ABSTRACT
Samuel Adams has come down to us as the American Revolution personified, as if he in some way willed the independent nation into existence while fellow colonists dithered. Between 1763 and 1776 there were many colonists like Samuel Adams who moved reluctantly from protest to revolt to revolution. British and American historians often echo each other in dismissing Britain's leadership in the decade leading up to the outbreak of hostilities. In this view, the Stamp Act stands out as the most foolish of Whitehall and Westminster's many ill-considered choices after the French and Indian War. The meeting of a Continental Congress in 1774, nine years after the Stamp Act Congress, is proof that colonial alienation continued to spread. The precipitating cause was the same: a spate of parliamentary legislation, in this instance the Coercive Acts, that concerned colonists condemned even more roundly than they had Grenville's program.
