John Adams

A Massachusetts lawyer who became one of the leading voices for American independence, John Adams went on to represent the young republic in Europe, to serve as the first vice-president of the United States and, from 1797 to 1801, as its second president. His presidency was dominated by the danger of war with revolutionary France, which he avoided at the cost of splitting his own party.

Adams was born on 30 October 1735 (19 October in the Old Style calendar then in use) on his family's farm at Braintree, now Quincy, Massachusetts. His father was a farmer, shoemaker and church deacon. He entered Harvard in 1751, taught school after graduating, and chose law over the ministry, joining the bar in 1759. In 1764 he married Abigail Smith, who became his closest adviser and correspondent; their son John Quincy Adams would become the sixth president. Adams wrote the Braintree Instructions of 1765 against the Stamp Act, arguing that colonists could be taxed only with their consent. When British soldiers were charged with murder after the Boston Massacre of March 1770, in which five civilians were killed, he took on their defence: the captain and six soldiers were acquitted, and two were convicted of manslaughter.

Elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774, Adams at first hoped for reconciliation but became one of the strongest advocates of a complete break. In June 1775 he proposed George Washington as commander of the army. On 7 June 1776 he seconded the resolution declaring the colonies independent, and he sat on the committee of five that prepared the Declaration of Independence, persuading Thomas Jefferson to write the draft and then defending it in the debates before Congress voted for independence on 2 July. He sat on some ninety committees and headed the Board of War and Ordnance.

Sent to France in 1778, he arrived to find the alliance already signed and clashed with Benjamin Franklin and the French foreign minister. In the Dutch Republic he won recognition of American independence in April 1782 and a loan of five million guilders. With Franklin and John Jay he negotiated the peace with Britain signed on 3 September 1783, insisting on American fishing rights off Newfoundland. From 1785 to 1788 he was the first American minister in London, where he wrote a defence of the new state constitutions. He had earlier been the main author of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780.

Adams served two terms as vice-president under Washington, an office he called the most insignificant ever devised, though he cast 29 tie-breaking votes in the Senate. In 1796 he defeated Jefferson by 71 electoral votes to 68 and took office on 4 March 1797. When French officials demanded bribes from American envoys in the XYZ affair, an undeclared naval war followed. Adams expanded the navy and created a Navy Department, and in 1798 signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, under which critics of the government were fined or jailed. Against the wishes of Alexander Hamilton and much of his cabinet, he sent a new peace mission to France, which produced the Convention of 1800. In November 1800 he became the first president to live in the White House. Divided Federalists and angry Republicans cost him the 1800 election, and before leaving office he appointed John Marshall chief justice.

Adams retired to his farm, Peacefield, in Quincy. He never owned slaves and said he abhorred the practice, though in public life he tried to keep the issue out of national politics. In 1812 he and Jefferson renewed their friendship through letters that continued for fourteen years. Abigail died in 1818, and Adams lived to see his son elected president in 1825. He died at Peacefield on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, a few hours after Jefferson.

Our 1783 map shows the independent United States whose peace treaty Adams helped negotiate; the 1800 map shows the country near the end of his presidency.