The man known to history as John Adams was
born on the 30th of October 1735 in the town of Braintree in Massachusetts, just south
of Boston and overlooking Boston Harbour. His father was John Adams Senior, a farmer
and deacon, who also dabbled in shoemaking and was a tax collector in the local region.
He was the great-grandson of Henry Adams, who had immigrated to Massachusetts from Braintree
in Essex in England in 1638 and established the first colonial settlement at Braintree,
Massachusetts, which he named after his hometown back in England. John Adams Senior was an
affluent enough figure in Braintree that he was able to purchase his own farmstead at
Quincy to the north of the town itself, though the family could not be said to have been
especially wealthy. John’s mother was Susanna Boylston, a member of a prominent Massachusetts
family from Brookline who had married John Adams Senior in 1734. Their first child, John
Junior, arrived the following year. They had two further sons together, Peter born in 1738
and Elihu born in 1741. John’s early life was typical of the middle
classes of colonial Massachusetts in the mid-eighteenth century. He was educated in a mixed gender
school where the curriculum centred on The New England Primer, a textbook which had been
first published by Benjamin Harris in the late 1680s and which comprised of readings
which inculcated New England’s children into the Puritanical religious beliefs that
had drawn their ancestors to New England to begin with in the seventeenth century, a place
where they could worship freely. While the catechisms and religious excerpts of The New
England Primer prepared children like Adams for the spiritual world and helped them to
learn to read and write, they did little for the wider intellect and so once he had finished
his elementary schooling Adams was sent to Braintree Latin School. Here he undertook
the first stages of a classical humanist education in which he learned Latin, rhetoric, logic,
philosophy and arithmetic, though the curriculum was fast changing in line with the scientific
breakthroughs made in Europe since the sixteenth century and the advance of the Enlightenment.
Adams was clearly an intelligent student, but already in his early teenage years his
rebelliousness and his questioning of authority got him into considerable trouble while attending
the Latin School in Braintree. His fractious spirit would later prove ideal for a revolutionary. Adams was born and grew up at a time when
America was a very different place to the one which he would live in during his later
years. In the mid-eighteenth century the east coast of North America was dominated by British,
French and Spanish colonies. The Spanish held Florida, while the French had colonised New
France, a region approximate to what is now eastern Canada. The British had begun settling
colonies between these French and Spanish positions in the early seventeenth century,
first in Virginia and New England and then expanding further north and south from those
positions. By Adams’ time there were thirteen individual colonies stretching from New Hampshire
in the north to Georgia in the south. These were generally divided into three categories.
In the north were the New England colonies of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut
and Adams’ native Massachusetts, which with the city of Boston was the most prosperous
part of New England. To the south were the Middle Colonies, consisting of New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. These were the most ethnically and religiously mixed
of the Thirteen Colonies and were growing in economic importance owing to the growth
of the cities of New York and Philadelphia. The Southern Colonies of Maryland, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia were less urbanised and their economies centred
on the production of cash crops such as cotton and tobacco, a development which had led to
the emergence of a large slave population here. All Thirteen Colonies were controlled
by the British government. The colonial community were subjects of the crown and paid taxes
as such, though they had no political representation in England, all issues which would soon lead
to political unrest. Revolution was not on John Adams’ mind in
the 1750s. Instead he was growing into a substantial scholar. In 1751 he had begun attending Harvard
University in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest college in North America. Here
he became keenly interested in the works of the great Greek and Roman authors, notably
historians such as Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus and the rhetorical and political writings
of Cicero and Quintilian. He was also influenced by the new political, philosophical and cultural
writings and viewpoints of the European Enlightenment which were discussing the idea of political
liberty and representation in reaction to the absolutist monarchies of countries like
Russia and France during the pre-revolution Ancien Régime. A highly influential work
in this regard was The Spirit of Law, published by Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu,
in 1748. This was quickly translated into English in 1750 and with its arguments about
political liberty and the rights of citizens before the law, was a seminal text in influencing
some of the Founding Fathers such as Adams in the 1750s and 1760s. Indeed Adams interest
in the law had become profound. Having completed his Artium Baccalaureus or A.B. at Harvard
in 1754, he quickly began studying law, earning an A.M., the equivalent of a Masters, from
Harvard in 1758 and then gaining admittance to the bar to practice law in 1759 when he
was just 24 years of age. Around the time that he was completing his
A.M. and entering the bar, Adams had begun courting his third cousin, Abigail Smith.
It was a slow courtship by the standards of the time and Adams did not propose for several
years. Consequently they were not finally married until October 1764. It was a relationship
based on mutual respect and Abigail was a moderating voice on John, who while always
viewed as honourable by his political colleagues in later years was often guilty of being unwilling
to accommodate the views of others and also showed a certain level of arrogance. He and
Abigail settled down on his 9½ acre farm at Quincy outside Braintree, which he had
inherited after his father’s passing in 1761. Adams began building a successful legal
practice, one which was based on his growing reputation for intellectual and legal rigour,
in the city of Boston. He and Abigail also soon started a family when a daughter, named
Abigail after her mother, was born in 1765. Five more children would follow, John Quincy
in 1767, Susanna in 1768, Charles in 1770, Thomas in 1772 and Elizabeth in 1777. Unfortunately
their two younger daughters did not survive. Susanna died in infancy in 1769, while Elizabeth
was stillborn. While Adams was studying, building his law
practice and courting Abigail, the Thirteen Colonies were embroiled in conflict. Back
in 1756 Britain and France went to war in a conflict which has become known as the Seven
Years War and which has been viewed as the first global conflict of modern history, as
it involved clashes between the two main belligerents plus their allies in Europe, the Americas
and Asia. The causes of the war were Anglo-Franco rivalry in general, but border disputes and
clashes between the British position in the Thirteen Colonies and the French in New France
or Canada and Louisiana was also a major contributory factor. Many British subjects in the Thirteen
Colonies fought for the British during the conflict. Adams did not go to war, as he was
studying at Harvard when it broke out in 1756, however he, like many other British subjects
in the Thirteen Colonies, was enormously impacted on by the conflict. When it ended, the British
were victorious and acquired Canada from France in the Peace of Paris which brought it to
an end in 1763. The colonial community of the Thirteen Colonies had made an enormous
contribution to the war effort and many believed in the aftermath of the conflict that they
should be given a greater degree of political representation by the British government.
Instead they would be disillusioned to find that London’s only intention was to impose
higher levels of taxation on the Colonies. This would begin to radicalise Adams and many
others from the mid-1760s onwards. Adams’ political views were beginning to
become clearer during these years and he began to write and publish frequently on many political
issues. He did this somewhat secretly, publishing articles under the pseudonym ‘Humphrey Ploughjogger’
in The Boston Evening Post. Here he assumed the persona of a simple-minded New Englander
to criticise the political views of several prominent Bostonians who had been publishing
in The Boston Gazette and other newspapers who were themselves overly critical of British
rule in the Thirteen Colonies where he deemed it appropriate, but elsewhere suggesting that
one needed to appraise crown officers in North America on the basis of their actions rather
than solely on their designation as representatives of the crown. There was a growing sense in
these that he wished to defend the rights of the colonial community against overt British
interference in the Thirteen Colonies, but Adams was not at this point committed to overturning
British rule in North America. In 1765 the British government introduced
the Stamp Act. This was a decree that all the subjects of the Thirteen Colonies would
have to pay a tax on almost any form of paper or printed material which they purchased,
be it a newspaper or a deck of playing cards. These were all to be embossed with a revenue
stamp, hence its name. The Act was designed to increase the revenue generated for the
British government from its subjects in the Thirteen Colonies on the basis that the crown
had paid large amounts of money to protect them from invasion by the French during the
Seven Years War, but it was markedly unpopular when it was introduced in 1765. Adams became
a vocal opponent of it in Massachusetts, penning several articles under his pseudonym ‘Humphrey
Ploughjogger’ and another document called the Braintree Instructions in which he laid
out his opposition on the grounds that Americans were not being taxed in the same way in which
subjects of the crown in England were. Such was the furore which it provoked that the
British government quickly rowed back on its decision and repealed the Stamp Act in March
1766. Nevertheless, it is viewed as a major episode in the growing disaffection of the
colonial community in the Thirteen Colonies with crown rule. It also saw Adams publicly
identify himself as an opponent of British policies in Massachusetts for the first time. By the late 1760s Adams had moved his young
family to Boston and emerged as the pre-eminent lawyer in the city. He continued to voice
his complaints against heavy-handed policies imposed by the Westminster parliament in England,
notably the Townshend Acts which were introduced in 1767 and 1768 and involved new taxes again
on the Thirteen Colonies. Yet he was also capable of acting in accord with the government.
This was seen most clearly following the Boston Massacre, an incident which occurred on the
5th of March 1770 on King Street in the city, when a group of British soldiers were surrounded
by an angry mob, leading them to open fire and kill five people. Although the Boston
Massacre was heavily criticised by leading New England political figures such as Adams’
own cousin, Samuel Adams, John agreed to provide legal defence for the British soldiers who
had been involved in the incident. At the trials Adams expertly contrived to pack the
juries with sympathetic citizens and succeeded in having Captain Thomas Preston, the British
officer in charge, and his soldiers acquitted of all charges. Just a few months later, Adams
was appointed to the Massachusetts legislature when a seat opened up. All of this indicates
that, while he was critical of elements of British rule in North America by the early
1770s, he was not yet committed to the idea of revolting against the crown. If there was an incident which finally convinced
Adams that the position of the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies could not be improved
by peacefully negotiating with the crown and the British government and that violent opposition
would be needed, it came in 1773 with the introduction of the Tea Act. This was an action
by the British government designed to crackdown on the illegal smuggling of tea into the Colonies
by Dutch merchants and at the same time force the colonial community in North America to
purchase the surplus tea stocks which were being held in warehouses in London by the
British East India Company. Although the desire to crackdown on illegal tea smuggling was
somewhat understandable on the British government’s part, the manner in which the Tea Act was
introduced was so badly handled that it aroused violent unrest in the Colonies. The most famous
example was unquestionably the Boston Tea Party, when enraged Bostonians boarded the
Dartmouth, a British ship in Boston Harbour, on the 16th of December 1773, destroying 342
crates of tea, much of which was thrown into the harbour. This action, which resulted in
the destruction of tea which was worth nearly two million dollars in today’s money, was
applauded by Adams as one of the ‘grandest events’ in the history of opposition to
British rule in the Thirteen Colonies. It was not just the Tea Act which had aroused
Adams’ indignation and radicalised him against the British government in the course of the
early-to-mid-1770s. There were also growing signs of judicial and political overreach
in the Colonies by Westminster. For instance, the British government had begun paying the
wages of judges in Massachusetts and elsewhere directly from England, an action which Adams
and others viewed as a move to end judicial independence and establish tyranny in the
Thirteen Colonies. This was compounded when in response to the Boston Tea Party the British
imposed a naval blockade on Boston Harbour. The fallout was the decision by opponents
of British rule in North America, who would come to be known as the Patriots, to convene
a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies, Georgia excepted, to decide
how they could act in conjunction with each other against the government. The First Continental
Congress, as it became known, met in Philadelphia in September 1774. Adams was selected as one
of the four delegates from Massachusetts and headed for Pennsylvania. At the First Continental Congress Adams developed
a reputation immediately as someone who could bring the different parties together to compromise
on issues before them. Of the 56 delegates some, such as John’s cousin Samuel, were
radical Patriots who were in favour of initiating a military conflict in order to establish
a new nation, independent of Britain, but others believed that there was still room
for negotiation with London. On the far end of the spectrum there were those who believed
that the First Continental Congress’s aim should be to gain concessions from King George
III in England, but that there could be no talk of splitting from the crown and Britain
permanently. John offered a middle ground and was one of the key figures in ensuring
that the delegates arrived at a compromise within a few weeks. This came in the shape
of the Continental Association, an agreement whereby each of the twelve colonies represented
at the Congress agreed to boycott British trade with the goal of pressurising the decision-makers
in London into granting concessions and addressing the Patriots’ grievances. Petitions outlining
their complaints and what exactly they wanted were also addressed to King George III and
the English parliament. With this done the First Continental Congress disbanded and Adams
returned to Massachusetts. The response in Britain to the Continental
Association and other developments in the Colonies was not conciliatory. Pointing to
the fact that militias of irregular soldiers were being formed by the Patriots in Massachusetts
and elsewhere, the parliament at Westminster sent a statement to the King in February 1775
in which they declared that the Colonies were in rebellion against the crown in all practical
senses. Thus, in mid-April the commander-in-chief of the British armed forces in North America,
Thomas Gage, ordered that all militiamen begin relinquishing their arms. When they attempted
to forcibly disarm units in New England on the 19th of April 1775 the first armed clashes
of the American Revolutionary War occurred at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.
The outbreak of hostilities and the refusal of the government in England to offer any
concessions in response to the petitions of the First Continental Congress convinced Adams
that British rule now needed to be overthrown altogether in the Thirteen Colonies, though
he would continue for some time to present himself as a moderate figure who sought reconciliation
with the British. On the 22nd of April he visited a Patriot militia camp where he sounded
his support for their actions, but was disturbed by how poorly equipped the men were. Just
days later he was chosen to lead the Massachusetts delegation to a new meeting of representatives
from the Thirteen Colonies at Philadelphia. He arrived to what is now known as the Second
Continental Congress in mid-May. The summer of 1775, following the convening
of the Second Continental Congress on the 10th of May, was a very significant period
in the American Revolution. One of its first major measures, which was promoted strongly
by Adams in response to his concerns about the state of the militias, their poor equipment
and lack of discipline, was to establish a professional army to fight the war against
Britain. Thus, on the 14th of June 1775 the Continental Army was established by decree
of the Second Continental Congress. Adams proposed that George Washington, a Virginia
landholder who had extensive military experience from his time as a British commander during
the French and Indian Wars and the Seven Years War, should be made its first commander-in-chief,
the goal being to acquire greater support for the revolt in the Southern Colonies by
appointing a Virginian as head of the Patriots’ army. As such Adams was critical in the ascendancy
of George Washington at this time. Conversely, he played a much more limited role in drafting
the ‘Olive Branch Petition’, an appeal which was adopted by the Congress on the 5th
of July and sent directly to King George III, professing the loyalty of the colonial community
and imploring the King to intervene directly and open negotiations between the government
and the Congress. Adams signed the petition, as did all members of the Congress, but he
viewed this late effort at negotiating as pointless and now believed war and independence
was the only realistic path forward for the Patriots. The ‘Olive Branch Petition’ was rejected
unequivocally in Britain and in August the Colonies were formally declared to be in rebellion.
Thus, during the course of the autumn and winter of 1775 and into 1776, Adams and the
other members of the Second Continental Congress began building a government from scratch,
with all the manifest issues of raising revenue and appointing officials to carry out myriad
duties. By the early summer of 1776, as the war continued to intensify and the crown and
government in England showed no sign of adopting a more conciliatory line, the time had come
to declare to the world that a new nation was being created in North America. In order
to do so, a committee of five members of the Congress was established to draft a document
declaring their independence from British rule. Adams was one of the five and was joined
by Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingstone and a Virginian named Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence which created the United States
of America, but he did amend the text he had written and introduced new points which were
raised by his fellow committee members, particularly Adams and Franklin. It was the beginning of
a close relationship between Adams and Jefferson, one which would see them ally with each other
as friends and lock horns as enemies for decades to come. One of their first acts was to present
the Declaration of Independence to the Congress, which was duly ratified on the 4th of July
1776 after Adams had defended it passionately before the other Congress members. The United
States had been established. Now it would have to make a reality of its independence
through armed conflict. In its first major phase between 1775 and
1778 the American Revolutionary War was largely fought in New England and the Middle Colonies.
After a lengthy siege the Patriots succeeded in capturing Boston from the British in the
spring of 1776, following which the British commander-in-chief, Sir William Howe, decided
on a new strategy of trying to cut New England off from the Patriots’ capital in Philadelphia
by securing New York and New Jersey. He himself was relatively successful in this effort,
seizing New York City in November 1776, before moving against Philadelphia itself and capturing
the seat of the Second Continental Congress in the summer of 1777, though the leaders
of the revolution had fled from the city in advance of his arrival. But while Howe was
successful, the British war effort was dealt an immense blow in October 1777 when a large
army of over 7,000 troops, which had come south from Canada under the command of John
Burgoyne, was utterly defeated at the Battle of Saratoga in the Hudson River Valley by
a section of the Continental Army led by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. Nearly a thousand
of Burgoyne’s men were killed or wounded and the remaining 6,000 were taken prisoner.
With this the tide of the war changed and France, which had been providing financial
and material aid to the Patriots for some time, officially joined the conflict on the
Congress’s side. Henceforth British policy changed to trying to secure the Southern Colonies,
and the Continental Army soon recaptured Philadelphia. Throughout these early years of the war, Adams
was a senior member of the Second Continental Congress and a key figure in many of its activities.
He sat on ninety different committees and chaired over two dozen of them, a workload
which was unmatched by any other Congress member. Two of his positions stand out above
others. In June 1776 he was appointed as head of the Board of War and Ordnance. This was
effectively the administrative arm of the Continental Army. Before any soldier could
fire a rifle or musket at Saratoga or in New England someone had to oversee acquiring weapons
and gunpowder for the Continental Army. That someone was John Adams, who spent months in
the second half of 1776 and into 1777 working eighteen hour days to ensure that the Patriot
armed forces were provisioned properly. This was tied to his second major role during these
years, his efforts to foster strong diplomatic ties with some of the other major European
powers such as France, the Dutch Republic and Prussia in order to acquire weapons and
other necessary equipment from them. Accordingly he was central to the drawing up of the Model
Treaty, a template for commercial treaties between the United States and these European
nations. In time these diplomatic and economic ties would expand into direct military alliances
with France and the Dutch Republic, measures which were hugely significant in shaping the
course of the American Revolutionary War. The Model Treaty and Adams’ advocacy of
closer ties to some of the European powers who were antagonistic to Britain soon saw
him leaving North America. Of all Europe’s nations none had more to gain from British
weakness than France, and it was the most likely nation to ally with the new United
States. From early in the war it began providing economic aid and war materiel, but with the
victory at Saratoga in October 1777 the Second Continental Congress believed it could convince
King Louis XVI’s government in Paris to agree to a more formal military alliance,
where France would dispatch an armada and soldiers to North America to fight the British.
To this end, Adams was appointed as a commissioner to France in November 1777, just a few weeks
after Saratoga. He departed in the early spring of 1778, bringing his eldest son, John Quincy,
along with him and leaving Abigail, who by now was growing used to her husband’s extended
absences, at home in Braintree with the other children. The mission to France was a mixed
affair. By the time Adams arrived in Europe he learned that the French government had
already agreed to a military alliance, but thereafter Adams was frustrated in achieving
anything. The French preferred the more relaxed and somewhat deferential approach of Benjamin
Franklin, whereas Adams was increasingly ignored by Louis XVI’s ministers. By the end of
1778 a decision was taken in Philadelphia to appoint Franklin as Minister Plenipotentiary
to France, effectively making him the official US ambassador to the country. Adams felt slighted
by all of this and decided unilaterally to sail for home, arriving back in Massachusetts
in March 1779. Upon his return to North America the Second
Continental Congress determined that the war had reached a point where negotiations might
be entered into with the British. Adams was selected to oversee the possibility of this.
He was consequently sent back across the Atlantic to Paris once again, just over six months
after returning to New England, where it was hoped he would be able to send feelers out
to London. There the old problems with the French arose and the war had reached something
of a stalemate by early 1780 which made the British reluctant to enter into concerted
peace talks. Frustrated, Adams took leave of Paris in mid-1780 and headed for Amsterdam
in the hopes of convincing the Dutch Republic to provide greater support to the United States.
Yet here too he was met with indifference, the government in the Hague refusing to acknowledge
Adams’ credentials as the US ambassador to the country. Consequently Adams was growing
increasingly pessimistic about the European powers, perceiving that each was interested
in manipulating the war in North America to their own advantage, but none were true, unequivocal
allies of the United States. Worn out by years of exhaustive work, he suffered a major bout
of illness in Amsterdam in August 1781 which may have been a minor nervous breakdown of
some kind. Adams’ despair in Europe in the late summer
and early autumn of 1781 was relieved by news from North America concerning the war. Following
the disaster at Saratoga in October 1777 the focus of the British was on securing the Southern
Colonies and using them as a base to continue the war against the Patriots further to the
north. However, even this effort was thwarted by the shifting international situation. France’s
entry to the war had brought naval support for the Patriots and in time Spain and the
Dutch Republic went to war with Britain as well. In 1780 5,500 French troops landed on
Rhode Island to help Washington’s Continental Army try to seize New York, the only major
city in the Middle Colonies and New England still in British hands. However, they soon
changed course and headed south to besiege General Charles Cornwallis and his significant
force at Yorktown in Virginia. A three week siege followed in the autumn of 1781 with
a combined Franco-American army of approximately 16,000 men and nearly thirty warships pinning
Cornwallis’s 9,000 men into Yorktown. Washington oversaw the siege which quickly resulted in
British surrender. With the capture of over 7,500 British troops it became untenable for
the British to continue the war in any meaningful fashion and from late 1781 onwards peace negotiations
commenced in Paris. When news of what had occurred at Yorktown
reached Europe late in 1781 Adams found his position beginning to change as popular sentiment
in the Dutch Republic quickly turned in favour of the Patriots. In April 1782 he convinced
the Dutch government in the Hague to acknowledge the United States as an independent nation
and negotiated a large loan for the Congress. Thereafter he headed for Paris again where
concerted peace negotiations to end the war had been entered into, following the arrival
of a British delegation headed by David Hartley. It was now inevitable that Britain would have
to recognise the independence of the United States, but many issues still had to be resolved
concerning for example the boundary between the new country and Britain’s colonies in
what is now Canada, while fishing rights in the waters around Newfoundland and Nova Scotia
were also major concerns, as were reparations to British loyalists who wished to leave the
United States and return to Britain. These were all worked out by late 1782, but it took
until the 3rd of September 1783 before the Treaty of Paris was signed by Hartley for
the British and Adams, Franklin and John Jay for the United States, officially bringing
the American War of Independence or Revolutionary War to an end. The end of the war and the signing of the
treaty did not lead to Adams returning home. Instead he was appointed to perhaps his most
difficult ambassadorial position yet, when he was made the first ambassador of the United
States to Britain. He arrived in London in 1785 where his brief involved nothing less
than trying to establish cordial relations with the country the US had just been at war
with, and which was the largest trading nation on earth, and also the country with which
the United States had its longest border. He met King George III shortly after his arrival
in England and they established a genial relationship based on a certain mutual respect, but Adams’
time in London was otherwise complicated by the failure of both the British and US governments
to fulfil all of the elements of the Treaty of Paris. In Philadelphia, for instance, the
government was in no rush to compensate British merchants and American loyalists, while in
turn the British refused to relinquish control over a number of forts along the Ohio River
as had been promised. Adams’ frustrations, though, were relieved by the fact that his
children were now old enough that Abigail was able to join him in London, the first
time they had spent a protracted period of time together in some years. By 1788 it was clear that Adams could accomplish
little more in England than could be achieved by a less senior figure. Moreover, back home
the political landscape was shifting as senior statesmen were drafting the constitution for
the new country and plans were being put in place to hold the first presidential election.
Adams and Abigail consequently took their leave of Britain and headed home. There he
witnessed a tussle between advocates of a popular democracy with a wide franchise and
conservatives who wanted a limited form of democracy where landholders and the wealthy
would hold much of the power. The end result was the US Constitution, primarily drafted
by James Madison, a Virginia political theorist who had been a member of the Second Continental
Congress, along with others such as Alexander Hamilton. Madison was significantly influenced
by the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, a document which Adams had contributed significantly
towards in the late 1770s. The US Constitution, which was finally agreed
on in 1789 provided for a bicameral Congress, one consisting of an upper house called the
Senate after the Senate of Ancient Rome, and a lower house called the House of Representatives.
As such the desire for a popular democracy would be met by the House of Representatives,
while the Senate would plausibly more serve the interests of the landed elite and wealthy
business class. Additionally, the Constitution provided for a federal government, as each
state, regardless of its size, population or wealth, would send two delegates to the
Senate, thus ensuring that each state had the same power as any other to decide on legislation.
Beyond Congress the judiciary would be overseen by a Supreme Court of judges, while the executive
branch would be formed of a president elected for terms of four years through the votes
of the Electoral College, a system whereby each state would have a certain amount of
votes in an election. Effectively this was a compromise constitution designed to offer
something to conservatives and liberals and also to those who wanted a strong federal
government and those who wanted individuals to retain a large amount of independence.
It was intended that sufficient checks and balances would exist within it whereby one
branch of government could block another from exercising too much power. John Adams watched the proceedings in developing
the US Constitution with interest from his home at Quincy near Braintree in Massachusetts,
for Adams was eager to serve as the nation’s first president. However, it soon became apparent
that George Washington was the overwhelming favourite across the thirteen states in the
presidential election which was held over several weeks in late 1788 and 1789. Accordingly,
Adams and several other candidates threw their hats into the ring to become Vice-President,
leaving Washington unchallenged for the more senior position. In America’s early days
the Vice-President was elected through the Electoral College too, rather than being a
running-mate chosen by the president as it is today. Adams won the race to become Vice-President.
Consequently, in the spring of 1789 he set off for New York City, which had briefly become
the temporary capital of the nation in the late 1780s, though it was soon removed back
to Philadelphia while a new administrative capital was being built along the Potomac
River, a place which would eventually be named Washington D.C. after the first president. While the office of Vice-President has become
more powerful in modern times, for much of the history of the United States it has been
a rather insignificant post, with the Vice-President holding little by way of constitutional power
other than to preside over the Senate. From the beginning Adams aroused opposition from
members of the Senate, primarily over the issue of how the President should be addressed.
Adams’ conservatism and suspected residual appreciation of monarchy was on display when
he proposed that the term ‘Highness,’ which was usually reserved for kings and queens,
should be used. Most of the senators dissented and ‘Mr President’ was eventually decided
upon. These and other actions early in his Vice-Presidency earned him the animosity of
many senators and though he cast more deciding votes in the Senate than any other Vice-President
other than John Calhoun in the 19th century, he soon became disillusioned with his role
and became more withdrawn. This was compounded by George Washington’s decision to largely
ignore him. The exception was concerning France where the Revolution broke out in the summer
of 1789, followed by the Revolutionary Wars. Washington was interested in Adams’ view
of developments there owing to the Vice-President’s former experience of the country. For his
part Adams was hopeful concerning the Revolution when it began but soon perceived it to have
descended into barbarism once the so-called ‘Terror’ began in the early 1790s. Washington’s
consultation with him on French affairs aside, Adams was broadly speaking marginalised within
the administration as Vice-President and in time he began to assert that the government
had created for him, quote, “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” Adams’ years as Vice-President in the 1790s
were significant more broadly in US politics for the development of the First Party System.
This was dominated by two parties, the Federalist Party, which was established by Alexander
Hamilton and which, as its name implied, was strongly in favour of fostering a strong federal
union in the new nation, as well as encouraging industrial growth in the cities. It had a
stronger base of support in New England and more urbanised states such as New York and
Pennsylvania. Their rivals were the Democratic-Republican Party, established by Jefferson and Madison.
With a strong base of support in the southern plantation states, the Jeffersonian Republicans,
as they became colloquially known, were promoters of republicanism, agrarianism and were more
in favour of slavery than the Federalists. This forerunner of the Democratic Party also
promoted US expansionism, believing the country should be looking to establish itself as the
pre-eminent power in North America. Adams soon joined the Federalist Party, being in
favour of Hamilton’s fiscal policies and the party’s view that it should look to
establish closer relations with Britain in opposition to the Revolutionary government
in France. He also was an advocate of a strong centralised Federal government. When Washington decided towards the end of
his second term that he would not stand for re-election, believing the Presidency would
take on the air of monarchy or a military dictatorship if one person occupied the office
for too long, it opened the way for the first contested Presidential Election in US History.
Jefferson was the frontrunner for the Democratic-Republican Party, though both parties put forward multiple
candidates. Though Hamilton and Adams distrusted each other, Hamilton could not deny that Adams
had the best chance of defeating Jefferson and so he became the primary candidate for
the Federalist Party. The various candidates did not campaign in person, as was the custom
at the time, but the War of words in the newspapers was acrimonious, highlighting the divisions
between the once united Founding Fathers. In the end Adams emerged with a narrow victory,
receiving 71 Electoral College votes compared to Jefferson’s 68, while the other Federalist
candidate Thomas Pinckney came a close third with 59 votes. The Democratic-Republican Party
had overwhelmingly carried the southern states for Jefferson, while the Federalists were
dominant in New England, but Adams had picked up enough support in the middle states of
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware, the original swing states, to win the election.
As Jefferson had come second he became Vice-President, though he and Adams had grown apart throughout
the 1790s and their friendship had descended increasingly into rancour and rivalry. Adams was sworn into office on the 4th of
March 1797. His Presidency was dominated by the issue of whether or not to declare war
on France, a nation that was now at war with most of the major European powers and whose
own Revolution had descended into radicalism and extreme antipathy towards organised religion,
an issue which moved some in the US in favour of joining the anti-French alliance led by
Britain. Adams’ Federalist Party was strongly in favour of war and toed a pro-British line,
but many in the US still harboured strong anti-British feelings and viewed the French
as their allies from the war of independence. Adams thus inclined towards peace and sent
a diplomatic embassy to France, but it ended in disaster when three French ministers, codenamed
X, Y and Z in the dispatches, demanded hefty bribes before they would fully commit to negotiations.
When word of this was eventually released into the public domain attitudes towards the
French soured across the US. Adams could have used this development to bring the US into
the war against France, but he resisted calls to do so. The US would largely remain neutral
in the conflicts which raged until 1815, although the second half of 1798 and early 1799 saw
naval clashes with France which forced Adams to begin remilitarising the country. Yet this
Quasi War never developed into a major conflict and France avoided involvement in the main
wars across the Atlantic, establishing a precedent which would last in one form or another until
the Second World War of the US trying to avoid becoming entangled in European conflicts. While the US avoided full scale war with France
in the late 1790s, the XYZ Affair did see a series of measures introduced to combat
the possible development of a fifth column of foreign interests in the US. The Alien
and Sedition Acts involved four pieces of legislation that specifically targeted French-born
settlers living in the United States and agents of the French government. All four acts were
passed in the space of two weeks in the summer of 1798. They were soon being employed against
pro-Democratic-Republican Party newspapers. They were consequently criticised as being
instruments designed to allow Adams to attack his political opponents, particularly Jefferson,
but this ignored many issues surrounding the Alien and Sedition Acts, notably the fact
that they were not proposed by Adams, but originated amongst members of Congress, while
Adams only reluctantly agreed to sign them into law. Nevertheless Adams has regularly
been accused of censorship of the press and executive overreach ever since. Adams’ presidency was also notable for his
being the first president to reside in Washington D.C. The capital of the United States in its
first years was typically in Philadelphia, with a brief transfer to New York in the late
1780s, but a decision was taken early in Washington’s presidency to establish an entirely new city
as the capital of the new nation. The site selected was the Potomac River on the border
between the states of Maryland and Virginia, the goal being to foster greater ties to the
southern states which were least in favour of a strong federal government in the 1780s
and 1790s. The new city, which was eventually christened Washington D.C. after the war hero
and first president, took several years to construct, but at last in November 1800 things
were advanced enough that Adams was able to move into the President’s Mansion, which
would later be renamed the White House, and Congress met for the first time in what was
called at the time the Congress House, later known as the Capitol Building. Yet not all
was harmonious. Shortly before the move to D.C., Pennsylvania had been disturbed by civil
unrest led by a German-American named John Fries. Fries’ Rebellion, as it became known,
was bloodless in the end, but was the third tax revolt that had occurred since independence,
an indication that whereas the British could be removed from the country, excessive taxation
was still viewed with disapproval across much of the nation, as it has been ever since in
the United States. For his part Adams was inclined to show leniency towards the leaders
of the revolt and issued an executive pardon to Fries and several others who had been sentenced
to hang. The late 1790s were also notable for the further
deterioration of the relationship between Adams and his Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson.
What had once been a close friendship had deteriorated greatly even before Adams entered
office in 1797. Things did not get any better during Adams’ time as president. At the
heart of the issue was the simple fact that Adams and Jefferson held opposing views on
most of the major policy issues of the day. For instance, Jefferson was unequivocally
pro-French and even after the XYZ Affair continued to press for an alliance with the revolutionary
government in Paris. They also held different views on the nature of the government, while
they occupied polar opposite positions when it came to the institution of slavery. Adams
termed it an ‘abhorrence’ and was central to Massachusetts becoming one of the first
states to gradually abolish slavery, beginning as early as the 1780s, while Jefferson was
a strong advocate and owned over 600 enslaved people during his lifetime. All of this increased
the divisions between the pair and Adams rarely consulted with Jefferson as his Vice-President
in much the same way that Washington had not consulted him. The discord between Adams and Jefferson would
come to a head in 1800 as Adams’ first term neared an end. The Presidential Election of
that year would see the two one-time friends and now rivals square off again, as they had
in 1796. However, on this occasion the rules of the election had been changed. This was
the first election where the two main parties nominated a single candidate who then chose
a running mate who would be Vice-President in the event of him winning. Adams was the
Federalist candidate with Charles Pinckney as his running mate, while Jefferson was the
Democratic-Republican Party candidate with Aaron Burr, a lawyer and veteran of the Continental
Army, running with him. It was a rancorous campaign, with Jefferson’s party attacking
Adams for his handling of relations with France and Britain and excessive taxation, while
also arguing that the government was trying to create an overly powerful centralised government
in Washington at the expense of the independence of the individual states. In this sense it
was a surprisingly modern campaign and elements of these arguments have persevered in American
politics for over two centuries. In the end, disunity within the Federalist Party between
Adams and Hamilton damaged their ability to present a unified front and Jefferson won
the election narrowly, receiving 73 Electoral College votes to Adams’ 65. When he left office Adams returned to his
family farm at Quincy outside Braintree. Already in his mid-sixties he intended to retire largely
from public life and instead concentrate on farm work and writing. He began an autobiography,
though he never completed it. Adams was also beset by financial difficulties in retirement.
Much of his money was held by and invested in Bird, Savage & Bird, a London based trading
company which specialised in exporting manufactured goods from England to North America and bringing
back raw materials such as cotton from the United States to feed the textile factories
which were springing up everywhere in cities like Manchester and Sheffield in Industrial
Age Britain. The company collapsed spectacularly in the last months of 1802 and early 1803,
losing Adams some $13,000, which would be more than $300,000 in today’s money. Luckily
his eldest son, John Quincy, was by that time a successful lawyer and diplomat and was able
to provide his parents with liquidity by buying some of their property. But while John Quincy
was a success, Adams was troubled by his other sons. Charles had begun drinking heavily while
still a teenager in the mid-1780s. After years of alcoholism and extra-marital affairs he
died of pleurisy in 1800. A few years later, after John’s retirement, his youngest son,
Thomas, who had trained as a lawyer, moved back to Quincy. There he also gradually descended
into alcoholism, largely abandoning his legal practice and increasingly working as a caretaker
around the farm, gripped by debt and mental health problems which caused his father no
little amount of concern. Adams was determined upon his retirement to
follow the precedent established by George Washington of staying out of politics and
not interfering in the administration and policy decisions of his successors. However,
Adams was less successful in this endeavour than Washington. While he did largely remain
silent for the first years of Jefferson’s presidency, eventually major events drew him
into the public sphere. Such was the case in 1803 when Jefferson’s government proposed
buying a huge swathe of land from the French government comprising much of what is termed
the ‘Midwest’ today. The Louisiana Purchase was carried out for fifteen million dollars
and brought over two million square kilometres of land stretching from New Orleans in the
south to Montana and North Dakota in the north and west to Wyoming and Colorado under United
States ownership. Adams was broadly supportive of the move, though he was critical of the
Embargo Act of 1807 which imposed an embargo on the trade of all foreign nations in an
effort to try to prevent the British Royal Navy from coercing American sailors to join
their fleet, an issue which had arisen as the war between Britain and Napoleonic France
intensified in Europe. Elsewhere Adams supported the presidential bids of Jefferson’s eventual
successor, James Madison, and was broadly favourable towards Madison’s handling of
the War of 1812 when war broke out afresh with Britain. Adams’ retirement also saw a complete sundering
of his relationship with Jefferson. When he left office early in 1801 he wrote to his
successor wishing him good fortune in his time as president. Jefferson, rather discourteously,
decided not to respond, though this may have been owing to Adams having not attended Jefferson’s
inauguration, leaving the White House at 4am on the morning of the day Jefferson was sworn
into office. It was the last straw in a relationship which had become severely strained in the
course of the 1790s and as a consequence of it Adams and Jefferson would not speak to
each other or correspond with one another for the next eleven years, despite an attempt
by Adams’ wife Abigail to begin corresponding with Jefferson in 1804 following the death
of his daughter Polly from complications of childbirth when she was just 25 years old.
In the end it was not until 1812 that a reconciliation between the two men who had written the Declaration
of Independence and then convinced the Second Continental Congress to adopt it was affected,
with Benjamin Rush a fellow member of the Congress in 1776 and a signer of the Declaration
acting as a mediator in their rapprochement. What followed was an extensive correspondence
over the next ten plus years. Early on, Adams attempted to turn their discussions towards
their political differences, stating that, quote, “you and I ought not to die before
we have explained ourselves to each other.” Jefferson demurred, though, and said they
should let bygones be bygones. Adams eventually agreed and their letters took on the shape
thereafter of two men in the twilight of their lives describing their habits in retirement
and reflecting on their philosophical views of life. Adams’ last years were tinged with sadness
and no doubt a certain pride. Abigail died of typhoid fever in 1818 at 73 years of age.
Her last words to her 82 year old husband were “John, it will not be long.” In actuality
John would survive for another eight years. In that time he lived to see his eldest son,
John Quincy, who had spent years serving in various ambassadorial roles to Europe which
Adams himself had held decades earlier, also serve as US Secretary of State in the administration
of President James Monroe between 1817 and 1825. When Monroe’s second term ended, John
Quincy stood for election as the Democratic-Republican Party candidate, beating Andrew Jackson in
one of the closest elections in US history. Thus, the second President of the United States
lived long enough to see his son sworn in as the sixth President on the 4th of March
1825. Adams died just over a year later at 90 years of age on the 4th of July 1826 at
his farm near Quincy. By a most remarkable set of coincidences this was the 50th anniversary
of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and just hours before Adams died Jefferson
had also passed away at his home at Monticello in Virginia. Adams was laid to rest at the
United First Parish Church in Quincy in Massachusetts next to Abigail. John Adams was one of the most significant
figures of the American Revolution. This was perhaps somewhat surprising, as he was a late
convert to the Patriot cause, having believed for much of the 1760s and early 1770s that
British rule could continue in the Thirteen Colonies if the crown made concessions and
reformed its governing methods in North America. He even acted as legal counsel for the British
following the Boston Massacre in 1770. However, the Tea Act and other developments between
1772 and 1774 convinced him that British rule was descending into tyranny and the establishment
of a new independent nation was the only path forward. When the American Revolution began
he was critical to it, proposing the creation of the Continental Army, acting as its administrative
head by running the Board of War and Ordnance and playing a significant role in both drafting
the Declaration of Independence and ensuring it was ratified by the Second Continental
Congress. His accomplishments did not stop there. In the 1780s he successively acted
as ambassador to the Dutch Republic, helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris, then served
as ambassador to Britain, a fraught role in the post-war period, and then returned to
America to become the first Vice-President of the nation. Finally, in 1797 he became
the second president of the United States. Throughout he was surprisingly enlightened
for his time in viewing slavery as ‘disgraceful’ and of the five Founding Fathers who eventually
became President of the United States he was the only one not to be a slave-owner. Few
of the Founding Fathers were as distinguished as he was. And yet there has always been a paradox to
Adams as a political figure, one in which he constantly played second-fiddle to others.
Adams was central to the creation and management of the Continental Army, but he was overshadowed
by George Washington who led it in the field of battle. He was an important contributor
to the Declaration of Independence, but Thomas Jefferson gets nearly all of the acclaim for
writing it. In the 1780s he was one of the main negotiators for the United States in
Paris, but the Treaty of Paris is usually credited to Benjamin Franklin. And when he
finally obtained the presidency it was only for his time in office to be mired in controversy
and plagued by the issue of whether to go to war with the French, who had reviled Adams
in Paris twenty years earlier and had now returned to plague his presidency. As a result,
of the first five presidents of the United States, the only five who have a claim to
having been involved in the American Revolution and were consequently Founding Fathers of
the nation, only Adams was limited to one term, leaving office after four years where
Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe each served for eight years. This is most
likely the reason why Adams is less revered and regarded by the general public than some
of his colleagues in the formation of the United States, but as has been made clear
perhaps, Adams was every bit as consequential a figure as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
and Benjamin Franklin in the birth of the United States. What do you think of John Adams? Was he perhaps
the greatest of the Founding Fathers, whose role in the American Revolution has been unfairly
eclipsed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
