John � Adams,

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��� John Adams the second US president, born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts,

��� He studied at Harvard and settled into law practice in Boston.�� Although he defended

��� British soldiers after� the Boston Massacre (1770), he had also shown "patriot' sympathies���� by pamphleteering against the Stamp Act in 1765. Having gained prominence as a political��� thinker and writer, he was sent as a Massachusetts delegate to the First (1774) and Second (1775‑‑7) Continental Congresses; he helped edit Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and led�� the debate that ratified it (1776). During the American Revolution he chaired several

�� committees and served on many more, was commissioner to France and Holland, and in

� 1779 drafted the influential Massachusetts constitution. After the war he was ambassador

�� to England (1785‑‑8), where he wrote the Defense of the Constitution of the United States.

�� After eight frustrating years as vice‑president under Washington (1789‑‑97), he assumed

�� the presidency (1797‑‑1801). The prickly Adams proved less able as a practical politician

�� than as a theorist; his regime was torn by partisan wrangles between Hamiltonian

�� Federalists and Jeffersonian Democrat‑Republicans, all of whom he antagonized; his

�� persistence in negotiating peace with France when his fellow Federalists were urging war

�� cost him their support. Meanwhile his Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), which virtually

�� forbade criticism of the government, outraged many citizens. Defeated for reelection by

�� Jefferson in 1800, Adams retired from public life. In later years he pursued an extensive

�� correspondence with many men, including his one‑time opponent Thomas Jefferson, and

�� both men died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of

�� Independence.