Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Minutemen provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that enabled the colonies to respond immediately to military threats. They were an evolution from the prior colonial rapid-response units.
Lexington Minuteman, a 1900 monument by Henry Hudson Kitson pays tribute to the Minutemen during the American Revolutionary War
The Minute Man, a statue by Daniel Chester French on Massachusetts' state quarter
This stamp is one of a set of three issued in 1925; the poem on the plaques was authored by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
A Minutemen monument in Hollis, New Hampshire
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.
In this c. 1772 portrait, Adams points at the Massachusetts Charter, which he viewed as a constitution that protected the peoples' rights.
While at Harvard University, Adams boarded at Massachusetts Hall.
The Old South Meeting House (1968 photo shown) was Adams's church. During the crisis with Great Britain, mass meetings were held here that were too large for Faneuil Hall.
Anne Whitney, Samuel Adams, bronze and granite statue, 1880, located in front of Faneuil Hall, which was the home of the Boston Town Meeting
