John Adams,
1735 ‑‑ 1826
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.