John Adams
John Adams was the second President of the United States, the most intellectually honest of the founders, and the one most clearly incapable of pretending to be liked. He was abrasive, vain, brilliant, prickly, fiercely independent, deeply principled, and almost incapable of the political smoothing that his colleagues mastered. Born in Braintree, Massachusetts on October 30, 1735, he was a farmer's son who became a Harvard-educated lawyer, a country lawyer with a national mind. He defended the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre in 1770, ensuring they got a fair trial when no other Boston lawyer would touch the case — a decision he considered one of the most important of his life because it proved the rebellion was about law and not mob justice. He nominated [[george-washington|Washington]] to command the Continental Army, served on the committee that drafted [[the-declaration-of-independence|the Declaration of Independence]] with [[thomas-jefferson|Jefferson]], [[benjamin-franklin|Franklin]], Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, negotiated the peace treaty with Britain at the war's end, served as the first American ambassador to Great Britain, was Washington's vice president for two terms, and finally served one term as president from 1797 to 1801. He lost re-election to Jefferson in 1800, retired to Massachusetts, and spent the next twenty-five years writing letters — including some of the most remarkable letters in American history, exchanged with his estranged friend Jefferson after the two had reconciled. He died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration he had helped write, hours after Jefferson.
The Revolutionary
Adams was the first major American to argue, in print and in court, that the colonies should resist British taxation by force. His pamphlet "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" in 1765 argued that American liberty was an inheritance from English Puritan dissent and could not be surrendered without surrendering identity. He was a slow-burning radical — never a rabble-rouser, never an emotional appeal, but methodically constructing the legal and philosophical case for independence over a decade. In the Continental Congress, he was the relentless advocate for separation when many delegates still hoped for reconciliation with the Crown. Jefferson later wrote of Adams in the independence debates: "He was our colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power, both of thought and of expression, which moved us from our seats." On July 2, 1776 — the day the resolution for independence actually passed — Adams wrote his wife Abigail that the date would be celebrated forever as a national holiday with parades, bonfires, and illuminations. He was off by two days; the Declaration itself was adopted on July 4, and that is the date America commemorates. Adams never quite got over being wrong about the date.
The Diplomat
Adams spent much of the Revolutionary War in Europe negotiating loans and recognition for the new nation. He served in France with [[benjamin-franklin|Franklin]] — a partnership that worked badly because Adams was suspicious of French intentions and impatient with Franklin's slow, sociable diplomacy. Franklin, in a letter to Congress, wrote of Adams: "He means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses." Adams was the lead American negotiator at the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that ended the war. He insisted on terms — recognition of American independence, generous borders to the Mississippi, fishing rights off Newfoundland, evacuation of British troops — that the French wanted to soften to maintain their own influence. Adams negotiated around the French, sometimes against them, and got most of what he asked for. The peace terms set the foundation for American territorial growth in the next half-century.
He was then sent to London as the first American ambassador to the country he had spent a decade trying to leave. His meeting with George III in 1785 was one of the strangest in diplomatic history — the king received him politely, said he had been the last to support American independence but would be the first to accept it now that it existed, and the rebel ambassador and the defeated king parted with mutual respect. Adams wrote his account of the meeting in a letter so honest about his own emotions — pride, anxiety, the strange unreality of the moment — that it remains one of the most readable diplomatic documents of the period.
The Presidency
Adams's presidency was the unlucky one. He inherited a country split between [[alexander-hamilton|Hamilton]]'s Federalists and [[thomas-jefferson|Jefferson]]'s Democratic-Republicans, with the parties divided over how to respond to the French Revolutionary Wars then engulfing Europe. The XYZ Affair in 1797 — in which French officials demanded bribes before negotiating with American envoys — pushed the country to the brink of war with France. Adams resisted full war but built up the army and navy, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts that criminalized criticism of the government, and lost much of the public's confidence in the process. The Sedition Act was the most damaging policy of his presidency, and one Adams himself was uneasy about even as he signed it. Several newspaper editors were jailed for publishing criticism of him. The Acts expired or were repealed after Jefferson took office, but the precedent — that wartime fear can override the First Amendment — has recurred in every American war since.
He lost re-election in 1800 to Jefferson, his oldest political friend turned bitterest rival. He left Washington before Jefferson's inauguration, refusing to attend, in one of the only ungracious moments of his career. He did, however, peacefully transfer power, which was the more important precedent. The 1800 election was the first transfer of power between opposing parties in American history, and the fact that it happened without violence — that Adams went home rather than seizing the army to keep his office — was Washington's example carried into practice.
The Letters
Adams retired to his farm in Massachusetts and lived for another quarter-century. He read constantly, wrote constantly, argued with his neighbors, mourned his daughter, watched his son [[john-quincy-adams|John Quincy]] rise through diplomatic ranks toward his own future presidency. In 1812, at the urging of a mutual friend, he resumed his correspondence with Jefferson. The two old men, who had not spoken in over a decade, began writing each other letters that would run for fourteen years and produce one of the great epistolary exchanges in the language. They discussed everything — religion, history, slavery, classics, their grandchildren, the new generation of politicians, the meaning of the Revolution they had made together. They disagreed sharply on many things and rarely converged, but the warmth of the friendship, recovered after decades of feud, gave both men something they had not expected to find in old age.
Adams died on July 4, 1826, the same day as Jefferson, fifty years to the day after the Declaration. His last words were reported as "Thomas Jefferson still survives" — he did not know Jefferson had died at Monticello hours earlier. The two had spent their final years writing each other into a friendship that outlasted the Revolution, and they died believing the other was still alive. There is something perfect and something terrible about that coincidence. The founders made themselves into legends, and then the legends conspired with the calendar to deliver the most dramatic ending the new republic had yet seen.
Used as a teaching source at school.ai-ministries.com.