John Adams, the second President of the United States, was a short, stout man with fat cheeks, a square chin, and a quarrelsome temperament. Though he had never held allegiance to King George III, he considered himself to be "well born," and carried himself with the grace and dignity of a member of the English aristocracy. He was intelligent, stubborn, strong minded and impulsive. He was quick to fight with anyone who disagreed with his ideas and did not hesitate to go against popular opinion when his beliefs were at stake. His passion for arguing and sense of conviction made him instrumental in bringing about the American Revolution.
On October 19, 1735 John Adams was born in a typical New England farm house in Braintree, Massachusetts. He was the first of three boys to be born to John and Susana Adams. As the eldest son of a well-established landowner, shoe maker, and local politician, he was given a superior education with the intention that he would one day attend Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. When John Adams enrolled in Harvard in 1751 he planned to pursue a career as a Congregational minister, but by the time he graduated in 1755 he had decided on a career in law. After graduation he taught school for a short time in Worchester and then undertook law school. He passed the Massachusetts bar in 1758 and set up a practice in Braintree.
In 1764 John Adams married Abigail Smith. They had five children, Abigail, John Quincy, Susana, Charles, and Thomas.
Practicing law in Braintree, John Adams soon built up a reputation as a champion of colonial causes. In 1765 when King George imposed the Stamp Act on the colonies, John Adams organized Braintree's protest.
Adams was elected a Massachusetts delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses where he worked tirelessly to unite the 13 colonies behind the cause of independence. It was at the Second Continental Congress in May 1775 that Adams convinced the delegates to make the army already assembled in New England the army of the united colonies, thereby committing all the colonies, and not just New England, to war with Britain. Adams then lobbied to get the southern General George Washington appointed Commander in Chief of the new Continental Army, consequently solidifying the support of the South.
During the revolution, John Adams was extremely active in the cause of the patriots. In 1776 he was among the five men selected to draft the Declaration of Independence. Upon his insistence, Thomas Jefferson was selected to do the actual writing. In 1777 he drafted the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, and the finished work became the model after which the other colonies fashioned their own bills of rights. As the American Delegate to France in 1778, Adams tried to win French support for the American troops (It was for this reason that Adams was not around for the writing of the Constitution). In 1787 John Adams signed an armistice agreement which put an official end to the American Revolutionary War.
John Adams came in second to Washington in the first presidential election, thereby making him the first Vice President of the United States. Adams, who had always been jealous of Washington's popularity, decided it best to swallow his pride and support the Washington administration. Although the Constitution had been designed so that the Vice President was to act as the President's Prime Minister, Washington's overshadowing of Adams resulted in a very powerful Office of the President and an almost insignificant Office of the Vice President, a relationship which has carried through to the present day. Adams did complain about the low status of the Vice Presidency, but in spite of this he accepted the job for a second term under Washington in 1793.
When Washington left office in 1797, a split was developing in the American political landscape. The split was between the Republican-Democrats and the Federalists, two groups who held fundamentally opposite philosophies of government. The Republican-Democrats believed in a strong local government whose power base was situated directly with the common people. They also believed that the powers of the federal government should be limited to what was provided for in the Constitution. The Federalists believed in a strong federal government made up members of the educated upper-class. They held that the powers of the federal government should extend beyond those provided for in the Constitution. When John Adams ran for President in 1797, he did so as a Federalist.
While Adams had believed firmly in the right of the American colonists to govern themselves, he had never believed that all men were "created equal." Adams had always felt that the farmers should attend to the job of farming, while the upper class should attend to the job of governing. It was for this reason that he came to favor a loose interpretation of the Constitution. He felt that the "well born" in power should be able to make any laws they saw necessary to get the job of governing done. A rivalry between John Adams and Alexander Hamilton split the political scene of 1797 even further. Hamilton disliked Adam because he felt that Adams' stubborn and quarrelsome temperament was ill suited for the job of President. Hamilton also wanted to control the Federalist Party, something which he would not be able to do if Adams was elected President. Since Hamilton himself was not popular enough to run, he decided to nominate Thomas Pickney as a second Federalist candidate in order to split the vote so that the choice of President would fall to Congress, over which he did have control. The plan failed. Adams won the Presidency, and the Republican-Democrat candidate Thomas Jefferson came in second and won the Vice Presidency. John Adams became the second President of the United States on March 4, 1797.
See Thomas Jefferson: Thomas Jefferson served as Adams' Vice President, then moved on to become the 3rd President of the United States.
Adams' Presidency was troubled by a war between Britain and France. Under Adams, the United States Navy was established to protect American merchant ships. In 1798 a letter was sent to President Adams from the French in an effort to blackmail the United States into paying France a tribute. Adams published the letter substituting the names of governmental officials implicated in the letter with the letters X, Y, and Z. The incident became known as the "X Y Z affair."
During the summer of 1798 Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Under the stipulation of these acts, aliens could be banished from the country during peacetime, and editors could be jailed for "scandalous or malicious" writing against the President or Congress. Thomas Jefferson led a movement to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Acts became a prevailing issue in the election of 1801. John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1801, and in a fit of jealousy left Washington without witnessing Jefferson's inauguration.
John Adams retired to New England where he died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826.
