The following year, Henry gave perhaps his most famous speech of his career. He was one of the attendees of the Virginia Convention in March of 1775. The group was debating how to resolve the crisis with Great Britain—through force or through peaceful ends. Henry sounded the call to arms, saying, "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!"

Only a short time later, the first shots were fired, and the American Revolution was under way.

The jury acquitted six of the eight soldiers, while two were convicted of manslaughter. Reaction to Adams's defense of the soldiers was hostile, and his law practice suffered greatly. However, his actions later enhanced his reputation as a courageous, generous and fair man.

Adams was elected to the Massachusetts Assembly and was one of five to represent the colony at the First Continental Congress, in 1774. When Congress created the Continental Army in 1775, Adams nominated George Washington of Virginia as its commander-in-chief.

On June 7, 1776, Adams seconded Richard Henry Lee's resolution of independence, and backed it passionately until it was adopted by Congress on July 2, 1776. Congress appointed Adams, along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman, to draft the declaration. Jefferson would write the first draft, which was approved on July 4.

Adams was soon serving on as many as 90 committees in the fledgling government, more than any other Congressman, and in 1777, he became head of the Board of War and Ordinance, which oversaw the Continental army.

'Common Sense'

Worded in a way that forces the reader to make an immediate choice, "Common Sense" presented the American colonists, who were generally still undecided, with a cogent argument for full-scale revolt and freedom from British rule. And while it likely had little effect on the actual writing of the Declaration of Independence, "Common Sense" forced the issue on the streets, making the colonists see that a grave issue was upon them and that a public discussion was direly needed. Once it initiated debate, the article offered a solution for Americans who were disgusted and alarmed at the presence of tyranny in their new land, and it was passed around and read aloud often, bolstering enthusiasm for independence and encouraging recruitment for the Continental Army. ("Common Sense" is referred to by one historian as "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.")

He joined the Freemasons and befriended other activists such as James Otis and Dr. Joseph Warren. As his confidence in his leadership abilities grew, so did his responsibilities. As tensions between the colonies and the British deepened, Revere was tapped to spy on British soldiers and report on their movement.

In addition he worked as a courier for the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. In a brazen act of defiance, he and others dressed as Indians and dumped tea into Boston Harbor, launching what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.

But it was his ride on April 18, 1775, that etched his name into history, especially after it was commemorated later by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At 10 that night Revere rode to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the approaching British.

The Battle at Lexington ensued, and with it, the American Revolution. During the war, Revere donned many different hats. He manufactured gunpowder and cannon for the Continental Army, printed the country's first money, and commanded Castle William at Boston Harbor.

Adams’s contributions to the independence movement were many and varied. During the 1760s and 1770s he frequently wrote polemical articles for the Boston newspapers, and he recruited talented younger men–Josiah Quincy, Joseph Warren, and his second cousin John Adams, among others–into the Patriot cause. It was Samuel Adams who conceived of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and took a leading role in its formation and operations from 1772 through 1774. He was among those who planned and coordinated Boston’s resistance to the Tea Act, which climaxed in the famous Tea Party, and he later worked for the creation of the Continental Congress, helping propel it into supporting Massachusetts in the crisis.

In 1770, after the Boston Massacre, where British troops fired into a crowd with no matching weaponry, Hancock chaired the committee that demanded the removal of British forces. After a period of improved transatlantic relations, Boston became a volatile site once again with the Tea Act of 1773, with Hancock helping to organize protests. He, along with fellow New England agitator and legislator Samuel Adams, was increasingly seen as a major rabble rouser by the British government.