John Adams

John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain. During the latter part of the Revolutionary War and in the early years of the new nation, he served the Continental Congress of the United States as a senior diplomat in Europe. Adams was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with important contemporaries, including his wife and advisor Abigail Adams and his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson.

A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. He defied anti-British sentiment and successfully defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre. Adams was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress and became a leader of the revolution. He assisted Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and was its primary advocate in Congress. As a diplomat, he represented the United States in France and the Netherlands. He helped negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain and secured loans for the American government. Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which, with his other political writings, influenced the United States Constitution.

Adams was elected to two terms as vice president under President George Washington and was elected as the United States' second president in 1796 under the banner of the Federalist Party. Adams's term was dominated by the issue of the French Revolutionary Wars, and his insistence on American neutrality led to fierce criticism from both the Jeffersonian Republicans and from some in his own party, led by his rival Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts and built up the Army and Navy in an undeclared naval war with France. He was the first president to reside in the White House.

In his 1800 bid for reelection to the presidency, opposition from Federalists and accusations of despotism from Jeffersonians led to Adams losing to his vice president and former friend, Thomas Jefferson. After his defeat, he retired to Massachusetts. He eventually resumed his friendship with Jefferson by initiating a continuing correspondence. He and Abigail started the Adams political family, which includes their son John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. John Adams died on July 4, 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Adams and his son are the only presidents of the first twelve who never owned slaves. Historians and scholars have favorably ranked his administration.

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735, to John Adams Sr. and Susanna Boylston. He had two younger brothers, Peter and Elihu. Adams was born on the family farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. His mother was from a leading medical family of present-day Brookline, Massachusetts. His father was a deacon in the Congregational Church, a farmer, a cordwainer, and a lieutenant in the militia. Adams often praised his father and recalled their close relationship. Adams's great-great-grandfather Henry Adams immigrated to Massachusetts from Braintree, Essex, England, around 1638.

Adams's formal education began at age six at a dame school, conducted at a teacher's home and centered on The New England Primer. He then attended Braintree Latin School under Joseph Cleverly, where studies included Latin, rhetoric, logic, and arithmetic. Adams's early education included incidents of truancy, a dislike for his master, and a desire to become a farmer, but his father commanded that he remain in school. Deacon Adams hired a new schoolmaster named Joseph Marsh, and his son responded positively. Adams later noted that "As a child I enjoyed perhaps the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon men – that of a mother who was anxious and capable to form the characters of her children."

At age sixteen, Adams entered Harvard College in 1751, studying under Joseph Mayhew. As an adult, Adams was a keen scholar, studying the works of ancient writers such as Thucydides, Plato, Cicero, and Tacitus in their original languages. Though his father expected him to be a minister, after his 1755 graduation with an A.B. degree, he taught school temporarily in Worcester, while pondering his permanent vocation. In the next four years, he began to seek prestige, craving "Honour or Reputation" and "more defference from [his] fellows", and was determined to be "a great Man". He decided to become a lawyer, writing his father that he found among lawyers "noble and gallant achievements" but, among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". He had reservations about his self-described "trumpery" and failure to share the "happiness of [his] fellow men".

When the French and Indian War began in 1754, Adams, aged nineteen, felt guilty he was the first in his family not to be a militia officer; he said "I longed more ardently to be a Soldier than I ever did to be a Lawyer".