The only one everyone liked was Washington.
That's exactly right, and that's why he was selected the First President. Maybe him being away had something to do with it. He wasn't around to fight with anybody.
How would you like to be shut up with all of those stinky old men who wore wigs, and all of those heavy clothes and only took a bath twice a year? That in itself must have made many of them take a step or two backward when talking to someone.
Did you happen to see the play "1776"? Everyone ran around singing, "No One Likes You Samuel Adams" Now if that isn't enough to give you a complex, I don't know what is. He wanted to be the first President so badly he could taste it, but he knew "No one liked him"....Makes you feel sort of sorry for him, doesn't it? LOL
funkandwagnalls.com
Adams, Samuel (1722–1803), American patriot, one of the leaders of resistance to British policy in Massachusetts before the American Revolution.
Adams was born in Boston on Sept. 27, 1722, and educated at Harvard College (now Harvard University). After leaving college in 1740, he was successively a law student, a clerk in a countinghouse, and a merchant. His business failed, and he later became a partner with his father in a brewery. This enterprise also failed after his father died. Meanwhile, he had been an active participant in Boston political circles. In 1756 he was elected tax collector of Boston, a position he held for eight years. His outspoken opposition to strict enforcement of the Sugar and Molasses Act in 1764 brought him into prominence in colonial politics. In 1765, during the course of the controversy that was aroused by the Stamp Act, Adams drafted the instructions to the Boston representatives in the General Court, the legislative body of Massachusetts. He was elected to the lower house of the General Court in the same year. The radical majority in the lower house elected him clerk in 1766, and while serving in this position, which he held until 1774, he gradually assumed leadership of the movement in Massachusetts that advocated independence from Great Britain. As such he was a consistent and bitter opponent of Thomas Hutchinson, an aristocratic political leader, who served as the lieutenant governor (1758–71) and royal governor (1771–74) of the colony.
Adams decisively influenced every important aspect of the prerevolutionary struggle against British rule. In the realm of practical politics, he promoted the formation of the Boston chapter of the Sons of Liberty and sponsored the Committee of Correspondence of Boston. He led the fight against the Townshend Acts, headed the demonstrations that led to the Boston Massacre, directed the Boston Tea Party, and figured significantly in other outstanding events of the period. He rapidly acquired an intercolonial reputation both through these activities and as a literary agitator and revolutionary ideologist. Many of his writings, chiefly political pamphlets, were widely circulated and read. A proponent of the natural rights of man, he was in the vanguard of those Americans who challenged the authority of the British Parliament and championed rebellion. Stylistically, his writings are lucid, forceful, and epigrammatic. Adams’s contributions to the Gazette, a Boston newspaper, constituted a voluminous phase of his agitational work. Frequently written under pseudonyms, his newspaper articles inveighed against reconciliation with Great Britain; they won many converts for the radical cause and generally deepened the mood for revolutionary action.
In June 1774, following the passage of the Boston Port Act, Adams climaxed his activities against that and similarly oppressive measures by securing the approval by the Massachusetts General Court of a resolution to send representatives to the First Continental Congress. Elected a delegate to the congress, he soon became the leader of the radical faction that demanded strong measures against Great Britain. Before adjourning, the Congress called for a boycott of British goods and recommended the use of force in resisting taxes that were imposed by the government in London.
Adams was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, which convened at Philadelphia in May 1775, and he subsequently signed the Declaration of Independence. He remained a member of the Continental Congress until its dissolution (1781), but he was frequently at odds with his colleagues on matters of national policy. Because his strenuous opposition to a strong national government impeded mobilization of the nation for a speedy victory over Great Britain, his popularity and effectiveness as a leader gradually waned. In 1779, Adams was a member of the committee that drafted the Massachusetts State constitution, and he was instrumental also in securing the ratification by Massachusetts of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. He was lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1789 to 1793 and governor from 1794 to 1797. He died in Boston on Oct. 2, 1803. |
