Adams, John

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Adams, John

ADAMS, JOHN. (1735–1826). Lawyer, U.S. congressman, diplomat, signer of the Declaration of Independence, vice-president under Washington and second U.S. president. Massachusetts. John Adams was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, on 19 October 1735, and graduated from Harvard in 1755. Admitted to the Boston bar three years later, Adams slowly built up a law practice. In October 1764 he married Abigail Smith, daughter of Reverend William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith, which not only brought him a wife who proved a lively and worthy partner but also gave him wide connections with prominent Massachusetts families.

Soon after graduating from Harvard, Adams took an interest in local politics and started writing for the newspapers. The Stamp Act crisis brought him into prominence as the author of the resolutions of protest that were sent by his hometown to its representatives in the legislature and upon which other towns modelled their own protests. Adams joined with Jeremiah Gridley and James Otis in presenting Boston's memorial on the closing of the courts and started a long contest with Massachusetts' lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson.

EARLY PROFESSIONAL LIFE

Early in 1768 Adams moved to Boston, where his enlarged legal practice promoted his rise to political prominence. In that same year he defended John Hancock on charges of smuggling. Given Hancock's guilt, Adams wisely based his defense on constitutional grounds, rejecting the validity of the law under which Hancock was charged because Massachusetts lacked representation in the English Parliament. Following the Boston "Massacre," of 5 March 1770, Adams joined Josiah Quincy in successfully defending the British guard commander and his men against homicide charges. The patriot leadership supported Adams's actions not only because they demonstrated his commitment to equal justice, but also because Adams carefully steered inquiry away from the crowd's incitement of the soldiers. Unlike his radical cousin, Samuel Adams, John disapproved of the Stamp Act riots and other violence. Rather, he based his opposition to the mother country's coercive policy on strictly legal grounds.

In gratitude for his defense of British soldiers, the government offered Adams the post of advocate general in the Court of Admiralty, but Adams saw this offer as an attempt to break his association with the Patriot leaders and declined. Adams heartily approved of the Boston Tea Party, but continued to oppose mob violence. Although he saw that independence was a possibility, he dreaded its potential consequences. On 14 June 1774 he was chosen as a delegate to the first Continental Congress, and sat with each succeeding Congress through the election of 4 December 1777. In the First Congress he helped draft the declaration to the English king, as well as a declaration of rights.

In the Second Congress Adams unsuccessfully opposed further petitions to the king, and was largely responsible for George Washington's selection as commander in chief, a move calculated to draw Virginia into closer support of the revolution. Having come around to the conviction that independence was desirable, Adams seconded the independence resolution of Richard Henry Lee on 7 June 1776. Appointed to the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, Adams, who played a lesser role in the drafting of the document, was credited by Thomas Jefferson with getting the document approved by Congress. On 13 June Adams was placed on the newly created Board of War, where his duties were onerous but essential to the functioning of the Continental army: seeing to its provisioning, arming, and pay. Over the following year Adams served on ninety committees, more than any other member of Congress. He also devoted a great deal of time to the constant squabbling of officers for primacy in rank and promotion; worked assiduously to establish an American currency, secure foreign loans, and regulate prices; and took part in the putative Peace Conference on Staten Island, which convened on 11 September 1776.

DIPLOMATIC ENDEAVORS

Adams left Congress on 26 October 1777, never, as it turned out, to return. On 28 November he was elected to succeed Silas Deane as commissioner to France, and on 13 February 1778 he sailed for Bordeaux with his ten-year-old son, John Quincy Adams (who would become the sixth U.S. President). Adams did not like France, the French, or his fellow commissioners. In May he drafted a plan for reducing the squabbling commission to a single representative, eventually winning the approval of his fellow commissioner and roommate, Benjamin Franklin, and he won the support of Congress as well. Adams's return to the United States was delayed until June 1779 so that he might accompany the French minister, Conrad Alexandre Gérard, across the Atlantic. Immediately upon his return to Massachusetts, Adams was named to represent Braintree in the convention called to draw up the state constitution. Adams played a vital role in the writing of this document, which reflected his doubts regarding unfettered democracy, and he institutionalized a powerful executive branch of the state's government.

In September 1779 Congress named Adams a minister plenipotentiary, charged with drawing up a treaty of peace and of commerce with Great Britain. Adams found himself on a very difficult mission, because the English initially would not negotiate and the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, loathed him. Benjamin Franklin wanted him removed from his diplomatic post, and Congress ignored Adams's communications. Frustrated, Adams spent much of the next two years in the Netherlands, where he gained Dutch recognition of American independence and a desperately needed loan that kept the American war effort alive.

Adams returned to Paris in October 1782 as part of a five-man commission that negotiated a peace treaty with Britain. This commission ignored Congress's instructions to follow the French lead, and as a result, on 30 November 1782, the peace negotiations produced a peace treaty that proved very favorable to the United States. The treaty was finally ratified by Congress on 3 September 1783.

As a fitting capstone to Adams's numerous and significant efforts on behalf of American independence, he was appointed the first U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1785. He was reluctantly received by George III. Adams returned to the United States in 1788, becoming the nation's first vice president. In March 1797, he was elected the nation's second president. Adams died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in 1826.