John Adams (30 October 1735 – 4 July 1826) was President of the United States from 4 March 1797 to 4 March 1801 (succeeding George Washington and preceding Thomas Jefferson), having previously served as Vice President from 21 April 1789 to 4 March 1797 (preceding Jefferson). Adams was a founding father of the United States, and he was also a leader of the Federalist Party in the early years of American politics.
Biography[]
Early life and career[]
Adams as a lawyer, 1770
John Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts on 30 October 1735, the cousin of brewer and Sons of Liberty leader Samuel Adams. Adams was raised in a family of modest means, and he graduated from Harvard College in 1755, and he worked as a teacher in Worcester before becoming a lawyer. On 25 October 1764, he married Abigail Smith, and they had six children, including future president John Quincy Adams.
While Adams shared his cousin Samuel's patriot sympathies, he was an impartial man, and he agreed to represent the British Army soldiers who were charged with manslaughter after the 1770 Boston Massacre, feeling that it was a right for every person to have counsel during a trial. He succeeded in having Captain Thomas Preston and his men acquitted, using the mob's differing accounts against them, but he reminded Preston that it was a jury of New Englanders who had found the British soldiers not guilty.
American Revolution[]
Adams in 1775
Adams, among the more conservative of the Founding Fathers, became disillusioned with the British after his mentor, the colonial attorney-general Jonathan Sewall, announced the closure of Boston Harbor and that any British soldiers found guilty of crimes would be tried in Britain instead of in America. Adams, whose impartiality led to Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, and Robert Treat Paine asking him to assist the Patriot cause, was nominated as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774. He also attended the Second Continental Congress in 1775, and, following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he felt that war was inevitable, and that John Dickinson's insistence on sending out the "Olive Branch Petition" to King George III was imbecilical. He grew impatient with the slow process of declaring independence, and he drafted the preamble of Richard Henry Lee's resolution, which called on the Thirteen Colonies to declare their independence. This resolution led to the signing of the US Declaration of Independence, which led to the United States becoming an independent nation on 4 July 1776.
On 27 November 1777, Adams was named Commissioner to France, joining Benjamin Franklin in Paris to advocate the formation of a Franco-American alliance against Great Britain. He did not get along well with Franklin, who preferred to use seduction to accomplish his mission, while Adams preferred histrionics. The plain-spoken and faithful Adams refused to engage in the sex- and entertainment-driven French culture, and Franklin rebuked Adams for his lack of diplomatic acumen and had him removed from any position of diplomatic authority in France. He then travelled to the Dutch Republic to obtain monetary support for the Revolution, and he acquired vital government loans from Amsterdam bankers, despite fighting a progressive illness. In 1780, he was the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution.
Presidency[]
In 1789, President George Washington selected Adams as his Vice-President, but his opinions were ignored, and he was mostly powerless. He was excluded from Washington's inner circle of cabinet members, and his relationships with Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were strained. He was criticized by Washington for attempting to "royalize" the presidency, but Washington valued him for being a cool-headed politician.
After Washington stepped down as President, Adams was elected as the Federalist Party nominee, and Jefferson became his Vice-President due to his status as runner-up in the 1796 election. His neutrality during the French Revolutionary Wars angered both Hamilton's Anglophile faction of the Federalists and Jefferson's Francophile Democratic-Republican Party, and he succeeded in preventing a war with France, although this led to the Federalists breaking up into factions. In the 1800 presidential election, Adams lost to Jefferson and runner-up Aaron Burr (who was from Jefferson's party), with Adams being weakened by his rivalry with Hamilton.
Final years[]
After leaving the presidency, Adams' life was full of sorrow, as his daughter Nabby died of breast cancer, he disowned his son Charles after he became an alcoholic vagrant, and his wife Abigail died of typhoid fever in 1818. Adams and Jefferson were reconciled through correspondence in their last years, and both of them died hours apart on 4 July 1826; Adams was 90 years old, and he had just lived to see his son John Quincy Adams' inauguration as President (although he could not personally attend it).