Fig. 3. His Excellency Samuel Adams*, Governor and Commander in Chief in and over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. From the engraving, in William V. Well’s Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, vol 3, 1865. SAMUEL ADAMS There were very few whose minds could comprehend the important distinctions which were then agitated, or whose reasoning could discern the approaching events of that controversy. Mr. Adams, buoyed up by a sense of the justice and righteousness of the colonists’ demands, stood