fertilization of the soil, and the management of livestock. He had to manage the 18 slaves that came with the estate and others he bought later; by 1760 he had paid taxes on 49 slaves-though he strongly disapproved of the institution and hoped for some mode of abolishing it. At the time of his death, more than 300 slaves were housed in the quarters on his property. He had been unwilling to sell slaves lest families be broken up, even though the increase in their numbers placed a burden on him for their upkeep and gave him a larger force of workers than he required, especially after he gave up the cultivation of tobacco. In his will, he bequeathed the slaves in his possession to his wife and ordered that upon her death they be set free, declaring also that the young, the aged, and the infirm among them "shall be comfortably cloathed & fed by my heirs." Still, this accounted for only about half the slaves on his property. The other half, owned by his wife, were entailed to the Custis estate, so that on her death they were destined to pass to her heirs. However, she freed all the slaves in 1800 after his death.

For diversion Washington was fond of riding, fox hunting, and dancing, of such theatrical performances as he could reach, and of duck hunting and sturgeon fishing. He liked billiards and cards and not only subscribed to racing associations but also ran his own horses in races. In all outdoor pursuits, from wrestling to colt breaking, he excelled. A friend of the 1750s describes him as "straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings"; as very muscular and broad-shouldered but, though large-boned, weighing only 175 pounds; and as having long arms and legs. His penetrating blue-gray eyes were overhung by heavy brows, his nose was large and straight, and his mouth was large and firmly closed. "His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman." He soon became prominent in community affairs, was an active member and later vestryman of the Episcopal church, and as early as 1755 expressed a desire to stand for the Virginia House of Burgesses.

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George Washington | Life, Presidency, Accomplishments, & Facts

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George Washington, American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775-83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789-97). He is known as 'the Father of His Country.' Learn more about Washington's life and career.

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John Adams, (born October 30 [October 19, Old Style], 1735, Braintree [now in Quincy], Massachusetts [U.S.]-died July 4, 1826, Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.), an early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774-77), the author of the Massachusetts constitution (1780), a signer of the Treaty of Paris (1783), the first American ambassador to the Court of St. James (1785-88), and the first vice president (1789-97) and second president (1797-1801) of the United States. Although Adams was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most significant statesmen of the revolutionary era, his reputation faded in the 19th century, only to ascend again during the last half of the 20th century. The modern edition of his correspondence prompted a rediscovery of his bracing honesty and pungent way with words, his importance as a political thinker, his realistic perspective on American foreign policy, and his patriarchal role as founder of one of the most prominent families in American history.

Early life

Adams was the eldest of the three sons of Deacon John Adams and Susanna Boylston of Braintree, Massachusetts. His father was only a farmer and shoemaker, but the Adams family could trace its lineage back to the first generation of Puritan settlers in New England. A local selectman and a leader in the community, Deacon Adams encouraged his eldest son to aspire toward a career in the ministry. In keeping with that goal, Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755. For the next three years, he taught grammar school in Worcester, Massachusetts, while contemplating his future. He eventually chose law rather than the ministry and in 1758 moved back to Braintree, then soon began practicing law in nearby Boston.

In 1764 Adams married Abigail Smith, a minister's daughter from neighbouring Weymouth. Intelligent, well-read, vivacious, and just as fiercely independent as her new husband, Abigail Adams became a confidante and political partner who helped to stabilize and sustain the ever-irascible and highly volatile Adams throughout his long career. The letters between them afford an extended glimpse into their deepest thoughts and emotions and provide modern readers with the most revealing record of personal intimacy between husband and wife in the revolutionary era. Typical of their epistolary exchange was Abigail's lament regarding John's prolonged absence in her letter to him of November 27, 1775:

Colonel Warren returned last week to Plymouth, so that I shall not hear anything from you until he goes back again, which will not be till the last of this month. He damped my spirits greatly by telling me that the court had prolonged your stay another month. I was pleasing myself with the thought that you would soon be upon your return. It is in vain to repine. I hope the public will reap what I sacrifice.

Their first child, Abigail Amelia, was born in 1765. Their first son, John Quincy, arrived two years later. Two other sons, Thomas Boylston and Charles, followed shortly thereafter. (Another child, Susanna, did not survive infancy.)

By then Adams's legal career was on the rise, and he had become a visible member of the resistance movement that questioned Parliament's right to tax the American colonies. In 1765 Adams wrote " A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law," which justified opposition to the recently enacted Stamp Act-an effort to raise revenue by requiring all publications and legal documents to bear a stamp-by arguing that Parliament's intrusions into colonial affairs exposed the inherently coercive and corrupt character of English politics. Intensely combative, full of private doubts about his own capacities but never about his cause, Adams became a leading figure in the opposition to the Townshend Acts (1767), which imposed duties on imported commodities (i.e., glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea). Despite his hostility toward the British government, in 1770 Adams agreed to defend the British soldiers who had fired on a Boston crowd in what became known as the Boston Massacre. His insistence on upholding the legal rights of the soldiers, who in fact had been provoked, made him temporarily unpopular but also marked him as one of the most principled radicals in the burgeoning movement for American independence. He had a penchant for doing the right thing, most especially when it made him unpopular.

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John Adams | Biography, Political Party, Children, Presidency, & Facts

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John Adams, the first vice president (1789-97) and second president (1797-1801) of the United States. He was an early advocate of American independence and a major figure in the Continental Congress. He was regarded as one of the most significant statesmen of the revolutionary era.

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Patrick Henry, (born May 29 [May 18, Old Style], 1736, Studley [Virginia]-died June 6, 1799, Red Hill, near Brookneal, Virginia, U.S.), brilliant orator and a major figure of the American Revolution, perhaps best known for his words "Give me liberty or give me death!" which he delivered in 1775. He was independent Virginia's first governor (serving 1776-79, 1784-86).

Patrick Henry was the son of John Henry, a well-educated Scotsman who served in the colony as a surveyor, colonel, and justice of the Hanover County Court. Before he was 10, Patrick received some rudimentary education in a local school, later reinforced by tutoring from his father, who was trained in the classics. As a youth, he failed twice in seven years as a storekeeper and once as a farmer; and during this period he increased his responsibilities by marriage, in 1754, to Sarah Shelton. The demands of a growing family spurred him to study for the practice of law, and in this profession he soon displayed remarkable ability. Within a few years after his admission to the bar in 1760 he had a large and profitable clientele. He was especially successful in criminal cases, where he made good use of his quick wit, his knowledge of human nature, and his forensic gifts.

Meanwhile, his oratorical genius had been revealed in the trial known as the Parson's Cause (1763). This suit grew out of the Virginia law, disallowed by King George III, that permitted payment of the Anglican clergy in money instead of tobacco when the tobacco crop was poor. Henry astonished the audience in the courtroom with his eloquence in invoking the doctrine of natural rights, the political theory that man is born with certain inalienable rights.

Two years later, at the capitol in Williamsburg, where he had just been seated as a member of the House of Burgesses (the lower house of the colonial legislature), he delivered a speech opposing the British Stamp Act. The act was a revenue law requiring certain colonial publications and documents to bear a legal stamp. Henry offered a series of resolutions asserting the right of the colonies to legislate independently of the British Parliament, and he supported these resolutions with great eloquence: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III..." Here he was interrupted by cries of "Treason! treason!" But he concluded, according to a likely version, "...may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

During the next decade Henry was an influential leader in the radical opposition to the British government. He was a member of the first Virginia Committee of Correspondence, which aided intercolonial cooperation, and a delegate to the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. At the second Virginia Convention, on March 23, 1775, in St. John's Church, Richmond, he delivered the speech that assured his fame as one of the great advocates of liberty. Convinced that war with Great Britain was inevitable, he presented strong resolutions for equipping the Virginia militia to fight against the British and defended them in a fiery speech with the famed peroration, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

The resolutions passed, and Henry was appointed commander of the Virginia forces, but his actions were curbed by the Committee of Safety; in reaction, he resigned on February 28, 1776. Henry served on the committee in the Virginia Convention of 1776 that drafted the first constitution for the state. He was elected governor the same year and was reelected in 1777 and 1778 for one-year terms, thereby serving continuously as long as the new constitution permitted. As wartime governor, he gave Gen. George Washington able support, and during his second term he authorized the expedition to invade the Illinois country under the leadership of George Rogers Clark.

After the death of his first wife, Henry married Dorothea Dandridge and retired to life on his estate in Henry county. He was recalled to public service as a leading member of the state legislature from 1780 to 1784 and again from 1787 to 1790. From 1784 to 1786 he served as governor. He declined to attend the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 and in 1788 was the leading opponent of ratification of the U.S. Constitution at the Virginia Convention. This action, which has aroused much controversy ever since, resulted from his fear that the original document did not secure either the rights of the states or those of individuals, as well as from his suspicion that the North would abandon to Spain the vital right of navigation on the Mississippi River.

Henry was reconciled, however, to the new federal government, especially after the passage of the Bill of Rights, for which he was in great measure responsible. Because of family responsibilities and ill health, he declined a series of offers of high posts in the new federal government. In 1799, however, he consented to run again for the state legislature, where he wished to oppose the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, which claimed that the states could determine the constitutionality of federal laws. During his successful electoral campaign, he made his last speech, a moving plea for American unity. He died at his home, Red Hill, before he was to have taken the seat.

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Patrick Henry, (born May 29 [May 18, Old Style], 1736, Studley [Virginia]-died June 6, 1799, Red Hill, near Brookneal, Virginia, U.S.), brilliant orator and a major figure of the American Revolution, perhaps best known for his words "Give me liberty or give me death!" which he delivered in 1775.

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Paul Revere | Biography, Midnight Ride, Boston Massacre, & Facts

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Paul Revere, folk hero of the American Revolution whose dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775, warning Boston-area residents that the British were coming, was immortalized in a ballad by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Learn more about Revere’s life in this article.

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Table of Contents

Thomas Jefferson (born April 2 [April 13, New Style], 1743, Shadwell, Virginia [U.S.]-died July 4, 1826, Monticello, Virginia, U.S.) was the draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation's first secretary of state (1789-94) and second vice president (1797-1801) and, as the third president (1801-09), the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution.

Long regarded as America's most distinguished "apostle of liberty," Jefferson has come under increasingly critical scrutiny within the scholarly world. At the popular level, both in the United States and abroad, he remains an incandescent icon, an inspirational symbol for both major U.S. political parties, as well as for dissenters in communist China, liberal reformers in central and eastern Europe, and aspiring democrats in Africa and Latin America. His image has suffered, however, as the focus on racial equality has prompted a more negative reappraisal of his dependence upon slavery and his conviction that American society remain a white man's domain. Especially disturbing to many were the DNA results of the 1998 study revealing that Jefferson had almost certainly fathered a child with his slave Sally Hemings, thirty years his junior. (For more on this story, see "Tom and Sally": The Jefferson - Hemings paternity debate.) The huge gap between his lyrical expression of liberal ideals and the more attenuated reality of his own life has transformed Jefferson into America's most problematic and paradoxical hero. The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated to him on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of his birth.
(Read Joseph Ellis's Britannica essay on the Sally Heming's affair.)

Early years

Albermarle county, where Jefferson was born, lay in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in what was then regarded as a western province of the Old Dominion. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a self-educated surveyor who amassed a tidy estate that included 60 slaves. According to family lore, Jefferson's earliest memory was as a three-year-old boy "being carried on a pillow by a mounted slave" when the family moved from Shadwell to Tuckahoe. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was descended from one of the most prominent families in Virginia. She raised two sons, of whom Jefferson was the eldest, and six daughters. There is reason to believe that Jefferson's relationship with his mother was strained, especially after his father died in 1757, because he did everything he could to escape her supervision and had almost nothing to say about her in his memoirs. He boarded with the local schoolmaster to learn his Latin and Greek until 1760, when he entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg.

By all accounts he was an obsessive student, often spending 15 hours of the day with his books, 3 hours practicing his violin, and the remaining 6 hours eating and sleeping. The two chief influences on his learning were William Small, a Scottish-born teacher of mathematics and science, and George Wythe, the leading legal scholar in Virginia. From them Jefferson learned a keen appreciation of supportive mentors, a concept he later institutionalized at the University of Virginia. He read law with Wythe from 1762 to 1767, then left Williamsburg to practice, mostly representing small-scale planters from the western counties in cases involving land claims and titles. Although he handled no landmark cases and came across as a nervous and somewhat indifferent speaker before the bench, he earned a reputation as a formidable legal scholar. He was a shy and extremely serious young man.

In 1768 he made two important decisions: first, to build his own home atop an 867-foot- (264-metre-) high mountain near Shadwell that he eventually named Monticello and, second, to stand as a candidate for the House of Burgesses. These decisions nicely embodied the two competing impulses that would persist throughout his life-namely, to combine an active career in politics with periodic seclusion in his own private haven. His political timing was also impeccable, for he entered the Virginia legislature just as opposition to the taxation policies of the British Parliament was congealing. Although he made few speeches and tended to follow the lead of the Tidewater elite, his support for resolutions opposing Parliament's authority over the colonies was resolute.

In the early 1770s his own character was also congealing. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton ( Martha Jefferson), an attractive and delicate young widow whose dowry more than doubled his holdings in land and slaves. In 1774 he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America, which was quickly published, though without his permission, and catapulted him into visibility beyond Virginia as an early advocate of American independence from Parliament's authority; the American colonies were tied to Great Britain, he believed, only by wholly voluntary bonds of loyalty to the king.

His reputation thus enhanced, the Virginia legislature appointed him a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1775. He rode into Philadelphia-and into American history-on June 20, 1775, a tall (slightly above 6 feet 2 inches [1.88 metres]) and gangly young man with reddish blond hair, hazel eyes, a burnished complexion, and rock-ribbed certainty about the American cause. In retrospect, the central paradox of his life was also on display, for the man who the following year was to craft the most famous manifesto for human equality in world history arrived in an ornate carriage drawn by four handsome horses and accompanied by three slaves.

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Thomas Jefferson | Biography, Political Career, & Facts

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Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, who also drafted the Declaration of Independence and served as the first secretary of state. As president, he was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. He was also the founder and architect of the University of Virginia.

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Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706. He left school at age 10. At age 12 he went to work in his brother's printing shop.

In 1723 Franklin moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He worked there as a printer. His most popular publication was Poor Richard's Almanack. The almanac featured Franklin's witty sayings and verses. A famous one was "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Franklin started many public services in Philadelphia. They included a fire department, a hospital, an insurance company, and a library. A school he founded became the University of Pennsylvania.

Franklin was a great scientific thinker and inventor. He invented the Franklin stove, which was used to heat rooms, and a type of eyeglasses called bifocals. His experiments with electricity led to the invention of the lightning rod. That metal rod is used to protect buildings from lightning.

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Benjamin Franklin won fame as a writer, a publisher, a scientist, and an inventor. He is best remembered, however, for his leadership in the American colonies and the early...

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Benedict Arnold - Children, Wife & Facts

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Benedict Arnold was an American Revolutionary War general best known for his defection from the Continental Army to the British side of the conflict in 1780.

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John Adams - Presidency, Political Party & Children

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John Adams was a Founding Father, the first vice president of the United States and the second president. His son, John Quincy Adams, was the nation’s sixth president.

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Patrick Henry was an attorney, orator and a major figure of the American Revolution who is best known for his words “Give me liberty or give me death!”

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Benjamin Franklin ‑ Biography, Inventions & Facts | HISTORY

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Benjamin Franklin (1706‑1790) was a statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor, diplomat, a Founding Father and a leading figure of early American history.

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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was one of the of the leading figures of early American history. Learn about this famous American statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor and diplomat.

Ahead of his time, Franklin was looking to find a way to unite the disparate American colonies as early as the French and Indian War. He created a famous cartoon of a snake divided with the phrase "Join or Die."

Franklin argued for American liberty abroad and at home. He was appointed as the first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress. He was both a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a signer of the United States Constitution. He famously quipped after signing the Constitution to the people that they had created a republic but warned it would only be one "if you can keep it."

William Franklin became the last Royal Governor of New Jersey and was imprisoned by American patriots during the Revolutionary War. He was exchanged and ultimately emigrated to England, and the two never reconciled their differences.

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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was one of the of the leading figures of early American history. Learn about this famous American statesman, author,...

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Early Years

Patrick Henry was born in 1736 to John and Sarah Winston Henry on his family's farm in Hanover County, Virginia. He was educated mostly at home by his father, a Scottish-born planter who had attended college in Scotland.

Henry struggled to find a profession as a young adult. He failed in several attempts as a storeowner and a planter. He taught himself law while working as a tavern keeper at his father-in-law's inn and opened a law practice in Hanover County in 1760.

As a lawyer and politician, Patrick Henry was known for his persuasive and passionate speeches, which appealed as much to emotion as to reason. Many of Henry's contemporaries likened his rhetorical style to the evangelical preachers of the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s.

Parson's Cause

Henry's first major legal case was known as the Parson's Cause in 1763, a dispute involving Anglican clergy in colonial Virginia. The case - one of the first legal attempts to challenge the limits of England's power over the American colonies - is often viewed as an important event leading up to the American Revolution.

Ministers of the Church of England in Virginia were paid their annual salaries in tobacco. A tobacco shortage caused by drought led to price increases in the late 1750s.

In response, the Virginia legislature passed the Two-Penny Act, which set the value of the Anglican ministers' annual salaries at two pennies per pound of tobacco, rather than the inflated price, which was closer to six pennies per pound. The Anglican clergy appealed to Britain's King George III, who overturned the law and encouraged ministers to sue for back pay.

The Parson's Cause established Patrick Henry as a leader in the emerging movement for American independence. During the case, Henry, then a relatively unknown attorney, delivered an impassioned speech against British overreach into colonial affairs, arguing "that a King by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a nature, from being Father of his people degenerated into a Tyrant, and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience."

Stamp Act

costs of defending the American colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765 required American colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of paper they used.

Colonists viewed the Stamp Act-an attempt by England to raise money in the colonies without approval from colonial legislatures-as a troublesome precedent.

Patrick Henry responded to the Stamp Act with a series of resolutions introduced to the Virginia legislature in a speech. The resolves, adopted by the Virginia legislature, were soon published in other colonies, and helped to articulate America's stance against taxation without representation under the British Crown.

Henry's resolves declared that Americans should be taxed only by their own representatives and that Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted on by the Virginia legislature.

Later in the speech, Henry flirted with treason when he hinted that the King risked suffering the same fate as Julius Caesar -assassination-if he maintained his oppressive policies.

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death

In March of 1775, the Second Virginia Convention met at St. John's Church in Richmond to discuss the state's strategy against the British. It was here that Patrick Henry delivered his most famous speech.

"Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, Peace,' but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and five of the six other Virginians who would later sign the Declaration of Independence were in attendance that day. Historians say that Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech helped convince those in attendance to begin preparing Virginia troops for war against Great Britain.

Royal Governor Lord Dunmore responded to the speech by removing gunpowder from the magazine. That November, he would issue Dunmore's Proclamation declaring martial law in Virginia and promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the King's cause.

Henry spoke without notes, and no transcripts exist from his famous address. The only known version of the speech was reconstructed in an 1817 biography of Henry by author William Wirt, leading some historians to speculate that the famous Patrick Henry quote may have been fabricated by Wirt to sell copies of his book.

Henry and Slavery

Patrick Henry married his first wife, Sarah Shelton, in 1754, and the couple went on to have six children together. Her dowry included a 600-acre farm, a house, and six enslaved people.

After Sarah died in 1775, he married Dorothea Dandridge of Tidewater, Virginia, and their union produced eleven children.

Despite the size of his family, Henry and his family lived in a small farmhouse on a Piedmont-area plantation known as Red Hill. Henry once referred to slavery as a "lamentable evil," but throughout his adult life Henry owned dozens of enslaved persons, some of whom worked the fields at Red Hill.

Anti-Federalism and the Bill of Rights

Patrick Henry served as Virginia's first governor (1776-1779) and sixth governor (1784-1786).

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Henry became an outspoken Anti-Federalist. Henry and other Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the 1787 United States Constitution, which created a strong federal government.

Patrick Henry worried that a federal government that was too powerful and too centralized could evolve into a monarchy. He was the author of several Anti- Federalist Papers -written arguments by Founding Father's who opposed the U.S. Constitution.

While the Anti-Federalists were unable to stop the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Anti-Federalist Papers were influential in helping to shape the Bill of Rights. The first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, protected individual liberties and placed limits on the powers of the federal government.

Besides a brief stint as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress -the United States government during the American Revolution-Patrick Henry never held national public office.

He died on June 6, 1799 at the age of 63 from stomach cancer. His Southern Virginia plantation is now the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial.

Sources

Henry's Full Biography; Red Hill Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.

Patrick Henry Arguing the Parson's Cause; Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

A Summary of the 1765 Stamp Act; Colonial Williamsburg.

Patrick Henry, Orator of Liberty; U.S. Library of Congress.

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Patrick Henry: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Speech | HISTORY

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Patrick Henry, a Founding Father and a leader of the American Revolution, is famous for a 1775 speech in which he declared, "Give me liberty or give me death."

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Who Was Paul Revere?

Paul Revere was born in the North End neighborhood of Boston at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family.

The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father. At age 19, Revere inherited the business upon his father's death. But he left the business briefly and enlisted in a provincial army in 1756 during the French and Indian War.

Children

Revere returned to Boston after a failed military expedition and started to build his family life and business. He wed Sarah Orne in 1765, and they had eight children before she died nearly two decades later.

The silversmith was resourceful and dabbled in a range of work, taking on apprentices and workers who created specialty flatware, silver bowls, tea sets and even casting the first bell in Boston in his foundry. He turned to dentistry to augment his income when the colonial economy faltered during a recession.

Revere's network was also expanding to include local activists angered by British rule. In the mid-1760s, as tensions were rising between the colonists and the British, he joined the rebellious Sons of Liberty.

Revere took part in the Stamp Act protests in 1765, which eventually led the Crown to repeal a tax that ignited the colonists' hatred of taxation without representation.

Did you know? Paul Revere did not gain immediate fame for his April 1775 "Midnight Ride." In fact, it wasn't until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, which greatly embellished Revere's role, that he became the folk hero we think of today.

Boston Massacre

With British troops in Boston and a rebellion stewing, Revere became a master propagandist, using his artisan skills to craft engravings that incited the colonists to join in the rebellion.

The growing unrest boiled over on March 5, 1770, when British troops and a crowd of colonists faced off on Boston's King Street near the Customs house. The tense standoff ended in the Boston Massacre, as the British used their bayonet rifles to shoot and kill five unarmed colonists.

One of Reveres' best-known pieces of propaganda depicted the violent night. He reworked a Henry Pelham drawing in an engraving and widely distributed prints of the stark image of armed British troops taking aim at the colonists.

Paul Revere's House

Amid the growing political tensions in Boston, Revere continued to strengthen his roots in the colonial harbor city. In 1770, he bought the now-landmarked Paul Revere House at 19 North Square for his growing family.

Revere lived in his North End home on and off for 30 years as his family continued to evolve. After the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1773, he married Rachel Walker and they had eight additional children.

Revere sold the home in 1800, and it was purchased by his great-grandson roughly a century later to ensure it was preserved. The 1680 structure still stands today as the oldest building in downtown Boston.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

As Revere was settling into his Boston home in the early 1770s, he became active politically. He responded to the new laws about tea imports that bypassed Boston's merchants by attending secret meetings with the inner circle who planned the Boston Tea Party. Revere joined other activists and dumped tea from the British East India Company on December 16, 1773, into Boston's harbor.

His activism extended beyond the confines of Boston when Revere began work as a courier and rode from Boston to New York on horse to spread information about the colonies.

When his associates learned the British were moving troops out of Boston and planned to arrest revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Massachusetts, Revere was tasked with tipping them off to help them avoid arrest.

He first used his signal system and had two lanterns placed on the Old North Church steeple in Boston to alert those on the harbor that the troops had left Boston and were crossing the Charles River.

Then, at about 10 p.m. on April 18, 1775, Revere set out in the dark from his North Boston home by horse with William Dawes to reach Adams and Hancock. The two riders met Adams and Hancock in Lexington and enabled the revolutionaries to avoid arrest.

Revere's next stop that late night was Concord, Massachusetts, a hotbed of the resistance and the suspected location of the British troops' second attack. But Revere, Dawes and a third rider named Samuel Prescott were captured by the British en route, and only Prescott reached Concord.

Revere was soon released, but he had already helped give the colonial militia a key advantage by alerting them to the impending attack by the British. The Battles of Lexington and Concord would spark the Revolutionary War.

Paul Revere's Ride

Revere remained active in the Revolutionary War, building Boston's first gunpowder mill and joining a Massachusetts infantry, but his remaining war record was lackluster, and he was largely unknown in his lifetime.

He became an American folk hero about 100 years later because of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's stirring retelling of his act of patriotism in "Paul Revere's Ride."

It begins with the now-famous lines, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere" and depicts a dangerous, midnight ride as Revere warns the colonists about the British attack. The poem recounts his lantern signal system in the lines "one if by land, two if by sea."

The stirring poem made him an American hero, and while it contains historical inaccuracies-such as claiming Revere rode alone-the poem highlights the risks taken by this patriot at the start of the American Revolution.
READ MORE: 7 Events That Led to the American Revolution
Sources

The Paul Revere House. Paul Revere Memorial Association.
"Paul Revere's Ride." Academy of American Poets.
Revolutionary War Battles. American Battlefield Trust.
Paul Revere. Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.
Voices of the Revolution: The Five Riders. Constitution Facts.

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Paul Revere: House, Midnight Ride, Boston Massacre - HISTORY

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Paul Revere was born in the North End neighborhood of Boston at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family. The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father.