John Adams: Life and Career of the US President

John Adams was the second US president

• John Adams was one of the founding fathers of the United States and a signatory to the American Declaration of Independence.

• From 1797 to 1801 Adams was the second President of the United States.

• He had five children with his wife Abigail - one of their sons later also became US President.

John Adams

(October 30, 1735 - July 4, 1826) was the second President of the United States of America and one of the most important politicians in the founding phase of the United States.

Born in

Massachusetts

in 1735

, Adams came from a humble background, but still enjoyed a very good education.

The hardworking and intelligent Adams made a name for himself as a skilled lawyer very early on.

During the

American Revolution

, Adams campaigned for the rights of American colonists against the British Crown.

He was one of the signatories of the

American Declaration of Independence

and worked for many years as an American diplomat in Europe.

Under the first US President,

George Washington

Adams served as Vice President (February 22, 1732 - December 14, 1799).

In 1797 he was elected Washington's successor and held the post until he was elected in 1801.

John Adams: Parents and Education

John Adams

was born on October 19, 1735 in Braintree in

Suffolk County

in what was then the

Province of Massachusetts Bay

.

His family on his father's side had emigrated to the province in 1636.

Adam's father John worked as a shoemaker and worked as a farmer around 20 hectares of land.

His father placed great emphasis on education and sent John Junior to a Latin school after attending elementary school.

His mother Susanna taught him to read at an early age.

As the firstborn of three sons, John was given special support by his parents and exempted from working on the farm.

In 1751 Adams went to study at

Harvard College

, where he studied the following subjects:

• Greek

• Latin

• logic

• physics

• rhetoric

He also took the subjects of moral philosophy and metaphysics.

After graduating, Adams returned to his hometown in 1755, where he briefly worked as a Latin teacher.

A year later he decided

to begin

an apprenticeship with

James Putnam

, one of the province's leading lawyers.

John Adams: Started legal practice

In addition to his work as a teacher,

Adams trained

in law.

He was admitted to the

bar in

1758 and began practicing law at

Braintree

.

During his early years as a lawyer, Adams handled a wide variety of

Massachusetts

legal cases

.

Eventually Adam was admitted to the

Superior Court of Judicature

.

Adam's quick rise as a lawyer is attributed to his puritanical performance orientation as well as his very good powers of observation.

In 1763 Adams published essays under a pseudonym in a newspaper for the first time, which critically deal with the local politics of the

United Kingdom

in the American provinces.

Adams advocated a balance between monarchy, aristocracy and parliamentarianism.

John Adams: Wife and Family

On October 25, 1764, Adams married

Abigail Smith

(November 22, 1744 - October 28, 1818),

nine years his junior

, who came from a respected family in the colony of Massachusetts.

The mother of the bride was against the marriage because in her eyes Adams was not a proper husband for her daughter.

The couple was married by Smith's father, William, a pastor.

After the wedding, the couple moved into a house in

Braintree

,

next to Adam's birthplace

, which Adams had inherited from his father.

As Adam's legal practice grew, the couple later moved to Boston.

Within eight years, the marriage had five children, three sons and two daughters.

The second-born son

John Quincy Adams

(July 11, 1767 - February 23, 1848) later became US President like his father.

Abigail Adams is said to have been a strong-willed and self-confident woman who had an equal marriage with her husband and who exerted great influence on the politics of her US presidential husband.

Among other things, she campaigned for women's rights.

John Adams: Participation in the American Revolution

In the 1760s, Adams began

to question

Britain's

authority

in colonial America.

He viewed the British imposition of high taxes and tariffs as a means of repression and no longer believed that the government in London had the interests of the colonists in mind.

He was a critic of the

Stamp Act

of 1765, by which the British imposed a tax on legal documents, newspapers and playing cards in the North American colonies.

Adams also spoke out against the

Townshend Acts

of 1767, which imposed tariffs on goods such as paper, glass, and tea that were imported into America.

Despite objecting to what he believed to be unjust taxation by the British, Adams represented the British soldiers

charged with

the murder in

the March 1770

Boston Massacre

.

Adams wanted to make sure the soldiers - who were charged with shooting into a troubled crowd of civilians in Boston and killing five people - received a fair trial.

John Adams: One of the leading figures in the Continental Congress

In 1774, Adams

attended the

First Continental Congress

in Philadelphia

as a

Massachusetts

delegate

.

The Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States from 1774 to 1789.

As a delegate of the

Second Continental Congress

, Adams proposed in 1775

George Washington

as commander of the colonial troops in the

American Revolutionary War

(1775-1783) that

had just begun

.

As a delegate of Congress, Adams later nominated Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826) for the draft Declaration of Independence, which Adams later also signed.

John Adams: Diplomatic Missions in Europe

In 1778 Adams was sent to

Paris

to organize aid for the American colonists' cause.

The following year he returned to America and worked as the chief draftsman of the

Massachusetts

Constitution

, the oldest surviving written constitution in the world.

Adams was back in Europe in the early 1780s and served in a diplomatic capacity.

In 1783, he helped negotiate the

Treaty of Paris

, which officially ended hostilities between

America

and

Britain

.

Adams stayed in Europe

after the

American War of Independence

and served as

the United States' first Ambassador to Great Britain

from 1785 to 1788

.

On his return to America he was a participant in the Constitutional Convention, which nominated Washington as the nation's first president.

Adams stood up for the vice presidency and won.

In contrast to today's presidential elections, the president and vice-president were elected separately.

John Adams: The second US president

In March 1797, Adams took office as the second US president.

His presidency was quickly occupied with foreign affairs.

Britain

and

France

were at war, which negatively affected American trade.

During his tenure, Washington was able to maintain its neutrality.

In 1798, an unexplained naval war broke out between the

United States

and

France

, which lasted until a peace treaty was signed in 1800.

Adams gambled away his popularity as president by signing the so-called "

Alien and Sedition Act

"

in 1798

.

Allegedly written to protect American interests, the laws gave the government extensive powers to deport "enemy" foreigners and arrest anyone who disagreed with the government.

Many Americans who broke up with an oppressive government feared that their new administration might resort to similar tactics.

Although the laws were never abused, they harmed Adams and helped cost him the 1801 election.

John Adams: Last years

Adams enjoyed a long and productive retirement after his presidency.

He and his wife returned to

Massachusetts

, and the former president spent the next quarter of a century writing columns, books, and letters.

In 1812 he began an exchange of letters with his old rival

Thomas Jefferson

, the third US president.

Correspondence between the two ex-presidents lasted for the rest of their lives.

Abigail Adams

died in 1818, but

John Adams

lived long enough to see his son

John Quincy Adams

become the sixth President of the United States in 1824.

At this point in time, John Adams was one of the last living signatories to the

Declaration of Independence

.

On July 4, 1826 (the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence), the 90-year-old Founding Father said his last words: "Thomas Jefferson is still alive." He died later that day.

What he didn't know was that earlier that morning Jefferson had died too.