Sam Adams

Who was the father of the American Revolution? He's a man who seldom gets much credit these days -- except as a brewer, which he really wasn't. Move over John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, it's Samuel Adams, the subject of a new biography written by John K. Alexander, professor of history in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences. Alexander's new book, Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician, takes a new look at a man who …

…too much ambiguity on state authority vs. federal authority. Rather than limiting the powers of the central government to those "expressly" delegated to it, as Samuel Adams favored, the amendment left out the word "expressly" and merely said the powers not delegated to the national government were reserved to the states or the people. This defect "created constitutional ambiguity which Adams loathed and would remain a matter of controversy more than 200 years later," Alexander says.