John Adams

Adams, John

Adams, John (1735-1826), 2nd president of the United States. He devoted his life to politics, participating with distinction first in the revolutionary activities of Boston and Philadelphia and later in the founding of the republic. He served as a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress, as a diplomat in the struggle to win European recognition of American independence, and as vice president and president of the United States during its critical, formative years.

Adams's diaries, letters, and books provide invaluable information about the politics of his time. His writings reveal the mind of an astute observer and philosopher—a very human one whose warmth, wit, and playfulness captivate the reader. His reputation as an intelligent and courageous statesman endures; but his name has been overshadowed by others—perhaps because he was not uniquely connected with any single great event.

Boyhood and Education. Adams was born in the village of Braintree (Quincy), Mass., on Oct. 30 (Old Style, Oct. 19), 1735. His parents and ancestors had been honored members of the community since its founding. His father, John Adams, was influential in town business, serving as selectman and officer of the militia; his mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, was known for her devotion to family and church. The Adams clan had arrived from England about 1640 and settled on land that their descendants were still tilling in John's boyhood.

Besides receiving the informal instruction of village life, Adams attended dame and Latin school. In spite of his inclination to be a farmer, his schooling prepared him for college and a career in the ministry. With some special tutoring in Latin from Joseph Marsh, a local scholar, John passed his entrance examinations for Harvard College in 1751 and began four absorbing years of study that excited his imagination. "I was a mighty metaphysician, at least I thought myself such"; he was a mighty scientist, debater, and orator, too. As he examined career possibilities, the ministry soon appeared less interesting to him than law, medicine, and public service. At graduation in 1755 he was still undecided, and he accepted a teaching position in Worcester while he contemplated the future.

Early Public Career. The career of a schoolmaster was most unsatisfying for Adams. His pupils were "little runtlings" who barely knew their ABC's, and his students noted that he was preoccupied with other matters. His position, however, enabled him to meet the intellectuals of Worcester, including James Putnam, its most distinguished lawyer. Adams finally decided to make a career of the law and apprenticed himself to Putnam. Since the intense young man was not interested in being a country lawyer, he returned as soon as possible (in 1758) to Braintree, where family connections could win him introductions to the Boston bar.

Lawyer Adams began his career in Braintree writing wills and deeds and taking an interest in town affairs. Although local matters were important to him, his law practice began to take him farther and farther from Braintree. On his way to and from Plymouth he would stop at Weymouth to visit Abigail, the young daughter of the Reverend Mr. William Smith. John and Abigail were married on Oct. 25, 1764, and he loved her deeply throughout their long marriage.

Adams's legal practice often took him to Boston, where he became well acquainted with James Otis, Jr., and his distant cousin Samuel Adams. With them he attended the clubs of tradesmen and joined the "Sodalitas" an a founding member. This group of Boston lawyers mixed scholarly discussions of law with debates on the legality of the Stamp Act of 1765. Out of these meetings came Adams' anonymous articles for the Boston Gazette, later reprinted as A Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law. In these he traced the origin and rise of freedom. The rights of Englishmen, he wrote, were derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.

Adams expressed these views in political form when he drew up for Braintree a protest against the Stamp Act that became a model for similar remonstrations elsewhere in New England. He assailed the stamp tax as an unnecessary burden upon the people and an unconstitutional levy—"no free man can be separated from his property but by his own act or fault." These ideas gave him much prominence in Massachusetts. Braintree recognized him now as a leading townsman by electing him a selectman, but legal work kept him in Boston, so he gave up his post as selectman and moved there in 1768.

Though Adams was always ready to speak out for liberty, he maintained his political independence and offered his talents to anyone in trouble. His most dramatic case occurred in 1770 when he and Josiah Quincy defended the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre. It was an incident of justice versus unlawful authority, but the culprit this time was the Boston mob that provoked the incident. For taking the case Adams was sharply rebuked in the patriot newspapers, yet he was privately congratulated on winning this case for liberty.

Since May 1770, Adams had been a Boston representative in the legislature (General Court). Associating daily with men deeply concerned about liberty, he was troubled by the issues confronting the colonies. These preyed upon his mind, and he decided in 1771 to leave public life. After 16 months of semiretirement, partly taken up in travel and bathing in the mineral springs of Stafford, Conn., and partly in farming, he returned to Boston.

Rise to Leadership. The radicals were happy to have Adams available for consultation and as a writer for the newspapers. They elected him to the Governor's Council in May 1773, only to have him ejected by the governor for his partisanism. He was, indeed, involved in patriotic maneuvers, and he rejoiced when Bostonians dumped the hated tea into the harbor in the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Britain's retaliation drew him into full partnership with the radicals, and he became a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774.

During the next three years in Philadelphia, Adams pushed Congress into decisive action that was to separate the colonies from Britain. He urged successfully the appointment of George Washington as commander in chief of colonial forces and the creation of a naval force to challenge Britain's supremacy of the seas. In committee and on the floor of Congress, he laid down principles of foreign policy, helped write the resolutions of May 10, 1776, that declared America independent, and defended the Declaration of Independence during debate in Congress.

As chairman of the Board of War and Ordnance for nearly a year (1776–1777), Adams attempted to equip the army. Important to the revolutionary cause also were his extensive correspondence and his published writings. His Novanglus papers (1774–75) and his Thoughts on Government (1776) outlined principles of liberty and order for the Americans.

In Diplomatic Service. In 1778, Adams was sent to replace Silas Deane, one of the American diplomatic agents in Paris negotiating a commercial and military alliance with France. Before he arrived, however, the American commissioners there had successfully concluded the negotiations. Adams returned to Braintree in time to be chosen a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention; he composed most of the articles of the state constitution accepted by the convention in 1780.

Adams's work on the state charter was barely completed when he was appointed a minister plenipotentiary in anticipation of peace negotiations with Britain. In Paris, while awaiting the start of negotiations, he was expected to be patient and inconspicuous—a role unsuited to his nervous, passionate temperament. With blunt advice for all parties, Adams irritated the French officials by meddling in policy matters, and he angered Benjamin Franklin by comments on his behavior. Finally giving way to their hostility, he withdrew to the Netherlands where he secured recognition of American independence and negotiated a loan and treaty of amity and commerce.

Returning to Paris in October 1782, Adams joined John Jay and Franklin in the peace discussions. In these proceedings Adams particularly, and successfully, insisted on the rights of the United States to fish off the Canadian coast, and he also was interested in extending American territory as far west as possible. The Treaty of Paris, ending the War of Independence, was concluded on Sept. 3, 1783.

While the peace treaty was being ratified by Congress, Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, toured England. In 1783–1784, Adams negotiated loans for the United States in the Netherlands and commercial treaties in France. In 1785 he was appointed first U.S. minister to Britain. His three years in London were fruitless in winning trade concessions or putting Anglo-American relations on a friendly basis. Adams used his time to good purpose, however, by getting well acquainted with Thomas Jefferson, U.S. minister to France, and writing A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (3 vols., 1787). Like Adams's other writings, this work was unpolished and somewhat polemical, but it contained a wealth of information on constitutional theory and was often cited in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Adams strongly approved of balanced government and praised the British parliamentary system as the "most stupendous fabric of human invention."

While Adams favored states' rights and reform of the Articles of Confederation, he had worried about the continuing weakness of the national government. In 1788 he welcomed the proposed Constitution as "admirably calculated to preserve the Union." As his thoughts turned homeward, he resigned his unproductive London post and returned to Braintree to study, write, and garden. Within the year, in the first election held under the Constitution, he was chosen vice president of the United States, confirming his national position as second only to President Washington.

The First Vice President. As in all of his positions, Adams, who was reelected in 1792, accepted the responsibilities of the vice presidency with energy and seriousness. He presided over the U.S. Senate and cast the deciding vote frequently, often for measures that would increase generally the powers of the national government or specifically those of the presidency. Always ready to offer opinions, Adams lectured the Senate on its duties. He also published a series of essays, Discourses on Davila (1791), which commented broadly on civil disorders, with special reference to the French Revolution.

As Washington's "heir apparent," Adams discovered that even the presidency was being reduced to the level of human passions and party objectives. According to his philosophy, the position should seek the man, and knowledge as well as virtue should qualify the man, without regard to partisanship. Unlike Washington, Adams had rivals for the presidency, and he should have been more flexible. Instead, he permitted Alexander Hamilton to assume leadership of the Federalist party, while he tried to remove himself from partisan politics by associating even with his party's critics.

Hamilton was angry over this conduct and sought another candidate to represent the Federalist party. But the party was embroiled with the Jeffersonian Republicans in fierce contests over the direction of foreign affairs. This division centered on the war between England and France, with the Federalists favoring the English, and the Republicans, the French. The climax came during the ratification of Jay's Treaty with Britain in 1794 (see Jay's Treaty). Its pro-English character offended both the French government and the pro-French Republicans who carried on a scurrilous newspaper campaign against Jay and the administration. The bitterness, however, brought a reaction in favor of the moderates and many leaders, wishing to avoid excess, rallied to Adams, who had managed to stay out of the dispute.

Hamilton, who had greatly influenced the treaty negotiations, was helpless but not reconciled to the choice of Adams as Federalist candidate for president. During the presidential campaign of 1796 he secretly tried to substitute Thomas Pinckney for Adams and thus divided the party. As a result, the election was extremely close: Adams won the presidency by three electoral votes (71-68) over the Republican Jefferson, who, under the electoral system then in use, became the vice president.

The Presidency. Adams entered office on March 4, 1797. Fully aware of his slender victory, he sought political harmony. His inaugural address, tracing the progress of the nation, declared his faith in republicanism and called upon the people to end partisan politics. He tried to reach an accord with Jefferson, conciliate the Hamiltonians, and steer a peaceful course through the controversy with France over Jay's Treaty. But he encountered supreme difficulties.

As the first president to succeed another, Adams had no guidelines to follow on cabinet appointments, patronage, and policy enunciations. He decided to keep Washington's mediocre cabinet, partly because he wanted to reconcile the Federalists and partly because he knew how difficult is was to get good men to serve. The cabinet was Federalist—and more, Hamiltonian—in loyalty. Adams did not fully realize the inherent dangers of this situation until 1799, when the cabinet violated its trust by working against his policies.

With Federalists about him, Adams found partisan politics impossible to avoid, though he favored Republicans Benjamin Rush and Elbridge Gerry with appointments. As relations with France worsened, he had to recommend preparations for defensive warfare while negotiations for peace continued. These measures irritated the Republicans, but Adams was not deterred. He held to his policy of peace and preparedness even after the French Directory insulted American envoys (see XYZ Correspondence) and began detaining American vessels. In January 1798 he proposed the creation of a navy department and asked for funds to put the military on a war footing.

Four bills to control subversion, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, were also passed. One of the acts imposed severe penalties on those who criticized the government. These harsh measures, formulated in a time of fright, were approved by Adams. Although a score of journalists were punished for their attacks on the administration, the laws were not ruthlessly applied. The opposition, however, made them appear cruel and turned them into symbols of Federalism.

Adams's reprisals against French seizures of American shipping were popular for a time, and the Federalists won the 1798 congressional elections. Though Congress did not declare war, Adams pushed ahead with military preparations, selecting Washington, Henry Knox, Charles C. Pinckney, and Hamilton, in that order, to be the ranking generals of the army. But while Adams was visiting in Quincy (which had been set off from Braintree in 1792), the cabinet secured Washington's backing to move Hamilton ahead of his colleagues and make him second in command (actually, commander since Washington was not expected to take the field). Adams grasped the significance of this maneuver. He saw lawful control of the army shifted to Hamilton and, more, the naked specter of militarism. Hamilton and the cabinet wanted to prolong the crisis with France and use the opportunity to consolidate the Federalist party and spread the war into Spanish America.

By the time Adams fully realized what was happening, he had advice from Europe that France would resume negotiations. In February 1799 he abruptly nominated William Vans Murray as a special envoy, to the amazement of the Hamiltonians. Debate over the action was bitter, and Adams compromised by agreeing to name a commission instead of a single delegate, but he withstood the pressure of Hamilton, the British minister, and some members of his cabinet. The commission finally concluded a treaty with France on Sept. 30, 1800. Thus Adams succeeded in preventing a war with France and preserving his country's neutrality.

The treaty negotiations had split the party, and the Federalists now openly considered the effect of this division on the 1800 election. When two cabinet members, Secretary of State Pickering and Secretary of War McHenry, revealed their disloyalty to Adams, he forced their resignations without any political finesse. His abrasive action infuriated the Hamiltonians, who vented their feelings in public, matching the president's undiplomatic conduct. The Republicans, led by Jefferson and Aaron Burr, enjoyed the Federalist predicament. Adams was temperamentally unable to assume the responsibilities of a party boss or to dramatize the achievements of his administration. The election results reflected this weakness. The Federalists lost the presidency to Jefferson and the Republicans by eight electoral votes (73 to 65) and also lost Congress.

Later Years. Adams left the presidency in 1801 for private life in Quincy. He remained bitter toward Hamilton and the Federalists, yet he regained his sense of humor and served his country in a different way, becoming president of the Massachusetts Society of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, and other societies. He also wrote articles for the Boston Patriot reviewing events of his administration, and he corresponded with many people in the spirit of Cicero's Letters. His correspondence on politics, history, national affairs, religion, and philosophy was designed to guide posterity in maintaining the principles of 1776. His letters to Jefferson and Benjamin Rush are monuments of erudition, revealing a charming personality that could be crusty, petty, and lovable within the space of dozen lively lines.

Adams died in Quincy, Mass., on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson died the same day.

See also Adams (family); United States--The Founding of the Nation, 1763–1815.

John A. Schultz
University of Southern California

Bibliography

Adams's writings are included in The Adams Papers, ed. by Lyman H. Butterfield et al. (Belknap Press/Harvard Univ. Press 1961– ), a projected 100-vol. edition in several series of Adams family documents—diaries, correspondence, and state papers—in the custody of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Series include The Papers of John Adams, ed. by Robert J. Taylor et al., 12 vols. through 2004 (1977– ); The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. by Lyman H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (1961), and its supplement, The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. by Lyman H. Butterfield et al. (1966); and The Legal Papers of John Adams, 3 vols., ed. by L. Kinvin Wroth and H. B. Zobel (1966). The Adams Papers is supplanting the 10-vol. Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. by Charles Francis Adams (1850–1856 ed. reprinted by AMS Press 1971). Volumes of selections include Political Writings of John Adams, ed. by George W. Carey (Regnery Pub. 2000), and Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, ed. by C. Bradley Thompson (Liberty Fund 2000). Adams's correspondence has been gathered in several editions, notably The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. in 2 vols. by Lester J. Cappon (1959; reprint, Inst. of Early Am. Hist. and Culture/Univ. of N.C. Press 1988), and The Book of Abigail and John; Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784, ed. by Lyman H. Butterfield et al. (Harvard Univ. Press 1975).

Adams, James Truslow, The Adams Family (1930; reprint, Greenwood Press 1974).

Brookhiser, Richard, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918 (Free Press 2002).

Brown, Ralph A., The Presidency of John Adams (Univ. Press of Kans. 1975).

Brown, Walt, John Adams and the American Press: Politics and Journalism at the Birth of the Republic (McFarland & Co. 1995).

Ellis, Joseph J., Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (Norton 1993).

Ferling, John E., John Adams: A Life (1992; reprint, H. Holt 1996).

Ferling, John E., John Adams: A Bibliography (Greenwood Press 1994).

Grant, James, John Adams: Party of One (Farrar, Straus 2005).

Handler, Edward, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams (Harvard Univ. Press 1964).

Haraszti, Zoltan, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Harvard Univ. Press 1952).

Howe, John R., Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton Univ. Press 1966).

Hutson, James H., John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Univ. Press of Ky. 1980).

McCullough, David G., John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001).

Nagel, Paul C., Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family (Oxford 1983).

Peterson, Merrill D., Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (1976; reprint, Oxford 1978).

Ryerson, Richard A., ed., John Adams and the Founding of the Republic (Mass. Hist. Soc. 2001).

Shaw, Peter, The Character of John Adams (Norton 1977).

Smith, Page, John Adams, 2 vols. (1962, 1963; reprint, Greenwood Press 1969).

Thompson, C. Bradley, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty (Univ. Press of Kans. 1998).

Weisberger, Bernard A., America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 (Morrow 2000).

Appended Material

Presidential Highlights: John Adams

2d President of the United States (1797–1801)

Born	Oct. 30, 1735, in Braintree (Quincy), Mass.
Higher Education	Harvard College (B.A., 1755).
Religious Affiliation	Unitarian.
Occupation	Lawyer.
Marriage	Oct. 25, 1764, to Abigail Smith (1744–1818).
Children	Abigail Amelia (1765–1813); John Quincy (1767–1848); Susanna (1768–1770); Charles (1770–1800); Thomas Boylston (1772–1832).
Military Service	None.
Party Affiliation	Federalist.
Legal Residence When Elected	Massachusetts.
Position before Taking Office	Vice President of the United States.
Principal Writings	The Life and Works of John Adams, 10 vols., ed. by Charles F. Adams (1856); The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4 vols., ed. by Lyman H. Butterfield et al. (1961).
Died	July 4, 1826, in Quincy, Mass., at age 90.
Burial Place	First Unitarian Church, Quincy, Mass.

Cabinet Members and Other Officials: Adams Administration

Office	Name	Term
Vice President	Thomas Jefferson	1797–1801
Secretary of State	Thomas Pickering	1797–1800
	John Marshall	1800–1801
Secretary of the Treasury	Oliver Wolcott, Jr.	1797–1800
	Samuel Dexter	1800
Secretary of War	James McHenry	1797–1800
	Samuel Dexter	1801
Attorney General	Charles Lee	1797–1801
Postmaster General	Joseph Habersham	1797–1801
Secretary of the Navy	Benjamin Stoddert	1798–1801

Top of Page

Related articles:
Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)
Washington, George (1732-1799)