On this episode of Newt's World, it's part of Founding Father's Week.

I'm talking about the lives and legacies of our original founders and the impact they've had in our country.

On this episode of Newt's World, it's part of Founding Father's Week.

I'm talking about the lives and legacies of our original founders in the impact they've had in our country.

And it's important to remember this was a very unique group of people.

It's not at all obvious that there's any cookie cutter involved, very different personalities, very different styles.

And you don't see that anywhere more decisively than between Samuel Adams and his cousin, John Adams.

Samuel Adams was a rabble rouser, he was aggressive, he was a politician in colonial Massachusetts.

He's one of the people who really developed the political culture of the United States.

And his second cousin was John Adams, who was sort of rigid, uptight, intellectual.

There were remarkably different people, even though they came out of the same broad background.

John Adams once wrote that his cousin Samuel Adams had the most thorough understanding of liberty

was Zealous and Keen to the cause, and that he embodied steadfast integrity and universal good character.

That's pretty good stuff coming from John Adams, who himself was a remarkably upright and organized and I think disciplined person.

On the other hand, because Samuel Adams was a rabble rouser, one of the people who encouraged the mob in Boston to take on the British,

the royal governor Thomas Hutchison had a rather different perspective on Sam Adams.

Governor Hutchison claimed that there existed no great and sendy area in the king's dominion or a man of great malignity of heart

who has less scruples, any measure, however, criminal to accomplish his purposes.

So you have, of course, John Adams, who loved the American Revolution, loved the concept of liberty, was totally prepared to take on the British Empire,

saw Samuel Adams as extraordinarily positive figure, and Governor Hutchison who's trying to preserve the empire,

saw Sam Adams as somebody who was just aggressively undermining and frankly a pain in the neck.

I think from our perspective, what we realized is that Samuel Adams was above all an ardent patriot who believed in liberty and was prepared to risk his life for it.

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