This is an I-Heart podcast.

On this episode of News World, the lives of these men are essential to understand the

American form of government and our ideals of liberty.

The founding fathers all played key roles in securing American independence from

Great Britain and in the creation of the government of the United States of America. And now the

life of John Adams. We're going to talk about probably the most misunderstood of the founding fathers, John Adams.

Adams is a little bit of an odd duck, partly because he's from New England,

which at that time was just very different from either New York or Virginia,

partly because Adams himself was really, really smart, but he was very argumentative and he was very blunt. He also had

enormous courage. Adams had really developed, over time, a view of the British as a tyranny.

He didn't arrive at it immediately.

He was also of all of the founding fathers, probably the one who believed the most deeply in the rule of law.

And in fact, one of the most creative and courageous parts of his life was his willingness to defend the British soldiers

who were charged with murder during the Boston massacre. It was very unpopular in Boston because

it was sort of a lynch mob desire to just, you know, hang them. And Adam said, no, I mean,

this whole thing is about the rule of law. He ultimately wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, which

served as a model for the U.S. Constitution, and he worked very, very hard to knit together the

country. He understood that Virginia as the biggest colony and then biggest state and population

and in Welp had to be at the center, but at the same time, he also realized

that bringing all of New England in really, really mattered. And it's important to remember

that in this period, the idea of America is a really sort of vague idea to most people. Most

people think themselves in terms of their colony or later on in terms of

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