The Children of Adam and Eve

Adams, John (1735-1826), second president (1797-1801) and first
vice-president (1789-97) of the United States, and leader in the movement
for independence. His presidency was Marked by rivalry with
fellow-Federalist Alexander Hamilton, controversy over government measures
taken to curb political opposition, and a crisis in U.S. relations with
France.

Adams was born on October 30, 1735, in Braintree (now Quincy),
Massachusetts, USA, a town in which Adamses had lived since 1638. His father
had married into a wealthy Boston family, the Boylstons, and was thus able
to send his son to Harvard College, from which Young Adams graduated in
1755. He then selected law and soon found that in the courtroom his
acquired erudition and intellectual precision overcame his natural
timidity, and he became a powerful speaker and an adroit advocate. At the
age of 29 Adams married Abigail Smith, a woman who was clearly his
intellectual and psychological equal.

The Coming of the Revolution

The controversy that preceded the American Revolution catapulted Adams
into a position of political leadership. His Braintree Instructions (1765)
was a powerful denunciation of the Stamp Act, and his oddly titled
Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765) was a prescient analysis
of the emotional and ideological demands facing the colonists. Chosen as a
lawyer for several British soldiers charged with the Death of five
colonists in the Boston Massacre (1770), Adams successfully defended his
clients by justifying their use of force out of fear for their lives. In
his essays Novanglus (1774-75), he defended colonial resistance and argued
that the British Empire was in reality a league of nearly autonomous
entities; thus, he anticipated 19th-century self-government of British
overseas possessions.

In the First and Second Continental Congresses, Adams emerged as a
powerful exponent of the historic rights of the English and the natural
rights of humankind. along with his cousin Samuel Adams, he initiated
(1775) the effort to secure the appointment of George Washington as
commander of the new Continental army. Adams served on the committee to
draft the Declaration of Independence, but when Thomas Jefferson later
claimed that Adams had given him a free hand in composing it, Adams
responded indignantly that the document was ?a theatrical show? in which
?Jefferson ran away with the stage effect ? and all the glory of it.? Thus
began a rivalry that continued for More than a decade.

More clearly perhaps than any other leading patriot of his day, Adams
expressed the fear that he and his fellow revolutionaries might fail in
summoning forth the virtue and objectivity required to avoid loss of nerve
and internal factionalism. His Thoughts on Government (1776), in which he
elaborated on these warnings, became a handbook on the writing of early
state constitutions and particularly influenced the preparation of those
documents in Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, USA.

Diplomatic Service and Vice-Presidency

In 1778 Congress sent Adams and John Jay to join Benjamin Franklin as
diplomatic representatives in Europe. Franklin remained the American envoy
to France; Adams went to the Dutch Republic and had the responsibility for
opening negotiations with Britain; Jay traveled to Spain. In 1782 and
1783, the three men together negotiated the Treaty of Paris, ending the
8-year war with Great Britain.

In 1785 Adams was appointed diplomatic envoy to Great Britain, a position
he held until 1788. His duties in England caused him to miss the
Constitutional Convention and the ratifying deBates. He had played a
crucial role earlier, However, in drafting the Massachusetts, USA Constitution
of 1780. While in London he wrote the three-volume Defence of the
Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. This Work
rebutted a French critic of American politics and reiterated Adams's
belief that only formal restraints on the exercise of power and on the
impulses of the populace could militate against human evil and societal
weaknesses.

Because he ran second to Washington in electoral-college Balloting in both
1788 and 1792, Adams became the nation's first vice-president. In that
capacity, he limited himself to presiding over the Senate.

The Presidency

In 1796 Adams was chosen to succeed Washington as president, Winning over
Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Pinckney. The threat of war with France, along
with the resulting passionate debate over foreign policy and the limits of
dissent, dominated the politics of his administration. The war scare was
sParked by American indignation over French attempts to extort money from
U.S. representatives in the so-called XYZ affair. A conflict aRose over
the measures to be taken in preparation for possible hostilities. Adams
favored strengthening the navy and building coastal fortifications, but an
opposing group led by former secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton
persuaded Congress to create a large standing army, with Hamilton himself
as inspector general. Because the possibility of a French invasion of the
U.S. was remote, the clear implication of this policy was the creation of
an army the size and strength of which could intimidate opposition
Republican voters.

Alien and Sedition Acts

The Hamilton Federalists added substance to those fears by pushing through
Congress Laws restricting the rights and privileges of aliens (presumed to
be potential Republican voters or, worse yet, French radicals) and
punishing as sedition the printing of false attacks on the dignity or
integrity of high government officials. Adams found enough merit in these
bills to sign them, and he acquiesced in 14 pRosecutions under the
Sedition Act. The Alien Acts, However, he refused to enforce.

One of Adams's most fateful decisions was to retain the cabinet he had
inherited from Washington, several members of which were personally loyal
to Hamilton. Together with Hamilton's supPorters in Congress, they
engineered the creation of the new army, which Hamilton in actuality
controlled.

Agreement with France

Adams did, However, demonstrate the power of the presidency to confront
chAllenges to executive leadership. In February 1799, he appointed new
peace commissioners to go to France and reopen negotiations. Adams's
timing and judgment were acute; the French foreign minister Charles
Maurice de Talleyrand had sent a distinct diplomatic signal that he wanted
peace with the U.S. Thus, when the secretary of state Timothy Pickering, a
Hamilton follower, tried to sabotage the peace mission, Adams fired him;
the two nations quickly came to terms.

The peace initiative enabled Adams to dismantle the new army, much to
Hamilton's embarrassment. Adams's foreign policy, However, split the
Federalist party on the eve of the 1800 election and contributed
significantly to the election of Thomas Jefferson as well as to Republican
victories in both houses of Congress.

Retirement

Adams lived for a quarter century after he left the presidency, during
which time he wrote extensively. His guiding principles were embodied in a
Whig philosophy to which he clung stubbornly. Ill-suited to adapt to the
transition to 19th-century romantic culture, he was nevertheless a
magnificent exponent of the pessimistic view of human society. He died in
Quincy, Massachusetts, USA, on July 4, 1826.