(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Why was Founding Father Samuel Adams such a bad tax collector?

After earning his master's degree at Harvard, he found himself unemployed more than once.

Raised in a civic-minded household, his passion was in politics, and he later started the political newspaper "The Independent Advertiser," but it lasted less than a year.

About a decade later, his wife died in childbirth, and he dove into politics again as an elected tax collector, but he didn't find success in that role either.

Adams was too lenient with the townsfolk who couldn't afford to pay the higher rates in the struggling colonial economy.

Using connections he'd made around town, he eventually became a leading voice against British taxation without representation.

He would later go on to organize the famous Boston Tea Party protest with the Sons of Liberty, which contributed to the start of the Revolutionary War.