President John Adams Integrity Helped Him Steer Our Young Nation.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: Curt Schleier

For some, ambition is the driving force that gets them through the day. For John Adams, it was integrity.

He was a prosperous attorney in his mid-30s when he was offered a Royal appointment as Advocate General in Massachusetts' Court of Admiralty. As biographer David McCullough wrote in "John Adams" (Simon & Schuster, 2001), though it was "a plum for an ambitious lawyer, Adams had no difficulty saying no."

As Adams himself wrote, the office was a "sure introduction into the most profitable business in the province." But with Boston occupied with British troops -- sent in 1768 to keep order as another round of taxes was imposed -- he refused.

By the same token, after the so-called Boston Massacre it was Adams and Adams alone who agreed to defend the British soldiers who had fired on the mob. No one else would. He was, wrote McCullough, "firm in the belief . . . that no man in a free country should be denied the right to counsel and a fair trial." He lost half his prosperous practice as a result.

It was Adams' firm commitment to principle that made him one of the most important of the Founding Fathers and the second U.S. president (1797-1801).

Above all, Adams was a man of honor to whom material possessions meant little. Adams "recognized at an early stage that happiness came not from fame and fortune "and all such things,' but from "an habitual contempt of them. He prized the Roman ideal of honor.' "