which secured the independence of the colonies; and finally as President of Pennsylvania and a member of the Constitutional Convention.  His last public act was to petition Congress to abolish slavery in the United States.  If one were asked to name the three men who did most to secure the independence of their country, they would be George Washington, who fought her battles, Robert Morris, who financed them, and Benjamin Franklin, who secured the aid of France.  When Thomas Jefferson, who had been selected as minister to France, appeared at the court of Louis XVI, he presented his papers to the Comte de Vergennes.

“You replace Mr. Franklin?” inquired the nobleman, glancing at the papers.

“No, monsieur,” Jefferson replied, “I succeed him.  No one could replace him.”

And that answer had more truth than wit.

Honors came to Franklin such as no other American has ever received, but he remained from first to last the same quiet, deep-hearted, and unselfish man, whose chief motive was the promotion of human welfare.  He had his faults and made his mistakes; but time has sloughed them all away, and there are few sources of inspiration which can compare with the study of his life.

* * * * *

No family has loomed larger in American affairs than the Adams family of Massachusetts.  John Adams, President himself and living to see his own son President—­an experience which, probably no other man will ever enjoy—­had a second cousin who played a much more important part than he did in securing the independence of the United States.  His name was Samuel Adams, and when he graduated from Harvard in 1740, at the age of eighteen, his thesis discussed the question, “Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved,” and answered it in the affirmative.

Samuel Adams was a silent, stern and deeply religious man, something of a dreamer, a bad manager and constantly in debt; but he was perhaps the first in America to conceive the idea of absolute independence from Great Britain, and he worked for this end unceasingly and to good purpose.  The wealthy John Hancock was one of his converts, and it was partly to warn these two of the troops sent out to capture them that Paul Revere took that famous ride to Lexington on the night of April 18, 1775.  A month later, when General Gage offered amnesty to all the rebels, Hancock and Adams were especially excepted.

It was Samuel Adams who, perceiving that Virginia was apt to be lukewarm in aiding a war which was to be fought mostly in the North, suggested the appointment of Virginia’s favorite son, George Washington, as commander-in-chief of the American army, and who seconded the motion to that effect made by John Adams.  He lived to see his dream of independence realized, and his grave in the old Granary burying ground at Boston is one of the pilgrimage places of America.